According to local media reports, the tragedy occurred during a Halloween party on October 24.

The child's mother, Kisha Avitia-Wilson, said she was attending a trunk-or-treat event in Kenosha with her family when her older children received balloon animals.

Recounting the heartbreaking incident to NBC Chicago, Avitia-Wilson said the family had been trying to keep the balloons away from her baby, Don.

“We were keeping the balloons away from Baby Don, and one of the balloons came undone,” she said.

“He grabbed it, and he bit it. When he bit it, it shot the tied-up part into the bottom of his esophagus. I grabbed him immediately out of his car seat. I performed CPR … I stuck my fingers down his throat. The person that I was with tried to do the same things also, and he turned blue immediately and went into cardiac arrest,” she added.

Despite desperate attempts to save the child, he could not be revived.

“The ambulance came so fast and stuck the tube down his throat and the pliers down his throat. It was nothing that we could have done to save my baby boy,” she said.

“I don't like to talk about him in past tense, but he isn't here with us any longer.”

The tragedy has taken an additional toll on Avitia-Wilson, who is 30 weeks pregnant. The shock and grief reportedly triggered early contractions, leaving her hospitalised as she copes with the devastating loss.

Calling for greater safeguards against balloon-related accidents, she said: “Balloons have warnings on them, but that is not enough. They should stop selling them. Stop marketing them to kids. Stop producing them.”

In a GoFundMe appeal, the child's great-aunt, Mary Lott, remembered him as a joyful and much-loved little boy.

“He was a handsome little boy whose laugh was infectious, whose smile could light up any room, and who was loved by so many,” she wrote.

Describing the family's ordeal, Lott said Avitia-Wilson was struggling to cope with the loss while making funeral arrangements and dealing with the physical and emotional strain of her pregnancy.

“She is pregnant and grieving while also trying to make funeral arrangements, and the stress of carrying all of this at once has been overwhelming for her,” she wrote.

Lott also urged people to keep the grieving mother and the child's sisters, Da'Niyah and Da'Nylah, in their prayers during what she described as an unimaginably painful time.