“THIS IS YOUR FAULT!” you scream as nurses help you pace back and forth, back and forth, endlessly. The hospital gown swirls around you as you march.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” your partner asks meekly.
“I HATE YOU!” Another contraction rips through your enormous belly, and you curl into yourself, gasping for air.
When going into labor, you have this beautiful, perfect picture in your head of how you will have a tiny healthy baby wrapped in your arms at the end of this grueling process. However, things do not always go as planned – and medical accidents can and do happen during childbirth, despite technological and medical advances.
There are usually various factors present in the pregnancy or labor that would signal to the medical staff whether a birth injury could occur. If these factors are not addressed immediately, they could lead to one of several different types of birth injuries.
There are five common types of birth injury that can occur, though these of course are not an exhaustive list. These injuries range from mild to severe.
The first type is brain injury:
The second type of injury is damage to the peripheral nerve, also called a brachial plexus injury. This can prevent arm and hand movement, and it will usually improve in time unless the nerve was torn during the birthing process.
The third type of injury is damage to the cranial nerve and the spinal cord, which can result because of improper rotating, pulling and stretching of the baby during birth. This can result in facial paralysis or other spinal cord injuries – sometimes paralysis of other parts of the body as well.
The fourth type of injury is bone fractures, which usually occur during breech births or when the infants are large in size. Babies are born with 300 bones as opposed to adults’ 206 and they fuse together as they age; these bones are soft, especially in the head where they have yet to set, and break easily. Clavicles are known to break during labor.
The fifth and most uncommon injury is an intra-abdominal wound, which is essentially a blunt abdominal injury. It does a lot of damage to the baby’s liver and other internal organs.
Many or all of these injuries can be prevented with proper care and attention from your medical providers. However, if your baby has been harmed and you believe it was because of medical malpractice, please contact a birth injury lawyer immediately.
There are certain factors that occur during pregnancy or labor that should be addressed by medical personnel. If they are not addressed, they can lead to birth injuries. Some of these factors are:
It is extremely important to conduct plenty of research and choose a medical malpractice lawyer with many years of experience in this line of legal work. It is a very specialized area of law that requires a lot of experience. This is because there is a lot of overlap between medical and legal matters, and there are also unique procedural matters that come up in medical malpractice cases.
Most attorneys in medical malpractice law practice one of two kinds:
It can be helpful to have a lawyer who has worked on both sides, because they will know how the other side thinks. You might feel more comfortable with someone who only works with plaintiffs. In the end, it is entirely up to you, and neither side is more correct than the other.
Read more and see where to find a lawyer in How to Find the Right Medical Malpractice Attorney for Your Case.