After you give birth to a child and he or she comes home to begin life as he or she will know it, parents like you tend to be very proud, very hopeful and of course very tired at least for the first few weeks or months. It’s a heady time that involves a lot of learning by everyone involved, but it’s also an incredibly gratifying period for new parents. You have a child to care for and raise now, and that responsibility is all at once humbling, daunting and very exciting.
Hopefully, you are not one of the many parents around the country who has become nervous and increasingly concerned as your child has lagged behind on certain aspects of his or her emotional and interpersonal development. Like most new parents, any sign of a problem could be overblown, but you probably read and understand basic time frames for developmental landmarks. If your child has missed several of them, you may have decided to take the difficult step to make an appointment with a specialist to find out what if anything is wrong.
Hopefully, you are not one of the many parents around the country who has been given the potentially devastating news that your child has an autism spectrum disorder. This was not a condition that was very well known by the previous generation, so many parents are not only extremely disappointed with that news but they are also concerned about their ability to properly care for that child as he or she grows older.
If this has happened to you, you need to remember that you are very far from alone. There are few medical conditions in existence that have exploded in prevalence in the United States in recent years at anywhere near the rate that autism has, and more and more children are being diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder every year. At this point, 1 out of every 88 children born in the United States is ultimately diagnosed with autism of some type.
Given the growing prevalence of this condition, it should help everyone to know that April is National Autism Awareness Month. This is a month when people should take some time to learn more about autism and how it affects not only those who are diagnosed with it but also their families who must learn to cope and help that child.
People should also learn more about how a child can contract autism and they should understand some of the myths that are out there regarding this condition. Unfortunately, some children who are ultimately diagnosed with autism endured difficult births where their brains were damaged because of a temporary loss of oxygen.
Some of these difficult births were caused by mistakes made by the medical professionals who were supposed to oversee that process and protect that child. If your child has been diagnosed with autism and you believe it was because of this type of a mistake, contact the New York medical malpractice lawyers at The Fitzgerald Law Firm today to schedule a free initial consultation.