If a child’s brain does not get enough oxygen during the birthing process, they can sometimes be afflicted with a condition known as cerebral palsy. This is a condition that can have a lot of different symptoms depending on what parts of the brain are impacted, but it can be hard to know if the child has it at first.
You may think that issues of brain damage or injury would be clear immediately to the parents, but this simply isn’t the case because of a child’s developmental rate.
Limitations on skills
For instance, one of the common signs of cerebral palsy is a limitation on mobility skills. Someone who has this condition may need devices to help them walk for the rest of their life.
While this is very obvious later on in life, is not apparent at all for new babies that were just born since they haven’t developed the skill to walk yet. The same is true if the child has speech development issues. These only show up over time, but it is not clear right away because the child has not reached the stage where he or she would normally develop those skills.
As a result, parents often discover that the child has cerebral palsy months or even years after the fact. The child begins to miss important milestones and isn’t developing at the rate of his or her peers, and that is when the parents begin to suspect that something is wrong.
Has this happened to you?
This can make for a very complicated situation when your child’s condition is related to something that occurred long ago. Make sure that you are well aware of all the legal options that you have if you believe a medical mistake contributed to this birth injury.
