Humber Bay couple shares daughters journey with mild cerebral palsy, lends support to $2.5M fundraising campaign for …

Etobicoke Guardian

Gabriella Gabbie Tom is sitting on the floor of her family room playing with Puppy, her brown stuffed dog with the green polka dotted chapeau.

Dont sit in a W, Gabbie. Remember how to sit with your legs crossed, her mom, Angel Chu-Tom gently reminded her only child.

Nearly four, Gabbie is a going concern. She crawls around the floor at lightning speed and chats up a storm.

One day, Im going to be a ballerina! Gabbie exclaimed.

Today, no one would guess Gabbie was born prematurely at 28 weeks weighing just two pounds. Once stabilized, the preemie was immediately placed into an incubator and rushed by a neonatal medical team to The Hospital for Sick Children in downtown Toronto.

Premature babies sometimes forget to breathe. Each time little Gabbie stopped breathing during her two-month SickKids stay, a bedside alarm sounded and a NICU nurse would rush in to stimulate her to breathe again.

Gabbies SickKids neonatologist Dr. Linh Ly, medical director of SickKids Neonatal Follow-up Clinic, enrolled Gabbie in a MRI research study of pre-term infants out of concern her repeated stopped breathing may have caused some brain injury.

Gabbie had two MRIs: one at birth, another around the time of her due date.

Thanks to the MRI scans, doctors diagnosed Gabbie early with mild cerebral palsy (CP). A spectrum disorder, CP is a condition in which injury to a developing brain causes a lack of muscle control. Every child with CP is unique.

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Humber Bay couple shares daughters journey with mild cerebral palsy, lends support to $2.5M fundraising campaign for ...