A mom from North Carolina couldn't explain the “feeling” she had throughout her pregnancy.
Despite repeated reassurance that her pregnancy was perfectly healthy, Serena Murison had a strong intuition that her unborn baby would never be able to walk.
The 34-year-old told Newsweek that her pregnancy with her son Rudy was completely normal.
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“There were no red flags, nothing abnormal on ultrasounds, nothing anyone could point to medically,” Murison said. “I just had this deep, persistent knowing that something was different. I couldn’t explain it, and honestly, I didn’t have any evidence to support it. I just knew.”
Murison was desperate to believe what doctors were telling her. She even did an NIPT test—a blood screening test that checks for certain chromosomal conditions—which didn’t flag any concerns.
She also said others dismissed her concerns as pregnancy anxiety, but she felt strongly that her son wouldn’t walk.
“Everything objectively said that I was carrying a healthy baby, so I tried to convince myself that what I was feeling was just anxiety,” Murison said. "But the feeling never really went away."
Still, she couldn’t ignore a nagging feeling inside that made her believe there was more to it than doctors could see.
Rudy was eventually diagnosed with LAMA2-related congenital muscular dystrophy, a rare neuromuscular disease that can cause severe muscle weakness and developmental delays from infancy.
A 2023 study of people living with the condition published in Neurology: Genetics found that standing and walking-related functions were among the most severely affected abilities.
A 2024 Swiss cohort study also reported that many people with the severe congenital form never achieved independent walking.
Researchers say the condition exists on a broad spectrum, with symptoms and outcomes varying significantly from patient to patient.
“It finally gave us an explanation for why his body worked differently and why he would not walk independently,” Murison said. “Getting that answer was devastating, but it also put a name to something I had somehow felt long before there was any way for me to know.”
Looking back, Murison said there is a difference between blindly trusting a mother’s instinct and taking it seriously.
“I don’t think I had some magical ability to diagnose my child before he was born,” she said. "I couldn’t have known he had muscular dystrophy, but I knew my baby, and something in me was paying attention before I had the language or evidence to explain why.”
For other parents who have concerns about their unborn baby that they struggle to explain, Murison would advise they speak up, even if they don't yet have evidence to back them up.
“Ask the question; keep paying attention,” she said. “You can trust what you’re noticing without needing to know exactly what it means yet.”
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Sirena Bergman and Emma Lee-Sang