Jude is 2 and a half years old, he was born at 30 weeks gestation- 10 weeks premature. He spent 10 weeks in the neo natal unit before being allowed home. When the time came we were delighted to get our little baby home after 10 long weeks leaving him every night in hospital. Jude was doing brilliant when he got home, growing, putting on weight, thriving. Then when Jude was 8 months old, at a consultant appointment we heard the words 'cerebral palsy' for the first time. I can just remember asking 'will Jude walk' and the consultant saying, 'I've seen children worse than Jude get on their feet'. We left the hospital that day in tears, not knowing what the future was going to be like for our little man. Shortly after Jude started physiotherapy and started to do things slowly like rolling over, then progressing to commando crawling, to pulling himself up onto his knees, to then being able to four point crawl. All of this was a very slow process and certainly didn't happen over night. He was so determined and worked extremely hard to achieve this. The day after his first birthday we went for an MRI scan- which confirmed what the doctor had told us. Jude had damage to the part of his brain that would coincide with having spastic diplegia cerebral palsy. For those of you who don't know cerebral palsy is a condition which affects muscle control and movement. This is where the part of the brain controlling muscle tone doesn’t work properly, leading to very tight, stiff muscles. Diplegia meaning, the legs are affected. More recently Jude has been pulling himself up at the furniture and taking steps along it. He also got a kaye walker last month and is able to walk short journeys in it.