Ben's Story

February of 2009, we found out that we were expecting a bundle of joy come October of that year. Oh how excited we were!!

It was a pretty uneventful first trimester. All day "morning" sickness every single day, not much else happened.

The second trimester was much more eventful. When we went to found out the sex, the ultrasound tech saw something troubling on the ultrasound. So we were sent to a specialist in OKC to get it checked out. Along with finding out he was a BOY (YAY!) when we visited the specialist, we also found out that I had a uterine septum dividing my uterus. This was not good at all, because it significantly decreased the amount of room he had to grow in.

Fast forward a couple of months, through a couple of ultrasounds and only one more appointment with my "Dr." in our town (I only saw her twice throughout the pregnancy, btw), he stops kicking one day. Obviously bad, my husband made me go to the doctors office. It was there that we found out Ben was in a lot of stress and his heart rate had dropped to below 60.

I was immediately sent to our local hospital for an emergency c-section.

We spoke to the doctor on call who then performed the surgery.

Once he got in there, he found out that Ben had been so stressed out from the lack of room that he had had a bowel movement in the womb and was smothering in it. The pediatrician had not seen anything like it.

Benjamin was born 4 weeks early weighing in at 4 lb 1 oz and 15 3/4 inches long. Our little miracle baby. The doctors said if we had come in any later, he would not have survived.

By the time he was born, he had been deprived of oxygen for an extended period of time. Since neither of us knew about Cerebral Palsy we did not connect the dots yet. We were just glad to have him in the world. Alive and doing pretty well.

At 4 months, I noticed that he was not reaching certain milestones. His pediatrician told me that if he was not rolling over by 5 months to let him know. Well, he did not.

At 10 months, his pediatrician had a strong feeling that Ben had Cerebral Palsy.

At 1 year, his doctor verified the diagnosis and we officially found out that he had C.P.

This page begins at age 2 1/2...

So, Welcome to our story!