A MUM from Stoke Prior had good reason to be very proud of her daughter’s cool head, after she fell down the stairs at their family home whilst carrying her six-month-old, and was knocked unconscious.

Nine-year-old Lucy Tolley not only called an ambulance, but also ran next door to find a neighbour, and called her dad to tell him what had happened, shutting the family dogs out of the way.

Emma Tolley, who runs Posh Paws pet boutique in Studley, had just returned from picking Lucy, and her friend Mollie Caldicott up from Stoke Prior First School when she took her tumble.

She had gone upstairs to change her baby daughter Sally’s nappy, and was about to head back down.

She said: “I came down two or three steps, and I caught my foot on my jeans. I knew I was going to fall, and I had a split second where I grabbed Sally to protect her head in my arms, and just fell. Apparently I screamed, but I hit the floor and I don’t remember anything after that.

“When I came to, my daughter was on the phone to the ambulance already, and her friend had gone to get her mum. She’d phoned my husband, she took total control. I’m so proud of them.”

Mrs Tolley suffers from diabetes and she had talked to her daughter about what to do if she became unconscious.

She added: “We’d talked through if she found me unconscious, but not really about falling, but it had obviously lodged in her brain. I was walking round in a daze I don’t know what I would have done without them.”

Mrs Tolley suffered two black eyes in the fall as well as grazes to her face, and a bruised shoulder, but luckily her baby daughter was unhurt. She was admitted to hospital for two days, until her blood sugar levels recovered after shock of the fall.

“They were saying in the ambulance, for a nine year old that’s absolutely brilliant,” added Mrs Tolley, “they asked ‘how old is she?’ and said she’s done really well doing that. Both of them. I’m so proud.

“We told Lucy what to do in an emergency when she was very young. It doesn’t matter how young they are, you need to tell them get it into them early on.”