My son has inability to bear weight on his legs with normal cognitive functions. How to help him?

Question

Hi doctor,

I am worried about my son. He was born at 28 weeks and he spent three months in NICU. I have twin babies. He also had a traumatic birth as I had bleeding due to placenta previa. He is 15 months now. We recently had a neonatal consultant appointment and he assessed him developmentally. He is not able to crawl and we are concerned about it. He is not able to bear weight on his legs.

When we try to make him stand, he starts doing frog legs. The doctor thinks that he have a floppy tummy. His arms seem to be fine and he is able to roll and sit. Cognitively, he is alert and he is able to feed himself taking finger food with a pincher grasp. His hearing is good and he blabbers a lot. His sibling is reaching his milestone. We are currently waiting to have a physiotherapy assessment to diagnose him. But we want a second opinion regarding whether he has cerebral palsy. He had a brain scan and a hip scan at 36 weeks. Both of them were clear. Please suggest.

Answer 1

Hi,

Welcome to icliniq.com.

Thank you for giving detailed information. Your son is a premature baby. He has achieved major milestones in time by being mentally alert, arms being fine, able to roll and sit, and blabbering at this age. The only problem, he is facing now is the inability to bear weight in both legs. To be honest, it is very difficult to pronounce cerebral palsy at this stage as his milestones are good. Physiotherapy assessment and doing exercise for the legs will help a lot as he can able to perceive stiffness or looseness and it will stimulate some control.

To conclude this problem at this stage, he is having a premature exercise and this is the reason that your consultant is not able to say it. Doing physiotherapy exercise, giving good nutrition and overall care will be the best option for your child rather than thinking about cerebral palsy. Comparing his progress with his sibling is not good and there is always a little difference present between them.