TWO minutes after Cassie Hodges put her newborn boy down to serve dinner, a pressure cooker with boiling soup exploded causing devastating burns across her arms, chest and stomach.

The mum-of-three was transferred to the burns unit of Concord Hospital in NSW for treatment and wasn’t able to see her two eldest girls for days because of the unbearable pain and life-changing injuries.

Her partner Mark has been helping her with everyday tasks such as eating, with burns to 12 per cent of her body.

“Mark has to feed me like a baby, hold me while I cry through the pain, and do everything else I need” she said.

“I will be OK, but I want to share my story. Two minutes earlier I was holding my son; my poor son could have been hurt. We are lucky; I want to make sure this never happens to anyone ever again.”

On Friday, Mark decided to cook some soup for dinner at home in Goulburn. With the family hungry and not enough time to slow cook, he decided to throw it into the pressure cooker.

He selected the ‘soup’ option and walked away.

After about 25 minutes Cassie walked into the kitchen with her 13-week-old boy Zac in her arms. She called out to Mark to let him know that the soup was ready.

Cassie walked out to put her son in the lounge room, and told her two older girls Olivia, five, and Ruby, two, to sit at the table before dishing up dinner.

“I walked back into the kitchen and Mark let the pressure release valve off to release the pressure. The steam came out of the top as normal. Then I heard a click, suddenly I knew the lid unlocked and the next minute I was hit with something,” she said.

To the couple’s horror the lid had unlocked and because it hadn’t finished releasing the pressure, the lid “flew off” and the soup exploded all over Cassie and Mark.

“The entire contents hit me like as if someone chucked a bucket of water at me, the noise of it was a loud sizzle,” she said.

“I immediately screamed. My partner was holding his stomach and he pulled his arm back and his skin was all peeled off. I removed my singlet and ran to the shower.”

This all unfolded with their three children nearby.

“My five-year-old daughter came in after hearing me scream, she panicked, started to freak out, screaming,” she told Kidspot.

“She will require counselling, she is not OK.”

The couple called an ambulance. It arrived with a fire truck in response to the family’s distressing call.

“I have severe burns to majority of both my arms, my chest and stomach,” she said.

“I was lucky, if I hadn’t gotten straight into the shower I would have needed skin grafts and doctors said if I had breathed any of it in I would have been put into a coma to save my life.

“I was told I had to have all my dead burnt skin removed by scraping with a rough towel and biobrane, a type of pig skin, applied immediately.”

With just endone and Panadol, Cassie gritted and cried through excruciating pain, as staff scraped her dead skin from her raw and blistering body.

“I have never felt such pain in my life,” she said.

“Mark has a deep burn to his stomach because he didn’t get into the water as he wanted me to be OK. His is much smaller, but still deep and very painful.

“We are both heavily medicated,” she said.

Cassie was not able to see her two daughters for over a week. They stayed with family.

When her daughter returned home she was still frightened.

“She came home and she started to scream and cry when she saw me, she is very withdrawn,” Cassie said.

“She keeps asking questions over and over, says ‘I love you’ constantly.”

She is positive the couple will make a full recovery, and understands it could have been much worse.

“It terrifies me, I’ve cried many times thinking about my son, thinking it could have been him,” she said.

But she wants to share a warning to other families and is calling for the Casera pressure cooker she used to be recalled.

She received it as a Christmas gift in 2014.

“I want people to be aware of the dangers, we did nothing wrong, the machine unlocked prematurely, it should stay locked and unable to be opened until the pressure is all gone,” she said.

“Throw your cookers out, or demand a refund.”

Cassie is meeting with a lawyer today and has so far been unable to contact the manufacturer.

The product has previously been stocked at Crazy Clarks, but all of the discount stores closed nationally in 2014. The same product can still be brought online at various deal websites, as well as Gumtree.

This article originally appeared on Kidspot.