Lala Kent recounts her terrifying ER visit with daughter Ocean when she was ‘running out of air’

Cindy Ord/Bravo via Getty, Lala Kent/instagram

Lala Kent went through a scary ordeal with her baby girl last week.

Sharing the experience on her Give them Lala podcast, the Vanderpump Rules The star, 32, shared that she was getting into bed after putting her daughter down when she heard Ocean, 19 months, getting “annoyed” in her room.

Explaining that the toddler was used to sleeping, Kent said she knew Ocean’s crying meant “something was wrong.”

“I come in and she’s gasping for air, she can’t breathe,” Kent said, explaining that she felt reassured that the little girl was screaming because it meant she had air in her lungs.

“I watched her for what seemed like an hour, which was actually five minutes, before I decided we were going to the emergency room – as if something was wrong,” she recalls.

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“I was looking at her, trying to lay down, smoking in the shower, (and) while she was smoking, I put her on my chest, laid down in the bed and, the way she was talking, you could tell she was I’m having trouble breathing,” she explained. “Now I’m not making a mess anymore.”

Kent rushed her little girl — who she shares with ex Randall Emmett — to Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, where she was placed “immediately in a room.”

“She screamed, then coughed, and this nurse heard her and asked, ‘How long has this baby been doing this?’ “Kent explained.

“I said, ‘I don’t know because I just got her back. I have joint custody right now. I got her when I was 7, I got her. This is what I have now,'” she continued.

Noting that Ocean was “a little lethargic” and had a runny nose, Kent didn’t think much of it at first because “I was told my baby was doing great when she was at the other house.”

“She ended up with croup, which is very scary for infants,” she noted of the condition, defined by the Mayo Clinic as “an upper respiratory infection that obstructs breathing and causes a characteristic barking cough.”

“Luckily, Ocean’s lungs are developed, so it’s something that, if you catch it early, is very treatable.”

Kent and Emmett split in October 2021. Last December, she told PEOPLE that she wouldn’t involve “a guy” if she decided to have more children.

“I want to have more children,” Kent said at the time. “I don’t think there’s going to be a man involved. In fact, I know for a fact that there won’t be a man involved if I decide to have another baby.”