Stephanie Bernardy hugs her 11-month-old son close to her chest. When she puts Brayden down, she keeps a watchful eye on the baby.

Meanwhile, Brayden’s 4-year-old brother Bently inflates and deflates a balloon as he watches “Ice Age.” He begins chewing on the rubber, alerting his mother.

“Do not, or that’s going to go in the garbage,” Stephanie says.

She has shown extra caution and care ever since Brayden nearly choked to death when he swallowed part of a plant on July 7.

“Every single little choking noise that I hear, I jump onto it,” Stephanie said. “I’m terrified it’s going to happen again.”

On that fateful Thursday between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m., Stephanie had been talking to Machelle Leggett, her mother, in the driveway. Machelle was visiting from John Day.

A large shrub, similar to a juniper, grows near the front door of Stephanie’s home. She said her two boys were playing on the porch. Brayden crawled toward the front door near the bush.

Nobody is quite sure how Brayden got hold of the prickly plant.

“The next thing we knew, he just had his mouth wide open,” Machelle said of her grandson. “He was turning different shades, and we were both going hysterical.”

The piece of shrub was less than an inch long and had somehow gotten loose from the rest of the plant. Whatever the cause, it was lodged in Brayden’s throat.

The two women frantically tried to remove it. Machelle put her fingers in Brayden’s mouth, attempting to grab the intrusion but to no avail.

Next, Machelle laid Brayden on the ground and pounded on his back.

That didn’t work either, and Brayden was becoming more distressed.

“He looked up at (Stephanie), like ‘Mommy, help me,’ ” Machelle said.

As Machelle struggled to save Brayden, Stephanie, panicked, ran back and forth across the street, screaming to the neighbors for help, as well as trying to find her cell phone to call 911.

“It felt like the neighborhood was deserted,” Stephanie said.

But it wasn’t.

Across the street, Christina White and her boyfriend Chris Myers heard the commotion. They ran out of their house to see what was going on.

Myers called 911, while White, who had taken first-aid classes, sprinted across the street.

White took Brayden from Machelle. She put the baby on her forearm, her hand on his stomach and his head draping off the side of her arm.

She delivered back blows to Brayden several times. Eventually, he coughed up the plant, as well as some blood.

“He looked at me and smiled,” White said. “He didn’t cry and just took a nice deep breath.”

During the traumatic event, Bently was scared and confused at the sight of his little brother choking. After Myers had called 911, he distracted Bently by playing with him on a tire swing

Paramedics from the Baker City Fire Department arrived about a minute after Brayden started breathing again. He was deemed responsive and stable. An ambulance escorted the family to the emergency room.

Doctors tested and scanned Brayden at the hospital. They were concerned about swelling in his throat, and that an abscess could form and cut off his breathing, Stephanie said.

Brayden was prescribed antibiotics to bring the swelling down. Stephanie said he’s completely healthy now.

Had it not been for her neighbors, Stephanie believes she would have lost her son.

“I owe them my life,” Stephanie said. “I can’t even put it in words.”

Machelle shares the same sentiment.

“That was one of the scariest moments of my entire life,” Machelle said. “I thought for sure we were going to lose my grandson, and what was worse for me was that he was going to go right in front of his mother and brother.”

Stephanie runs a day care and is trained to perform CPR and first aid. However, she said it was difficult to stay calm when it was her own son.

White feels fortunate that she was home when it happened.

“I think it’s just important that even if you don’t have children, you should be taking some kind of a first-aid or CPR class,” White said.

See more in the July 20, 2016, issue of the Baker City Herald.