Giving birth is one of the most natural things in the world, but it’s not always without complications. Even with the most carefully planned pregnancy there can be complications during delivery or birth that even the most dedicated team of doctors and nurses would be unable to prevent.
There are also birth injuries which are the direct result of medical negligence, and these situations occur far more often than most people would care to think about, in both vaginal and caesarian deliveries. To put some numbers around this, a child is born with a birth injury in the United States every 20 minutes, and the vast majority of those injuries are the result of medical negligence.
You would be forgiven for thinking that birth injuries are more common in public hospitals than in private ones, but statistically birth injuries are almost twice as common in for-profit hospitals when compared to non-profit medical centers. The sad truth is that there are almost 200,000 avoidable birth injuries every single year in hospitals across the United States.
Typical Birth Injuries
Parents need to be as vigilant as any medical professional as to the presence of birth injuries just before and just after your child arrives into the world. Unfortunately, medical negligence can be responsible for both fetal injuries and death (taking place before your baby is born), and for infant injury and death after your partner has given birth. Incorrect fetal monitoring is the cause of far more birth injuries than can ever be accurately recorded.
Key warning signs that something has gone very badly wrong during the birthing process include resuscitation, the requirement for intensive care immediately after delivery, severe bruising, or any type of seizure. Not every doctor or nurse is going to admit that something went wrong during delivery of your baby, especially if they suspect it, was their fault.
The effects of birth injuries can be permanent, disabling and often require long-term, expensive medical care, especially in the case of damage to the spinal cord, Cerebral Palsy, hypoxia and resulting brain damage, and Klumpke’s Palsy, for example. Approximately 10,000 children are born with Cerebral Palsy each year, but many of these cases are the direct result of medical malpractice which could have been avoided.
Legal Recourse
If, as a parent, you suspect that your child’s birth injury may have been caused by medical malpractice you can, and should, sue the hospital involved. There is a growing number of birth injury cases in the United States, but this is not because more parents are taking legal action against the hospitals involved. Instead, it’s a simple case of medical malpractice in delivery rooms becoming more common than ever.
So, it’s worth remembering that not only are you pursuing the hospital responsible for your child’s birth injury, but you are also potentially preventing that same medical professional from causing similar harm to another innocent child.
You owe it to yourself, and to other parents, to pursue a malpractice lawsuit against the hospital responsible for your child’s injury.