Oliver's Amazing Adventure - Cerebral Palsy Diagnosis

At the start of this week we received a letter from Oliver’s consultant which confirmed in black and white what we had always thought that Oliver has Cerebral palsy. At the minute we wont know how severe it is or what it means for the future but for now we have an answer. What we do know is that he will have mobility issues, some form of learning disability and will most likely have to go to a specialist school. Although we knew that the chances of him having CP was really high because of how early he was we still hoped for he best for him, so although we were prepared still seeing it written down still wasn’t nice. Oliver has already overcome so much considering the survival rate of a 23 week baby is only 19% so the fact that he is even here is a miracle and we couldn’t be prouder of him.

Other then his MRI we have nothing really new to update about him, he loves rolling onto his side and has recently started sleeping on his tummy (if I put him on it that is). He started hydrotherapy a couple of weeks ago and I thought he would be ok but when he actually got in the water he didn’t seem too pleased. We’ve got another session tomorrow so I’m hoping that it goes a bit better. On a Thursday I take Oliver to Moo Music and honestly I think that moo is the only place Oliver will sit down. He will sit for a good 2 mins max at moo but then as soon as he’s at home he throws himself backwards but not before looking around to see who’s looking at him and laughing. He has 7 teeth now and is dribbling everywhere so I’m sure we have more on the way. He is so chatty too, he says dada, baba, lala and will copy facial expressions and some noises, he also says things that sound gotcha and car.

I think out of all the posts I’ve written about him, this one has been one of the hardest to write. It’s one thing speaking to friends and family about the diagnosis but actually writing it down and saying it out loud as we have started to tell people has been difficult. But it’s like I said from the very start when they first told us he had the bleeds and what they would mean for him that what ever challenges or difficulties he has doesn’t matter to us, we thought he wasn’t even going to survive so whatever happens he’s here and that’s all that matters.

Written by Danielle Keating for her Facebook blog, Oliver’s Amazing Adventure!