stiff hands and legs in infant

[mona5223]

Hi Doc,


My sister gave birth to a baby boy on Oct 30th. The baby was born C-sectioned at 40 weeks. Every thing looked fine until before delivery. soon after delivery, kid has seizures, no crying and then it was noticed that he has stiff legs and arms. He wasnt drinking milk so they were feeding him thru a tube from his nose for almost 10days.after that he started slowing sucking but still has problem swallowing.Seizures went away on its own. A whole lot of tests were done on him which included genetic testing, chromosome testing, spine test, MRI of his brain , heart etc. All the test results are normal. They have started therapy for his stiffness but still no improvement. He can sense our touch but cannot move his head, lift hands and legs. Fingers are like tight fist and legs crossed inward. if we try to move he feels the pain but cannot cry. His growth, bowel movement, urination everything is normal. We are all  really depressed and doesn't know what to do next. The doctors say everything is normal, but there might be some problem with brain/nerve  which they are not able to figure it out. Any help is appreciated n this.


This discussion is related to Stiff legs and arms in Newborn.

[mona5223]

Appreciate your response and concern. He does not even move his fingers, arm, legs, swallow properly. He just lies in a position we place him.Was your kid able to crawl and move his hands until 18months?

[mona5223]

Thanks Rock for your reply. It was planned C-section as she had another baby c-sectioned before. Yes, the baby is normal baby growing at equal proportionate so far. Docs say everything is fine with him and don't know whats the reason behind it. Since  all the reports came negative, they are assuming it might be some neuro problem which is very difficult to find and only time can tell. Initial brain and neuro report is negative, so they wanted to dig more into it. We just wanted to know whether this is something which can be cured? If its cerebral palsy, I believe its for ever:(

[babyratliff]

My son had a seizure after being stuck in vaginal canal for 4 hours he came out not breathing and had bleeds in his brain from lack of oxygen the labor was fine up until his heart rate was higher than usual idk but he is currently 18 months old and recently just got diagnosed with cerebral palsy he is a very happy kid but your story sound similar my son has always had both fisted hands and is still unable to crawl walk hold his own bottle etc he is very delayed at this point but as a newborn they not expected to do much but sleep eat and poop so don't be so worried just yet talk to your sister about the different free therapy advocates that can come and help the baby this all may be scary right now but don't worry kids brain can recover so well from seizures etc there is a lot of kid's that can turn out to be very normal! Good luck an god bless you all

[RockRose]

Last question - why was the C section done,  do you know?

Was it a scheduled procedure,  or was it done because the baby was struggling in labor?

[RockRose]

Sounds like the baby falls under the general umbrella of "cerebral palsy".

http://www.specialchild.com/archives/dz-003.html

[RockRose]

There aren't any docs here - this is a patient to patient support forum.

I'm sorry your family is going through this.

The thing is,  the baby isn't "normal".  Something is wrong,  they just don't know what.  Have the doctors actually said the baby is fine,  or have they said all the tests come back appearing normal so we haven't found what is causing the problem yet?