Birth Mistakes | When to Suspect Cerebral Palsy

Today, it is very unlikely that a child with cerebral palsy will go home from the hospital without being diagnosed with the condition. There are cases, however, where this does happen and where the parents do not find out until long after the child was actually born that their child does suffer from cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is a brain injury, so there's obviously no outward sign that there is anything wrong until the child starts exhibiting the symptoms of having this particular type of injury to their brain.

The Signs

Cerebral palsy is actually a group of disorders. All of them, however, exhibit most of their effects on the child's control of their muscles. There are different types of cerebral palsy that affect the muscles in different ways but, most of the time, the first symptoms have to do with how the child develops physically or, in some cases, how they feel when they are picked up and held.

One of the symptoms that a child with cerebral palsy may have is feeling floppy in some areas of their body and rigid in others. It's important to remember that what's going on is that the brain is failing to control the muscles in the way it normally would. This means that they spasm in some cases and that in other cases they are completely limp.

Another common sign that a child may have cerebral palsy is when they fail to reach milestones that are expected of other infants. Most of the time, the one that parents notice is that their child has not developed the ability to roll themselves over as speedily as one would expect. Because parents are typically waiting anxiously to see these signs of development on the part of their children, it generally doesn't take them too long to realize that something isn't right with their child's development and to start asking a doctor but the problem may actually be.

In some cases, birth mistakes on the part of healthcare providers end up causing cerebral palsy in infants. If you believe that this is the case and, especially, if a medical investigation confirms as much, you should speak with an attorney to investigate whether or not you have the option of filing a lawsuit.