Can You See Cerebral Palsy

• Cerebral Palsy
• Can You See Cerebral Palsy?

Identifying Cerebral Palsy

If you suspect your baby has cerebral palsy, there may be early signs and symptoms which may be indicative of cerebral palsy. Keeping an eye out for these signs can help your child receive an early cerebral palsy diagnosis and appropriate care. Keep in mind that not all children that are eventually diagnosed with cerebral palsy show early signs and symptoms.

Early Signs of Cerebral Palsy in Babies

• Weak muscle tone
• Inability to lift head on their own
• Difficulty in clapping hands or grasping objects
• Difficulty or delays in crawling, sitting, rolling over
• Stiffened or crossed legs when you pick up the baby
• Overextended neck or back when you pick up the baby
• Excessive drooling
• Difficulty feeding

Early Signs of Cerebral Palsy in Toddlers

The signs of cerebral palsy become more pronounced and are more easily identifiable due to developmental delays as the baby grows into a toddler.

• Uncontrolled muscle movement
• Lopsided crawling
• Abnormal gait
• Inability to stand
• Hopping on the knees in an attempt to walk
• Stiff joints, muscles, and tendons
• Difficulty with brushing, coloring, and other fine motor skills
• Hearing, vision, or speech problems

About Developmental Delays in Children

How is Cerebral Palsy Diagnosed?

Although you can see cerebral palsy early in most cases based on your observations of early signs and symptoms, a confirmed diagnosis is important. This generally involves three steps:

Developmental Monitoring

Developmental surveillance or developmental monitoring involves professional tracking of the child’s growth and development over a period of time. During each visit to the medical provider’s office, the doctor will observe the child’s growth, activities, and update the child’s developmental history in consultation with the parents. If concerns manifest themselves during the developmental monitoring stage, the next step known as a developmental screening should be scheduled as soon as possible.

Developmental Screening

At this stage, the medical professional will perform a short test to determine if the child is facing specific developmental delays, such as movement or motor delays. Parents may have to complete questionnaires or interviews as part of the developmental screening tests, while some tests may be directly given to the child. These tests may involve the use of certain formal, validated screening tools. Developmental screening does not provide a cerebral palsy diagnosis, but it suggests whether a specialist’s evaluation is required.

Developmental Evaluation

If the screening tool shows concerns with the child’s development, a formal process of developmental evaluation must be undertaken. This evaluation involves a detailed assessment of the child’s development by a specialist, such as a developmental pediatrician, child neurologist, physical therapist, speech-language therapist, occupational therapist, or child psychologist. The specialist will usually observe the child, give a structured test to the child, ask questions from the parents or caregivers, and determine whether the child needs early intervention services or special treatments or both.

Is Your Child’s Birth Injury the Result of Medical Malpractice?

Parents whose children suffer birth injuries want and deserve answers as to whether mistakes by the doctors and nurses contributed to the injury. At Miller Weisbrod Olesky, our award-winning birth injury attorneys have represented families all over the United States in their time of need after a birth injury. We use our skills and expertise to obtain for you and your child a medical malpractice settlement that will help provide specialized medical therapy in order to maximize the quality of life and independence of your child throughout their life.

• Were there signs of birth injury or birth complications during the pregnancy, labor, and delivery process, or presence of risk factors, which were either not recognized or properly treated?
• During the labor and delivery, were there clear indications that the baby was suffering from fetal distress, but appropriate actions were not taken by the maternal fetal specialists, obstetrician or nurses?
• Was there a delay in diagnosis of a likely premature birth that led to later complications, including brain injury?
• Did the medical team fail to order a series of tests to diagnose this birth complication in a timely manner?
• Was the decision to perform a cesarean delivery delayed leading to birth trauma during vaginal delivery or labor?
• Did the neonatal resuscitation team fail to quickly begin important breathing support?
• Should brain cooling (also called “hypothermia therapy”) have been provided to your baby, but the doctors and nurses failed to perform the appropriate tests or ignored the results of the tests?

Our birth injury attorneys have recovered millions of dollars in settlements for families of children that have suffered a birth injury. At no point in our legal intake process will we ask you to pay anything. The medical review of your case and the consultation are free. We only receive payment when you do, no matter how long or tough your case is.

Registered Nurses and Nurse-Attorneys Are a Vital Part of Our Birth Injury Team…and Yours

Most birth injury law firms will employ one or two nurses to assist the review of cases and medical research. But Miller Weisbrod Olesky offers an unmatched number of nurses and nurse-attorney employees support to both the birth injury attorneys and our clients.

Our team of registered nursing staff and nurse-attorneys bring a deep level of medical and personal insight to every client’s case. Our nursing team includes both an experienced labor and delivery nurse as well as an ICU nurse. Working closely with the rest of the team, they investigate the reasons behind a birth injury and how medical professionals breached their standard of care.

Why Should You Talk with the Highly Capable Attorneys at Miller Weisbrod Olesky?

The only way to find out if you have a birth injury case is to talk to a lawyer experienced in birth injury lawsuits. It’s not uncommon that a birth related complication results in a preventable birth injury, including cerebral palsy, but it takes a detailed expert review by a birth injury attorney of the medical records from your child’s birth to determine if the birth injury was the result of medical malpractice.

At Miller Weisbrod Olesky, a team of committed lawyers, nurses and paralegals uses our detailed medical negligence case review process to assess your child’s potential birth injury case. We start by learning more about you and your child and the status of meeting/missing developmental milestones. Then we gather medical records to determine what happened before, during pregnancy. We call in documented and proven medical experts who review your records and let us know if they think medical errors could have caused your child’s injuries.

If we feel medical negligence caused or contributed to wrongful birth in your case, we meet with you to discuss how you can receive compensation from the medical professionals who made the errors. Our birth injury attorneys have recovered millions of dollars in settlements for families of children that have suffered a birth injury.

At no point in our legal intake process will we ask you to pay anything. The medical review of your case and the consultation are free. We only receive payment when you do no matter how long or tough your case is.

Contact Our Birth Injury Lawyers