The birth of a child is undoubtedly one of the happiest days in one’s life. It marks the birthday of the child that he or she will celebrate for the rest of their life. This day is memorable not only for the mother but also for everyone in the family, including the child as well. Welcoming a new member of the family is always a day filled with excitement.
Such a pleasant and happy memory can easily downturn into something tragic if anything goes wrong during the delivery process. A mistake by the doctors or nurses during the birthing process or any sort of medical negligence during the same can cause lifelong injuries to the baby and can even lead to death.
Contact Michigan Injury Lawyers today to discuss your legal options should you face birth injury issues.
What Are Your Legal Options After a Birth Injury?
When you notice that your child is born with certain deformities that were not found in the ultrasonography during the pregnancy period, you must immediately consult a different obstetrician than the one who helped you in your childbirth. This is important as you will find out if your child had received any birth injuries during childbirth. To understand your legal options after a birth injury you must understand what exactly a Birth Injury is.
A birth injury is a serious injury suffered by an infant during labor or delivery. Some of the more serious birth injuries include:
- Birth asphyxia
- Cephalohematoma
- Cerebral palsy
- Erb’s palsy
If any of the above has taken place, your child may have experienced an injury during child birthing. The injury could be fatal and lifelong like cerebral palsy, which has no cure. The damage could be to the brain, or the nervous system or the skin or bone. Therefore, you must be aware of what you must do if such a situation arises.
If your child faces such an unfortunate situation as a birth injury, you can make a claim for compensation from the medical professional(s) under whose supervision and instructions the birth injury took place.
To understand the legal options for a birth injury situation, contact our experienced birth injury attorneys.
A birth injury needs to be taken seriously by parents whose children have suffered under it, as such injuries damage your child’s future and drain your finances for life since the child will need constant medical support for life.
Common Birth Injuries
Medical staff during labor can sometimes act negligently that makes both mother and child suffer for life.
Such medical negligence during birth falls into certain categories.
Birth injuries affecting infants:
- Cerebral palsy - It is a disorder of muscle tone, movement, and posture.
- Erb’s palsy - A brachial plexus injury that results in the complete paralysis of one arm.
- Forceps or vacuums used during birthing sometimes lead to broken arms, bruises and more.
- Shoulder dystocia - this occurs when an infant’s shoulder gets lodged in the mother’s pelvic. Such an injury may cause nerve damage in the affected area or light paralysis of the injured limb.
Birth injuries affecting mothers:
Not only can a person sue for birth injuries caused on infants during labor by the doctor, but mothers can also claim compensation from the hospital authorities for any sort of injury that she incurred during birth due to the action of the doctors.
Some of such injuries incurred by mothers during labor are as follows:
- Perineal tears are the lacerations of the skin that separates the vagina from the anus. Third and fourth-degree tears cause severe damage to the mother such as fecal urgency, chronic perineal pain, and pain during physical intercourses, fistula formation, etc.
- Cesarean section errors are another common act of medical negligence on women during childbirth that doctors are responsible for. If a doctor fails to notice fetal distress sometimes it can get life-threatening.
- Prolapsed uterus is a situation when the uterus descends into the vagina. Such a situation also occurs during labor due to the negligence of doctors.
Doctors can cause uterine ruptures, hemorrhaging, abnormal uterine bleeding, infection, preeclampsia/eclampsia, and many more damages to mothers during labor.
When Do You Call a Birth Injury Lawyer?
As soon as you notice that after childbirth you or your child is facing certain problems physically that is not normally supposed to happen. We suggest immediate interaction with a birth injury lawyer so that you can discuss potential claims before the statute of limitations expires.
It is extremely important to have a birth injury lawyer by your side as soon as you realize the medical negligence or malpractice that you and your child have faced. Your child may have incurred certain injuries that could make him or her disabled for life only because of the medical staff attending your child during birth.
These injuries demand financial resources for your child now and in the future, meaning an attorney with complete experience in the field of birth injuries cases should help you with filing a claim for compensation.
Contact Our Firm to Fight Your Lansing Birth Injury Case
Michigan Injury Lawyers is a law firm that helps those injured in birth injury accidents caused by medical negligence. For many years, our firm has stood by many great Michiganders to fight against medical negligence and malpractice that causes injury during birthing.
Our law firm has helped many Michigan families get compensation so that they can get deal with the trauma that comes with birth injuries, and also help their children with the medical expenses that were caused in the first place by the doctors and medical staff of the hospital. We have lawyers who have the combined experience of over 150 years for cases such as birth injuries.
Our firm encourages you to reach out by phone at (517) 435-9370 or online as soon as you realize, or it comes to your knowledge, that you or your child has an injury that was caused during labor, and that injury stemmed from negligence on behalf of the medical authorities attending to the mother and baby during labor.