MUSKEGON HEIGHTS, Mich. (WOOD) — A Muskegon Heights 8-year-old who was born without a hand got a special surprise from his school that’s giving him the chance to grasp lessons and handle everyday tasks more easily.

Erosha Quinn said there was no warning during her pregnancy that her son, Michael Bell, would have any health problems.

“When I was pregnant, I had like five ultrasounds done. They never seen anything the whole time. Then when he was born, they threw him up on my stomach and I realized he had no hand,” Quinn said.

It got worse. Michael wasn’t eating on his own. Quinn said doctors told her he wouldn’t walk or talk.

After several months of tests, Quinn learned her son has Moebius syndrome, a rare neurological condition that affects muscle movement. The right side of his face and vocal chords are paralyzed, which affects how clearly he can speak. In addition to not having a left hand, he doesn’t have a right thumb.

Michael had tried prosthetics before, but Quinn said they limited movement, preventing him from bending his wrist.

“What they had for Michael was a cuff. It was a wooden cuff, it would go all the way past the wrist part,” Quinn said.

Michael doesn’t let having only one had stop him from doing what the other kids do, but one of his teachers at Dr. Martin Luther King Elementary in Muskegon Heights noticed it was making things more difficult for him — writing, for example. Michael writes with his right hand, but he was having trouble holding the pencil and at the same time keeping his paper from sliding across his desk.

So the teacher and her husband decided to do something about it.

“His resource teacher said, ‘I have a friend who can kind of make him a kind of prosthetic hand that he can use and then by him using his hand he can be able to do his writing better, hold books, go to his locker and just do the things that the other kids in second grade were doing,'” Principal Shawn Hurt told 24 Hour News 8.

The husband, an artist, contacted friends who directed him to a Central Michigan University freshman. With help from online donors, the student engineered a prosthetic hand for Michael, then used a 3D printer to make it real.

“The last day of school they called me and was like, ‘Can you come up here? We got this hand.’ And it was like, ‘What? I’m on my way,'” Quinn recalled.

Michael’s favorite superhero is Captain America, so his prosthetic is red, white and blue and includes a shield that looks like the one the superhero carries.

“I got an arm!” he exclaimed.