When we learned that Sarah and Cody were expecting their second child the whole family was thrilled to pieces. They were living in Huntsville and both were working and Luke was in day care at the time. When Sarah was somewhere around three months pregnant we got a call from Cody telling us that he had just got a call from the hospital in Athens and that Sarah had been in a car accident.
When we got to the hospital in Athens, Sarah seemed to be doing OK except for a few bruises and a couple of scratches. Considering that a car had come across three lanes of traffic and hit her head on, totaling both cars we thought she was in great condition. They kept her at the hospital for a couple of hours while they monitored the baby, then released her. We were all pretty shaken by the accident so we decided we would stop at a restaurant and get a bite to eat and calm our nerves before we headed back in different directions to go home.
When we got to the parking lot, Sarah tells me that that her clothes are wet so she needed to get home and change. When I looked at her, I told her she needed to go back to the hospital because her amniotic fluid was leaking. We took her back to the hospital and they examined her again and told her to go on home that she could expect to miscarry in a few days. This never happened. Thank God
The pregnancy progressed normally and everything seemed to be going just fine. The baby was due the first week in January. We had Thanksgiving dinner with the family, most of the kids were home for the Holidays so I was surprised when Sarah called Sunday morning and told me that she thought her water had broken. I said to her that " I guess we are going to have a baby today". Sarah, Cody and I headed to Huntsville where she was to deliver. Charlotte was born just a couple hours later. She weighed 5 lbs and 6 oz. and was 16" long so even though she was premature she was still a good size baby.
Charlotte was diagnosed as having club foot, but not a sever case. Her feet turned in at the ankles. She did not have toenails on her left foot and the first joint of her second toe was missing. On her right leg there was an indention just above the ankle but below the calf muscle. No one gave us any idea as to what may have caused these problems.
The orthopedic doctor put her in cast on both legs when she was just about 6 weeks old. This seemed to straighten out her feet very well. Then as she got a little older he prescribed corrective shoes. She started to walk when she was around 10 months old and has never slowed down since. But still no one gave us a name for what had caused these problems.
One day recently I was on the computer and I got to thinking that there must surely be a name for what happened to Charlotte, so I typed in amniotic fluid leakage and club foot. Up came hundreds of articles about a condition called ABS or Amniotic Band Syndrome. I couldn't believe that all this information was there all this time yet none of the doctors Charlotte had seen in the last two and a half years had mentioned it to us. We were all relieved to learn that it had a name and that other children had the same condition. I think we were lucky that Charlotte came six weeks early. The band around her right leg could have been much more serious had she gone full term.
Charlotte is a typical two and a half year old that gives her brother Luke a run for his money and never slows down. Recently when Sarah took her for a doctor visit in NE., she asked him about ABS and he told her oh yeah that is exactly what she has. We could have had peace of mind sooner if the doctors here had told us that.
I posted this link because it has stories of other children with this same condition. It also gives you information about what causes the condition and things that can be done to prevent it if the doctors are aware of ABS.
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