Birth Injuries Leading to Fatality

Attorney Michael Grossman Explains What to do After Your Child is Killed or Injured During Birth

Having a child is supposed to be one of the greatest moments in life. Thus, when something goes wrong during child birth, and the child dies, it’s one of the most tragic things that can happen. While a certain amount of birth deaths and injuries are simply the result of nature, when someone’s negligence causes a birth injury or death, the parents deserve to be compensated tremendously.

When you go to the hospital to give birth to a child, you have a reasonable expectation that the attending medical staff will do its job to provide adequate treatment. When the medical staff fails in this respect and does harm to you, your wife, or your child, then the negligent medical professionals should be held accountable.

At Grossman Law Offices, Michael Grossman and his team of medical malpractice attorneys have spent the past 20 years helping people in Texas and Arkansas who have fallen prey to medical negligence. If you suspect that your child died during birth or suffered an injury due to the negligent actions or inaction of the attending doctors, nurses, or some other medical professional, then we have the knowledge to look into the issue and determine if you have a legitimate cause of action. If you do have the grounds for a successful medical malpractice lawsuit, then we also have the experience and skills to get you the compensation you deserve for the tremendous harm your family has sustained.

Generally speaking, birth injury cases, whether they be fatal or just injurious, come in two forms:

• The mother, fetus, or baby suffers harm because a medical professional failed to diagnose or properly treat a medical condition. Many birth injuries are only minor if treated but can turn serious and even fatal if not diagnosed and cared.
• The mother or child suffers harm or death because the medical institution or doctor negligently or carelessly prescribed a harmful and unorthodox treatment, procedure, or drug. This type of birth injury represents the lion’s share of birth defects with the child, including: shoulder dystocia, brachial plexus injuries, cerebral palsy, disfigurement, brain injuries, and other skeletal, neurological, or muscular problems.

In many cases, the medical professionals know immediately when a birth injury has occurred because there will be readily evident signs; although, in most cases the medical staff will not tell the parents in an effort to conceal their own liability. Then, the parents only discover the problem as the child grows older and begins to show signs of condition related to the birth injury, usually as a result of developmental delays. When the attending medical staff attempts to pull this maneuver off, it’s a clear form of obstetrician medical malpractice. You need to contact a medical malpractice attorney the second you begin to suspect that your child may have been injured during birth. At Grossman Law Offices, our attorneys will sit down with one of the experts in obstetrics that we keep in our bevy of medical contacts and review the record from your pregnancy and delivery. If there is any evidence of medical malpractice, then we can help you take action against the offending medical professional. If much worse, your baby or spouse dies during birth, then you simply must contact us immediately. To discuss your case with one of our medical malpractice attorneys, call us now at 1-855-589-5645 (toll free) for a free and confidential consultation.

Birth Injury Indicators

Just like pregnancy, the mother and child are linked together with birth injuries. When the mother suffers harm during delivery or pregnancy, then the child often manifests that harm in the form of a birth injury.

In reality, pregnancy and birth are both very dangerous procedures, and both babies and mothers are occasionally killed or injured through the course of nature and not due to anyone else’s negligence. With the mother’s birth canal being extremely narrow and the baby’s bones soft and flexible, normal birth injuries will occur, including:

• Bruising: many babies come out of the birthing process bearing bruising on the neck, nose, forehead, and scalp. On the flip side (literally), the baby is born breeched, then the bruises will be on the legs, hips, and rear end. Bruises should only begin to vanish after a few days and are only a matter for worry if they fail to disappear after a week.
• Stork bites or pink marks: these are just dilated capillaries that appear on the eyelids, the forehead, and the back of the neck. These will also begin to disappear as the child ages.
• Little white cysts: sometimes the baby’s sweat glands become clogged, and he or she will develop these small cysts that appear as if they’re tiny pimples on the cheeks, forehead, and nose. In a few weeks, the milia will fade away.
• Broken bones: a broken collarbone in the baby is a sure sign of medical malpractice. Other broken bones such as arms, legs, and shoulders can indicate a much more serious birth injury.

On the other hand, other red flags can be a sign of a serious medical malpractice that may have caused a birth injury:

• The failure of the medical staff to diagnose, treat, and admonish you of any pre-existing or developing medical condition during pregnancy that could cause harm to the mother or child, such as hypertension, preeclampsia, diabetes, or other conditions.
• You were not warned of any developing complications or dangers by the attending medical staff during your pregnancy or delivery. This includes adverse reactions to drugs, and the side effects they could have on your baby.
• Abnormal positioning of the baby was not spotted with an ultrasound, allowing for a safe Caesarian section, and the resulting vaginal delivery was both difficult and dangerous.
• A delay in monitoring the fetus during delivery by the attending obstetrician and his or her staff or properly responding to fetal distress signals like an abnormally low or high heart rate.
• The large size of the baby or the small size of the birth canal made natural child birth through vaginal delivery unsafe, but the doctor ignored this and the necessity for a C-section, instead opting for vaginal delivery without warning or consulting with the mother.
• The attending doctor used an outdated procedure called a high forceps delivery to pull the baby through the birth canal, instead of the much safer C-section.
• When the baby shows signs of asphyxia (no oxygen in the blood) or hypoxia (little oxygen in the blood), then this can indicate improper delivery or a bad drug reaction, including improper epidural procedure. The result of either of these conditions can range from delayed development, to mental retardation, to organ failure. Asphyxia is indicated by pale color, weak or no breathing, a very slow heart rate, and a lifeless look, while hypoxia only differs in that coloration can be blue.
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• A baby with alarmingly low Apgar scores. The Apgar test is used to measure a child’s health immediately after birth, grading every baby on a scale of 1-10. One minute after birth, the attending doctor rates the baby’s Apgar score, and any baby scoring less than five requires immediate medical attention. The Apgar test is then repeated at intervals of five, 10, 15, and 30 minutes. If the child continues to score less than four on these tests, then serious neurological damage and possibly even cerebral palsy is a serious possibility.
• Once the baby is born, he or she does not exhibit normal interest in feeding or doesn’t seem to have innate feeding skills like grappling and suckling.
• Once the baby is born, it is sluggish, appears lethargic, and does not seem to have balanced movements in its face, legs, and arms.
• Once the baby is born, it suffers seizures.

In order to determine if a birth injury or death was the result of medical malpractice, you need a review of your case to be conducted by a knowledgeable and trial-tested medical malpractice attorney. Right now, you need to start requesting copies of medical records throughout the pre-natal process, pregnancy, delivery, and birth. Then, you need a medical expert to review your records and determine if there is any impropriety. Call us now at 1-855-589-5645 and get the ball rolling on your case.

Different Kinds of Birth Injuries

Birth injuries can be difficult to pinpoint because they can happen during pregnancy, birth, or even infancy.

As we’ve mentioned, most birth injuries occur due to improperly monitored or treated conditions and drug interactions. When a doctor administers a drug without considering how it will affect the mother’s pre-existing conditions or the future health of the baby, this is called teratogenicity. When doctors ignore how the drugs they diagnose to mother during pregnancy like Albuterol, Celexa, Lexapro, Singulair, Paxil, Wellbutrin, Effexor, Prozac, Accutane, Zoloft, or Thalidomide that have been known to cause birth injuries or defects, then they can be held liable for medical malpractice and birth injuries.

If a doctor is treating the mother for another condition, then he or she must make sure the drug will not harm the fetus inside of her. When the conditions of the mother and child are not adequately monitored, and death or injury results to the mother or child, again legal action for a medical malpractice lawsuit is warranted.

However, birth injuries can also result from negligence during the actual delivery process. Broken bones, blood clots, nerve damage, severe bruising, and hemorrhaging can all lead to the slow development of severe birth injuries like: cerebral palsy, Erb’s palsy, shoulder dystocia, disfigurement, brain damage, and death.

Cerebral Palsy

Cerebral Palsy (CP ) isn’t just one condition but it’s actually four conditions usually caused by a brain injury during pregnancy, birth, deliver, or early childhood development and affecting posture, coordination, and bodily movement. CP manifests itself in the first few years of childhood, and while it can be treated with therapy and accommodations, it can never be cured. The four types of CP are: stiff spasm-like movements of spastic CP, the lack of balance and depth perception of ataxic CP, the uncoordinated bodily movements of dyskinetic CP, and combined symptoms of mixed CP.

The portion of the brain that is injured determines the type of CP that develops in the child and may also indicate when the birth injury occurred. To discover whether or not your baby’s CP was inevitable or avoidable, you need a skilled birth injury attorney to conduct a thorough review of your birth and pregnancy records. All types of CP call for a lifetime of expensive therapy and accommodations, so if your baby has developed CP as a result of the negligence of a medical professional, then you should not have to shoulder that substantial financial burden on your own.

Erb’s Palsy, Shoulder Dystocia and Brachial Plexus Injuries

There is a bundle of nerves under the shoulder known as the brachial plexus that when damaged in a newborn infant can lead to a few different debilitating ailments. Erb’s Palsy develops when the bundle is injured during development. The nerves are bundled up in the infant but then disperse throughout the body as the child grows, spreading the damaged nerves throughout the arm and hand. As a result, the afflicted child can develop a lifelong injury in the arm and shoulder ranging from weakened movement to total lack of movement.

In many cases, Erb’s Palsy develops as a result of trauma during child birth, when the baby’s shoulder becomes caught in the birth canal. Doctors refer to this birth complication as shoulder dystocia. When a doctor lacks experience or is overworked and over-tired, then he or she can try to relieve shoulder dystocia by pulling or pushing too hard, damaging the baby’s brachial plexus and causing Erb’s Palsy. Or, it’s also possible that a forceps was misused in trying to extract the baby during a C-section, causing similar damage. In either case, if the medical staff erred, then legal action is likely warranted.

In some cases, nerve damage caused by shoulder dystocia will heal on its own, and in other cases it’s possible to rectify the condition with surgery. However, there are other cases where the harm is too severe to be fixed by any means. Immediately after birth, the child will begin to show signs of Erb’s Palsy – holding the affected arm against the body, cocked at a 90-degree angle at the elbow and having decreased grip.

Whether needing a series of surgeries to correct a slight brachial plexus injury or years of therapy and accommodations, Erb’s Palsy will result in expensive and strenuous consequences. If it was caused by medical malpractice, then your family should be compensated.

Brain Injuries

As we’ve already discussed, the birth canal is extremely tight and exiting the mother’s womb often leaves the child’s head with swelling. However, when forceps are improperly used to pull the baby out, severe brain injuries can occur, including hemorrhages and skull fractures. In some instances, the flow of oxygen can be completely cut off the infant’s brain, resulting in a condition called hypoxia. During the course of dangerous child birth, these problems will occasionally arise due to the cruel odds of nature. However, in other cases these problems are caused by negligence. Furthermore, when the attending obstetrician and his or her staff fail to diagnose any of the above brain maladies, the result can be far more serious health problems later in the baby’s life. The most common indicator of a brain injury is a when a baby is moving one side of its face or body and not the other – what is known as asymmetrical body movement. One side of the baby’s face may seem sluggish to respond, or the baby only smiles with one side of its mouth.

No matter what birth injury has manifested itself in your baby, you need to contact a skilled and seasoned birth injury attorney immediately.

Fatal Birth Injury Compensation

Even worse, some birth injuries are fatal. If your baby was killed due to the negligence of an attending medical professional, then you have a right to be compensated. Sadly, however, you will not be able to be compensated as you deserve. No amount of money could possibly replace the child you will never know, but the states of Texas and Arkansas place the minimum medical malpractice insurance level at $250,000. However, if gross negligence was committed by the attending medical personnel, then you could still pursue a wrongful death lawsuit against the medical institution or practitioner. Standard negligence is a single mistake, but gross negligence constitutes doing something that would be likely to result in harm to others, like performing a delivery while intoxicated. In this instance, then you can collect the full amount a jury will allow for your family’s pain and suffering. If your wife dies in delivery, then you can pursue compensation for lost wages, as well.

Why You Need Help

Birth injuries deal with highly complex medical issues, and getting to the bottom of liability for a birth injury takes someone with extensive experience both investigating and litigating similar cases. Your child is going to need many years of physical therapy and adaptive technologies, not to mention living with his or her condition for the rest of his life, and you deserve to be compensated for the huge financial impact of the birth injury.

At Grossman Law Offices, we can help you get satisfaction. We understand that the obstetrician may be a family friend, and you don’t want to sue. You can still go through a mediator and arrange a mutually beneficial settlement, and we can help make sure it’s fair. We want to help your family find the resolution it wants.

How We Can Help

Successfully resolving a birth injury case takes more than just an experienced birth injury attorney. It also takes medical malpractice experience, a knowledgeable support staff, and access to birth injury medical experts, who can analyze the evidence and put it in a context the jury will understand. We can offer all of you this, easing your confusion and concern after your child’s injury, or worse yet, death.

Since birth injury cases are a form of medical malpractice, that means the standard of proof is higher than for any other form of civil proceeding. In order to prove your case, you will need the authority of several medical experts on your side, and it should come as no surprise that medical professionals are often reluctant to testify against each other. They want to protect each other against litigation and the notion the doctor can be blamed for a baby’s injury or death. We have relationships with obstetricians, doctors, anesthesiologists, and nurses who will analyze the medical records of the mother and testify to what they believe the truth is.

Whenever dealing with a birth injury case, it’s vital that you act soon, because your child needs medical assistance, and evidence will disappear fast. Records disappear or are destroyed, and people forget what they saw or did.

Once word gets out that you may have a malpractice issue, and that will happen as soon as you start gathering records, the hospital will contact its medical malpractice insurance provider, and its agents will begin scouring over medical records, preparing to fight the claim. Defense law in insurance is a multi-million dollar business, and defense lawyers know what they’re doing. They know how to minimize the liability of insurance companies when the opportunity presents itself.

Moreover, as we stated earlier, medical malpractice laws in Texas favor the insurers at the expense of the victims. While the total value of general damages is capped at $250,000, general damages only constitute pain and suffering, disfigurement and emotional turmoil. Special damages, medical bills, lost future earnings, and future medical expenses, on the contrary are unlimited but much harder to prove. You need a lawyer who knows how to meet the challenging standard of proof for special damages. Focusing on special damages is the only way to get the true value of your injuries.

Depending on the type of birth injury, both the mother and child may be able to bring separate birth injury claims. When this is the case, you need only the best birth injury law firm to handle this two-pronged case.

No matter what type of birth injury befell your wife or baby, the attorneys at Grossman Law Offices know how to help you get the compensation you deserve. We’ve been dealing with birth injury and other medical malpractice cases for 20 years and have delivered many millions of dollars to injured and grieving Texans and Arkansans. Call us now for a free and confidential consultation at 1-855-589-5645 (toll free), and you can discuss your birth injury situation with one of our trained legal professionals.