well looks like doing a daily blog already was too hard to do lol. Just have to schedule in some time and I'll get this in no time.
As posted in my first blog I'll be chatting about a lot of different topics and will try to keep you all interested and a little off your guard from time to time. Today I'm going to talk about my son for a bit, just to introduce him and his disability to you.
My oldest son, I'll call him A, is now 24yrs old and is a spastic quadrapalegic with cerebral palsy. A lot of people don't know or understand the disability so hopefully I will be able to explain it properly. I was a young mom, 19, when I had him, no drugs or alcohol and very healthy so going into labour I was a no risk patient. My pregnancy was regular and no issues, he was very active and was a very healthy weight at term. 10 days after exptected birth date I was induced, the early stages were normal and went as expected. Once the contractions started regularly things started getting a little strange. I was hooked up to a fetal heartrate monitor and we noticed that my contractions were starting to become extremely aggressive. I was having 3 contractions at a time lasting for approx 2 min each. My monitor looked like the rocky mountains lol. I started hyperventilating from all the funky breathing they teach you to do during the prenatal classes and all I can say is what a change an hour can make. The staff started freaking out and paging my obgyn as they knew something was wrong. My baby was going into distress, his heartrate was going down to 30 beats/min during contractions, that's way too low. When the doctor finally arrived, (not mine but an associate) he did an exam and explained I was too far along to do a c-section and that I would have to deliver naturally. After all I can say is very large scalpel cut of my lady parts and then forceps to help him along, my son was born. He had the cord wrapped very tightly around his neck 2 TIMES and was basically suffucating during labour.
He was very strong and recovered quickly so the medical staff thought he was ok. They were very, very wrong.
A, was a strong and healthy little boy who seemed to be developing just a bit slower than other babies his age and at 6 months old he was unable to sit or hold his head up anymore. He seemed to be losing all muscle tone and his flexibility was starting to decrease. At 10 months we definitely knew something was really wrong. After doing a lot of research ourselves and forcing the pediatrician to look into it, he was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy. What was that, we had never heard of it, how exactly did this happen? He was a healthy boy and was never sick, how could he have CP. Then we looked into it and found out exactly what it meant.
Cerebral Palsy is brain damage to a developing brain, either inutero, delivery or within the first 3 yrs. As he was a healthy fetus and hadn't been sick in his first year we knew it had to be during delivery. After a CAT-scan we discovered that he had damage to many parts of his brain, consistent with low levels of oxygen over a long period of time. Basically his cord had cut off oxygen and blood flow to his brain during labour over the course of a few hours and caused damage to his brain, affecting many parts of the brain and subsequently many issues for him.
I will go into further details on other blogs, but to leave this one on a positive note. He graduated high school, he has many friends, he's very active in his community and he is the happiest, most positive person I have ever met. He smiles at everyone and makes people happy when he is around. His presence in my life is amazing, I have no other words other than that, amazing.
Well, until tomorrow, have a great day
