When Your Baby Is Injured: 4 Mistakes Doctors Make That Can Lead To Birth Injuries
Unfortunately, even if you had a textbook pregnancy, complications can arise during labor and your little one can suffer birth injuries as a result. Now you're left wondering what happened to cause the injuries. Some birth injuries are caused by mistakes that doctors have made. Here are four mistakes doctors can make that may lead to birth injuries.
Failure to Diagnose Potential Birth Complications
During pregnancy, your doctor should have been monitoring you and your baby. Monitoring should have included potential risk factors. Some of those risk factors the doctor should have been monitored for include:
- Size of baby
- Position of baby
If your doctor failed to monitor those potential risk factors, and your baby suffered birth injuries as a result, you may be able to sue for medical malpractice.
Failure to Recognize Umbilical Cord Entrapment
During pregnancy, your baby is sharing space with the umbilical cord. Occasionally, the umbilical cord can get wrapped around the baby's neck. When that happens during delivery, your baby can be deprived of the oxygen it needs to survive. Umbilical cord entrapment can usually be diagnosed by monitoring a baby's heart rate during labor. If your baby suffered birth injuries as a result of undiagnosed umbilical cord entrapment, you should sit down with a medical malpractice attorney as soon as possible.
Failure to Administer Pitocin Properly
If you were overdue, or your labor wasn't progressing quickly enough, your doctor may have ordered Pitocin. Pitocin is designed to bring on contractions so that labor can start. However, if Pitocin levels are too high, labor can progress too quickly. When that happens, baby and mom can be placed in jeopardy. If you were administered Pitocin during labor, and your baby was injured during delivery, you should discuss the matter with your attorney.
Failure to Proceed with C-Section
You developed complications during labor that should have required an emergency C-section. Unfortunately, your doctor delayed the C-section, which resulted in birth injuries for your baby. You may have grounds for a medical malpractice case. This is particularly true if your baby's heart rate was dropping during contractions, which can be a sign of fetal distress, or you began experiencing severe bleeding during labor.
If your baby is the victim of birth injuries, and you believe your doctor made a mistake during labor, you need to sit down with a medical malpractice attorney. Your attorney, like those at Goebel Law Office, will be able to look at your medical records and determine whether or not you have a cause of action for a medical malpractice case against your doctor.