Cerebral palsy is a condition that affects how a person moves, maintains posture, and controls muscles. It happens because of damage to the developing brain. This damage can occur during pregnancy, during labor and delivery, or shortly after birth. Many parents wonder if a difficult or traumatic delivery can cause cerebral palsy, and the honest answer is that in some cases it can, but it is not the most common cause.
Medical experts explain that cerebral palsy often comes from problems in brain development before birth, such as infections, poor blood flow, or genetic factors that affect how the brain forms and grows.https://www.chop.edu/conditions-diseases/cerebral-palsy Research using MRI scans shows that many children with cerebral palsy have patterns of brain injury that began in pregnancy, and that genes and environmental factors often interact in complex ways.https://cerebralpalsyguidance.com/2025/12/12/researchers-use-mri-to-diagnose-find-causes-of-cerebral-palsy-in-children/
However, trauma or complications during labor and delivery can also cause or contribute to cerebral palsy in some children. Hospitals and medical organizations note that lack of oxygen to the brain before or during delivery, known as birth asphyxia, is a recognized cause of the kind of brain damage that may lead to cerebral palsy.https://www.bila.ca/birth-injuries/cerebral-palsy/types/https://www.dignityhealth.org/north-state/services/neurology/neurological-conditions/movement-disorders/cerebral-palsy Even a few minutes without enough oxygenated blood can injure brain cells permanently, especially in areas that control movement.https://www.nationalbirthinjurylaw.com/what-causes-cerebral-palsy
A traumatic delivery can increase the risk of this kind of injury. Examples of traumatic or complicated deliveries include very long or very fast labors, shoulder dystocia where the baby’s shoulder gets stuck, emergencies involving the placenta or umbilical cord, or situations where the baby shows clear signs of distress that are not addressed promptly. During these events, blood and oxygen flow to the baby’s brain can drop. When this happens for too long, it can lead to hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, a type of brain injury strongly linked with later cerebral palsy diagnoses.https://www.nationalbirthinjurylaw.com/what-causes-cerebral-palsy
Delivery can also be traumatic if there is direct physical injury to the baby’s head or brain. Health and legal resources on birth injury explain that forceful use of tools like forceps or vacuum extractors, or other head trauma during birth, can cause bleeding in the brain or structural injury. These kinds of injuries can interfere with normal brain development and sometimes result in cerebral palsy.https://www.sokolovelaw.com/birth-injuries/cerebral-palsy/https://www.rheingoldlaw.com/nyc-birth-injuries-lawyer/birth-injury-faq/
It is important to know that while traumatic deliveries and labor complications can cause cerebral palsy, major children’s hospitals emphasize that this is less common than many people think. One large pediatric center states that complications of labor and delivery appear to be the cause in only about 5 to 10 percent of cerebral palsy cases.https://www.chop.edu/conditions-diseases/cerebral-palsy That means the majority of cases are related to events before birth, such as prematurity, infections, bleeding in the brain, blood clotting problems, or other medical issues that affect the developing brain.
Even so, when something does go wrong during labor and delivery, the effects can be severe. If signs of fetal distress, such as an abnormal heart rate, are not recognized and managed in time, the baby may not get enough oxygen. Legal case reports describe situations where delayed decisions about cesarean section, failure to respond to deteriorating fetal monitoring strips, or poor management of placental problems led to preventable brain injuries and cerebral palsy in the child.https://feldmanshepherd.com/birth-injury-lawyer/cerebral-palsy/
After birth, serious trauma such as falls, car crashes, or abuse that injure the infant’s head and brain can also cause cerebral palsy, but this is separate from trauma that happens during the actual delivery.https://www.rheingoldlaw.com/nyc-birth-injuries-lawyer/birth-injury-faq/ In all these situations, the common factor is damage to the brain while it is still developing.
Understanding whether a specific child’s cerebral palsy came from a traumatic delivery usually requires careful review of pregnancy records, labor and delivery notes, fetal heart tracings, newborn exams, brain scans, and sometimes genetic testing. Researchers point out that there is rarely a single simple cause and that several risk factors often come together in the same child. { lazyloadBackgroundObserver.observe( lazyloadBackground ); } ); }; const events = [ 'DOMContentLoaded', 'elementor/lazyload/observe', ]; events.forEach( ( event ) => { document.addEventListener( event, lazyloadRunObserver ); } );