Little Kyler Spence is so fragile that if he laughs or sneezes, his bones will fracture. He is so delicate that in his one and a half years on Earth, he has already had at least 15 bone fractures.

That’s because Kyler was born with a severe form of osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), also known as brittle bone disease. The genetic disorder is characterized by extremely fragile bones that are prone to fracturing or breaking easily.

“He’s like a little glass baby. For a long time I couldn’t hold him because he was so fragile,” Danielle Boushey, Kyler’s mother, told CTV Winnipeg on Thursday.

With a bit of practice, Boushey said she’s figured out a safe way to pick up her son and dress him without causing any more fractures.

“He could be playing one minute and the next, fracture,” she explained. “He could just be laughing, break from sneezing, coughing, anything.”

The family spends a lot of time at home because bumpy car rides can be too much for Kyler’s bones, Boushey said.

“It's too risky for him to go anywhere,” she said.

Boushey said she’s not sure how many fractures Kyler has had in total because tiny, micro-fractures are difficult to see in X-rays.

Dr. Celia Rodd, a clinician scientist and pediatric endocrinologist at the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba, explained why children like Kyler have such delicate bones.

“These children have a defect in their collagen so when they make the structure of the bone, the minerals, calcium and phosphorous, can’t get into it to make it strong solid bone,” she said.

On average, there is one baby born with OI every year in Manitoba, according to Dr. Rodd. She said there are also different forms of OI and that some cases are more severe than others.

“Some of the children with the very mild form may never know that they have this problem. They may have a couple of fractures in their life and never know that they have that because it’s never a big impact,” she said.

That’s not the case for little Kyler. Boushey expects he will need medical treatments and therapies throughout his life to treat his disorder.

In the coming weeks, the family will fly to Montreal so Kyler can have surgery to straighten his bones with the hope that eventually he will be strong enough to stand on his own.

With a report from CTV Winnipeg’s Michelle Gerwing