Bailey's story is yet to be written

By Natalie Clarkson

Bailey and his twin brother, Beau, were born in December 2015. The C-Section went perfectly with no complications and both boys' APGAR results were 10/10.

In recovery we noticed Bailey's arm was shaking quite a lot, but we were told some babies just adjust differently to the outside world and there was nothing to worry about.

The following day we noticed Bailey's left eye and left knee twitching, so we called the doctor to check him. We were told he was having seizures. He was sedated and hooked up to all sorts of machines. It was heartbreaking to see our little baby boy lying there, not knowing what was going on. A few days later Bailey had an MRI, which found he had had a stroke.

I remember sitting there while the doctor explained to us what this meant. I felt numb! I couldn't understand why the doctors couldn't tell us when or why this happened to our little boy.

Bailey started therapy when he was 4 weeks old to help him meet milestones like rolling, sitting etc. The first year of Bailey’s life, the specialists weren’t sure what he was going to achieve, it was just a waiting game. We found this extremely hard and frustrating. We had no idea of what Bailey's future was going to be like.

Bailey is now 8 years old and in grade 3, alongside his twin brother. With all the amazing support from therapy over the years, Bailey blows us away with his abilities every day! He is now classified to compete as a para-athlete in little athletics and also just earned his first stripe in Jui Jitsu with the amazing help of coaches who are able to be adaptive in how they teach kids with disabilities.

Unless you know an infant or child who has had a stroke, you wouldn’t be aware. It isn’t talked about much. We had no idea it could happen. Our journey has been hard and lonely at times, but we found Little Stroke Warriors Facebook support group. It's a beautiful, supportive group of parents who are on a similar journey to us. I wish we had found this group when we were in hospital.

One thing we remember at the time was a lovely nurse saying to us while in NICU was "Bailey's story is yet to been written" he's our beautiful, determined warrior who has an amazing journey ahead of him and we can't wait to see what his story will be.