Baby stops breathing when he cries

My baby has done this ever since he was about a month old. He’s 11 months old now and still does it and some days it really really scares me.

Today he got a hold of a piece of paper and took a bite out of it. I tried to fish the piece of paper out of his mouth, and he cried really hard. He usually freaks out and cries when I try to take stuff out of his mouth, but today was worse. He stopped breathing for about 7-8 seconds which is a really long time when your little baby isn’t breathing or making any noise. He started shaking and going limp and I was holding him trying to get him to breathe and his face was going emotionless, his eyes were dropping, and his lips were turning blue. I was freaking out and thought maybe he was choking on the piece of paper. I hit him on the back a few times and he started breathing again and his eyes opened back up, his lips turned pink again, and he was okay.

But this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. He has shaken and gone limp before from crying so hard (like if he fell and bumped his head) but he’s never had blue lips like it happened today.

Needless to say I’m pretty shaken up about it. I felt like I was gonna lose my baby.

What do I do in situations like this when my baby won’t breathe while he’s crying??? It freaks me out so bad. It scares me. I try to blow a little air in his face to make him catch his breath and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I don’t know what else to do.