Meghan King Edmonds revealed a parents’ worst nightmare in a new blog post Thursday night. The Real Housewives of Orange County star shared that her 13-month-old son, Hart, has “irreversible brain damage.” In the post published Thursday night titled “My Hart,” she wrote that she knew he was “different” the moment he and his twin brother Hayes were born in June 2018.
“From the minute he was born I knew something was different with Hart,” King Edmonds, 34, wrote. “The nurses struggled to straighten his legs to measure his length. He suckled hard, shallow, and often until I bled and he spit up black.”
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She wrote that she took him to a pediatric ophthalmologist when he couldn’t see his hands or if his eyes stayed crossed for too long. They visited with a chiropractor and a cranial sacral therapy, stopping at nothing to find out what was wrong with her son, despite many doctors telling her “he was fine.”
“I just knew,” she admitted. “I told our pediatrician—she said he was fine. I begged for a neurologist referral and when I got it—he said he was fine. I then begged for a neurologist who specializes in Cerebral Palsy (I jumped through hoops to get this appointment, so many hoops) and she said he might be fine. I then begged for an MRI.”
A week after news surfaced that husband Jim Edmonds had cheated on her, King Edmonds decided to put Hart “through an elective MRI with anesthesia.”
“I sat at a table with my husband for an hour as we waited for Hart to come out of the MRI. Tears gushed from my eyes as I blankly stared at the cars on the highway—but I wasn’t crying,” she recalled in her blog post. “My husband asked me what he could do. ‘Get me a Coke.’ Those tears were for a lot of things, but mostly the unknown and mostly Hart.”
Three days after the exam, their neurologist called.
“Hart has minor Periventricular Leukomalacia on both sides of his brain (namely the white matter), but more so on his right,” King Edmonds revealed. “She said that this explains all of my concerns: the rigidity in his muscles, the (somewhat) delayed physical milestones, the lack of fluidity with arm and leg movements, the stiffness in joints, the weakness in his lower back, the somewhat favored use of his right side. She told me this mainly occurs in premies and since he was not a premie (he was born at 37 weeks gestation) she believes this damage somehow occurred ‘a couple months before he was born.’ She explained that he is at risk for being diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy and will be monitored.”
“Hart has irreversible brain damage, it’s called PVL,” she continued. “Like I said, I already knew.”
She said Edmonds, a retired MLB player, was surprised by the diagnosis. After calling him, she individually called family members and enrolled Hart in a therapy program he was previously denied from “due to only having very minor” developmental delays.
“That night Jimmy and I went out to dinner for the first time in weeks,” she revealed. “I explained to Jimmy how we are not somehow compromised or punished for having a child with special needs (whatever that may or may not mean!), we are BLESSED. I will go on about this another time but just know that I do not see his diagnosis as anything but a gift: we were chosen to take on this special person. I truly feel as if we’ve doubled down and won the underdog hand. Truly.”
King Edmonds, who also has daughter Aspen, wrote that she’s trying to remain as positive as she can.
“I pray for a miracle and I grapple with how to navigate his life,” she wrote. “This is a heavy challenge as a mother: where do we go from here? This is where: one foot in front of the other.”
Photo credit: Instagram / @meghankedmonds
