Cerebral Palsy Risk FactorsIt is important to know that cerebral palsy risk factors are difficult to detect. First and foremost, we have to establish that cerebral palsy is a condition and not a disease. So it is very difficult to isolate risk factors because it is a condition not a disease. We can itemise some factors to look for. The main challenge in my view is how to prevent premature baby and underweight baby. These two are the twin factors which led to cerebral palsy.The age of the mother and father may be important either too young or too old, I am not very sure of this factor. In our case my wife was 26 years old and I was 33 years old when we had our daughter with cerebral palsy. Moreover, this was our second child. The first born was 7 years old at that time and his birth and development was alright. As husband and wife we took all necessary precautions by attending regular ant natal clinic before the birth of our child but some how, we could not prevent our second child to be affected by cerebral palsy. Our daughter suffered from jaundice shortly after birth and she was underweight. Our daughter stayed in hospital for one week and she was discharged but eventually she developed cerebral palsy. We realised that she had cerebral palsy after a doctor diagnosed her with the condition. We were devastated but we recovered from the shock and we are now managing our daughter with joy and happiness. Realisation that she had cerebral palsy was over a period of time. We were noticing that our daughter was not managing to attain certain milestones, like sitting, crawling and the body was floppy. We were in denial until we decided to have a thorough medical check up that is when we were informed that the child had cerebral palsy. In my view, although one may know the risk factors of cerebral palsy, it may be very difficult to prevent it because we are not in control of life. However, we may minimise the risks by attending ante natal and other regular medical check ups.
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