Morgan's pregnancy and delivery were both difficult; she suffered from excess amniotic fluid and gestational diabetes during pregnancy, and her son had to be delivered via C-section. "In my case," she explains, "the excess amniotic fluid created a condition where my son could not descend into the birth canal even though I was in active labor. I had never had this problem before, but I learned later that this sometimes happens when a child has a birth defect."
Mark was born with tibial hemimelia in his left leg, an extremely rare birth defect (approximately one in one million live births). In children with this condition, part the tibial leg bone is missing or underdeveloped. He also suffered from mirror image polydactyly, possibly as a side effect. Morgan says, "Tibial hemimelia can affect other things in the limb—the knee, the ankle, the foot. Sometimes the foot will try to create a mirror image of itself."In Mark's case, his big toe tried to split in half, and he had two fully grown extra toes below his big toe. There was nothing wrong with them except they were in the wrong place. They had to be removed or he would never be able to wear normal shoes. His big toe doesn't grow right; it has no ligaments. They tried to graft in ligaments from the extra toes, but it didn't work, so his big toe will have to be fused later in life.
"He's actually been relatively fortunate that he has a very long tibia for someone with tibial hemimelia, so he has been able to keep it. But he has ankle and knee issues, and has already had two surgeries to try to make his tibia and fibula bones the same length.
"He has his next surgery in a month or so to try to lengthen left leg, which is about 1.5 inches shorter than his right. His left foot turns in, he walks on the side of the foot, and he needs a brace to straighten his ankle and brace and protect his leg, and he has to wear a lift shoes. He'll be having lengthening and reconstructive surgeries all along the way until age 18.
"One of the most difficult parts for Mark is that the bone length discrepancy is not bad enough to require amputation and a prosthesis, but he's close to it. In some ways, a prosthesis would be better, because his leg is weak and fragile and problematic.
"It's a horrible, horrible decision for a parent to have to make—whether to put your child through all this pain and surgery or... chop off their little leg and give them a prosthetic. Neither one of those decisions is fair or easy or even right."
Fortunately, all of Marks's medical care has been provided through the Shriners of North America. Morgan says, "We're close enough to a Shriners hospital to get his care done. I haven't been able to pursue much of a career, though. I was in graduate school when I had Mark. Now I have him and my six-year-old son has autism, so it's really impossible for me to do that.
"No one has ever admitted to me that taking SSRIs during conception and pregnancy could have caused this to happen to my son. They tell me that it's a fluke, but I've had five other kids with no flukes. So that thought keeps coming up in my mind—could taking SSRIs have had something to do with it?
"It just floored me when my husband came into the hospital room and told me that our son had problems—it was just so surreal. I couldn't understand it . It just feels like an odd coincidence that I took SSRIs and this happened.
"I feel that stories like mine have to be put out there. If my story about Lexapro and how it may have affected my baby can be put out there, maybe other people will see it and say 'I took that medicine and my child has this,' and maybe we'll stop doling out these SSRIs".