Jersey Journal
By Miriam Ascarelli
Lessons from a Little One

We call our second daughter Battalin’ Madeline. I think it’s an apt name, considering all that Madeline has been through since coming into the world seven months ago with a limp left arm, the result of a nerve injury that occurred after a long day of labor.

At first, because most of these kinds of injuries heal by themselves, my husband, Jim, and I weren’t overly worried. Besides, there were other things to obsess over, like the terrifying 103-degree fever that came out of nowhere when Maddy was 6 days old. That landed us in the hospital for a week.

At the ripe old age of three weeks, we took Maddy to a pediatric neurologist to check out her arm. That was when we were confronted with the nerve injury we had never heard of: Erb’s Palsy.

Erb’s Palsy occurs in about two in 1,000 births, mostly in vaginal deliveries involving difficult labors and large babies, according to doctors at Texas Children’s Hospital who specialize in the condition. The injury occurs because the baby’s shoulders get stuck in the birth canal. To get the baby out, the child’s head or arm is yanked, stretching or severing the nerves connecting the arm to the spinal cord and paralyzing the arm.

Adults and children whose arms have been pulled with excessive force can also find themselves with the same condition. In our case, Maddy was a prime candidate – she had a hard time getting out and she was large: 10 pounds at birth.

Thus we ended up in a non-descript examining room as a pediatric neurologist used a rubber mallet to test for reflexes in Maddy’s left arm. Nothing happened…