Meghan King Edmonds Reveals Son Has Irreversible Brain Damage

It's been an incredibly difficult couple of weeks for former Real Housewives of Orange County star Meghan King Edmonds. On the heels of a very public cheating scandal involving her husband, former pro baseball player Jim Edmonds, Meghan is now revealing that one of her twin sons has irreversible brain damage.

Edmonds revealed the diagnosis in a blog post titled, My Hart, writing, "From the minute he was born I knew something was different with Hart." The mother of three welcomed her twin sons, Hart, and Hayes in June 2018. "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."

She wrote that she noticed her son was having trouble seeing his hands and that his eyes "stayed crossed longer than normal," prompting her to bring her son to a chiropractor, a pediatric ophthalmologist as well as to seek craniosacral therapy.

"Well, I knew. I always knew. I just knew…" she writes, stating she was willing to stop at nothing until her son was properly diagnosed. "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."

It was just 8 days after her husband was involved in a cheating scandal where he admitted to sending sexually explicit texts and images to another woman while Edmonds was in labor with her twins, that Hart had 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. 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 later the neurologist called Edmonds to tell her that her instinct that there was a medical issue with her son was correct.

"Hart has minor Periventricular Leukomalacia on both sides of his brain (namely the white matter), but more so on his right. 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," she explained.

"Hart has irreversible brain damage, it’s called PVL," she wrote.

While Edmonds knew there was something wrong with her son, she says the diagnosis came as a shock to her husband. "He was surprised, which surprised me," she said. After calling her family members individually to explain Hart's diagnosis, she then "called Missouri First Steps to get him enrolled in the therapy he’d been previously denied due to only having very minor – if any – developmental delays, but now his diagnosis qualified him."

She said she and her husband went out for dinner "for the first time in weeks" and discussed their son's diagnosis. "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."

The mother of three is remaining positive and is willing to take to take this new parenting challenge head-on. "This doesn’t mean his diagnosis isn’t a challenge… or a little bit sad, or that I don’t feel a little bit guilty. Because yes – just yes – to all of those things," she wrote. "I pray for a miracle and I grapple with how to navigate his life. Thirteen days after his diagnosis I finally put these thoughts to paper. This is a heavy challenge as a mother: where do we go from here? This is where: one foot in front of the other."