Cerebral palsy - birth complications or genetic?

Jodie and I both have cerebral palsy...in case you have not figured that one yet.

Jodie was a premie, weighing less than two pounds. I had always thought that my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck, cutting off oxygen to my brain. Mom told me last week that was not true, though there was reason to think that some oxygen had been cut to my brain at birth.

Cerebral palsy has always been thought to have been caused by some complication at birth, until now. Last week it was reported that most cases of cerebral palsy may have genetic causes, just like other developmental disabilities.

It is not hard to see why people would believe the complications at birth theory.  Birthing is such a complicated miraculous process - there  is always room to say this or that could have happened to cause cerebral palsy.

According to Medscape, the rate of cerebral palsy has remained the same in the last 40 years.  You would think that with the vast advances in medicine over that time,  that the rate of cerebral palsy would have gone down under the complications-at-birth theory.

When Jodie was pregnant in 1995, we checked with her doctor to see if we had an increased chance of having a baby with cerebral palsy.  Under the prevailing thought the cerebral palsy was not genetic, the doctor assured us that the answer was "no."

Today,  the answer to that question might be different.