A birth injury is physical harm a newborn sustains during late pregnancy, labor, delivery, or immediately after birth. They’re distinct from birth defects; birth injuries typically result from events that occur during the birthing process. Think complications during labor, a difficult delivery, or issues immediately after birth.
You’re probably wondering if your child’s birth injuries could have been prevented? Maybe. If it arose due to someone else’s carelessness, you might be eligible compensation. These are tough questions, and you deserve answers.
If you suspect your child's birth injury might have been preventable, the Cerebral Palsy Lawyer Alliance connects you with experienced birth injury lawyers near you who can listen to your story. Call (888) 894-9067 for a no-obligation conversation.
Spotting the Signs: Common Types of Birth Injuries
Newborns can experience a variety of minor physical issues that resolve quickly on their own. A little bruising or swelling, for instance, isn't always a sign of a serious injury. But others warrant serious concern:
- Brachial Plexus Injuries (e.g., Erb's Palsy, Klumpke's Palsy): Damage to the network of nerves that control the arm and hand. It often happens when a baby's shoulder gets stuck during delivery (shoulder dystocia) or if there's excessive pulling. Risk factors include large babies or a particularly difficult delivery.
- Bone Fractures (e.g., Clavicle, Humerus): Broken bones, most commonly the collarbone (clavicle), can occur during a complicated or assisted delivery. This might happen if the baby is large or in an unusual position.
- Cephalohematoma & Caput Succedaneum: Both involve swelling on a newborn's head. Caput succedaneum is a generalized swelling of the scalp caused by pressure during a long or hard delivery. A cephalohematoma is a collection of blood under the scalp, usually from a difficult delivery or the use of instruments. While many resolve, a large cephalohematoma might indicate a more traumatic birth.
- Facial Paralysis: Damage to the facial nerve, often due to pressure on the baby's face during birth or from the use of forceps.
The Most Concerning Injuries Affecting the Brain
Brain injuries are among the most serious birth injuries and can cause lifelong neurological conditions.
- Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy (HIE): This is brain damage resulting from a lack of oxygen or restricted blood flow to the brain around the time of birth. Potential causes include umbilical cord problems (like compression or prolapse), placental abruption (where the placenta detaches from the uterine wall too early), or prolonged labor where the baby shows signs of distress but intervention is delayed. HIE is a major concern and a common precursor to cerebral palsy.
- Cerebral Palsy (CP): Cerebral palsy isn't one specific thing but a group of disorders that affect a person's ability to move and maintain balance and posture. While CP can have various origins, a significant number of cases are linked to birth injuries such as HIE, maternal infections passed to the baby, or direct trauma during birth.
- Periventricular Leukomalacia (PVL): This involves damage to the brain's white matter (the tissue that transmits signals within the brain). It's often seen in premature babies but can also be linked to oxygen deprivation or infection.
- Intracranial Hemorrhages (Brain Bleeds): These are bleeds within the skull. Different types exist (e.g., subdural, subarachnoid, intraventricular) and can be caused by birth trauma (like from excessive force or misuse of delivery instruments) or by oxygen deprivation.
When to Worry: Symptoms That Demand Attention
If your newborn shows any of the following, it could indicate a birth injury and needs immediate medical evaluation:
- Seizures
- Extreme lethargy or unresponsiveness
- Difficulty feeding (sucking, swallowing)
- Abnormal movements, stiffness, or floppiness
- A weak or high-pitched cry
- Low APGAR scores that don't improve
- Arching back while crying
- Breathing problems
- Bluish or very pale skin
The Why: Unpacking Causes and Critical Risk Factors
The actions taken, or not taken, during labor and delivery play a huge role. This is often where the question of preventability arises.
- Delayed Birth/Failure to Act: Prolonged labor, especially when the baby shows signs of distress (like an abnormal heart rate), can lead to oxygen deprivation. A failure to recognize these signs and perform a timely C-section is a critical misstep.
- Oxygen Deprivation (Asphyxia): Beyond prolonged labor, other events can cut off a baby’s oxygen. These include umbilical cord compression or prolapse (where the cord gets squeezed or drops into the birth canal ahead of the baby), placental issues like abruption, or unmanaged maternal blood pressure problems.
- Mechanical Trauma:
- Improper use of assistive devices like forceps or vacuum extractors. These tools are designed to help in difficult deliveries, but if used incorrectly, with too much force, or when not appropriate, they cause direct physical injury, including skull fractures, nerve damage, or brain bleeds.
- Excessive force or improper maneuvers during delivery. This is particularly risky with shoulder dystocia, where the baby's shoulder gets stuck after the head is delivered. Panic or incorrect techniques lead to brachial plexus injuries or fractures.
- Infections: Maternal infections, such as Group B Strep (GBS) or chorioamnionitis (infection of the amniotic fluid and membranes), if not diagnosed or treated properly, are transmitted to the baby. This leads to neonatal sepsis, meningitis, and subsequent brain damage.
- Medication Errors: Giving the wrong medication or an incorrect dosage to the mother during labor or to the baby immediately after birth has serious consequences.
Underlying Risk Factors Don’t Mean Injury is Inevitable
Certain conditions increase the chance of a difficult birth, though they don't guarantee a birth injury will happen.
- Large baby (macrosomia)
- Premature birth
- Abnormal fetal presentation (e.g., breech, where the baby is not head-down)
- Maternal health conditions like diabetes or preeclampsia, especially if not managed appropriately during pregnancy and delivery.
Was It Preventable? Standard of Care and Medical Negligence
Sometimes, it's an unavoidable complication. But other times, the injury happens because the medical team didn't do what they should have.
The standard of care is a key concept here. It refers to the level of skill and care that a reasonably competent healthcare professional, in the same or similar community, would have provided under similar circumstances. This standard doesn't demand perfection; medical professionals are human.
Instead, it’s about ensuring competence and that medical professionals adhere to established, evidence-based medical guidelines and practices relevant to the situation they are handling.
When Care Falls Short: Defining Medical Negligence
Medical negligence occurs when a healthcare provider breaches (fails to meet) that standard of care, and this failure directly causes an injury that results in damages (harm, losses, expenses). It’s a sequence: a duty owed, a breach of that duty, causation, and harm.
Negligence leading to birth injuries can include:
- Failure to adequately monitor the fetal heart rate during labor, missing clear signs of distress.
- Not recognizing obvious signs of fetal distress and oxygen deprivation, and therefore not acting quickly enough.
- Mismanaging a complicated delivery, such as shoulder dystocia, by using excessive force or incorrect maneuvers.
- Unnecessary delay in performing an emergency C-section when it is clearly indicated by the mother's or baby's condition.
- Failure to provide appropriate stabilizing treatment as mandated by laws like the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). EMTALA requires hospitals that participate in Medicare and have emergency departments to provide a medical screening examination to any individual who comes to the emergency department and requests examination or treatment for a medical condition, and if an emergency medical condition is found to exist (including for a woman in active labor), the hospital must provide stabilizing treatment or an appropriate transfer.
It's Not Your Job to Prove It Alone
Figuring out if medical negligence occurred is a complex process. It typically involves a painstaking review of extensive medical records – prenatal records, labor and delivery notes, fetal monitoring strips, and newborn care documents.
Insights from independent medical professionals who can assess whether the standard of care was met are necessary. You shouldn't have to tackle this complex process alone, especially while caring for an injured child.
Taking the Next Step: What To Do If You Suspect a Birth Injury
Focus on Your Child First
Above all else, your priority is your child's health and well-being. Ensure they are receiving all necessary medical care, attending follow-up appointments, and getting any prescribed therapies.
Document Everything
While you're focusing on care, keep detailed records. This includes notes from medical appointments, a log of your child's symptoms or developmental progress (or lack thereof), any communications you have with doctors or hospital staff, and any specific concerns or observations you noted during or after the birth. These details will be very useful later.
Why Talking to a Lawyer Sooner Rather Than Later Matters
If you have a nagging feeling that something went wrong, or that your child's injury could have been prevented, speak with a birth injury lawyer. Here’s why:
- Understanding Your Rights: A lawyer helps you understand if the circumstances surrounding your child's birth might point to a potential medical malpractice claim. They explain what birth injuries mean from a legal perspective.
- Statutes of Limitations: There are legal deadlines, called statutes of limitations, for filing medical malpractice lawsuits. These time limits vary by state and are complex, especially when a child is involved. Missing this deadline means losing the right to seek compensation, regardless of how strong your case is. Acting promptly preserves your options.
- The Investigation Process: Lawyers who handle birth injury cases know how to conduct a thorough investigation. This usually involves obtaining all relevant medical records and having them reviewed by qualified medical professionals to determine if the standard of care was breached and if that breach caused the injury.
What a Birth Injury Lawyer Can Help With
A lawyer does more than file a lawsuit. Their role is to support you through this difficult process by:
- Investigating the detailed circumstances of your child's birth.
- Working with medical reviewers to determine if medical negligence played a role in the injury.
- Clearly explaining the legal process, your options, and what to expect.
- If negligence is identified, pursuing compensation for damages. This includes medical expenses (past and future), costs of ongoing care and therapy, adaptive equipment, lost future earnings for the child, pain and suffering, and other impacts on your child and family.
FAQ
Can a birth injury cause developmental delays later in life?
Yes. Brain injuries that occur at birth, such as Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy (HIE), lead to a range of long-term issues. These include developmental delays, cognitive impairments, learning disabilities, and conditions like cerebral palsy or epilepsy. The severity and type of delay often depend on the extent and location of the brain injury.
Are all birth injuries immediately obvious?
No. Some birth injuries, like a fractured clavicle or significant bruising, are immediately apparent. However, other types, particularly certain brain injuries or some forms of nerve damage, may not become evident until a child is older and starts missing developmental milestones, or when specific symptoms (like difficulty with coordination or speech) emerge over time.
If I had a C-section, does that mean my child could not have had a birth injury?
While Cesarean sections can prevent certain types of birth injuries often associated with difficult vaginal deliveries (like those from shoulder dystocia or passage through a narrow pelvis), injuries still occur. For example, if the C-section was delayed despite clear signs of fetal distress, the baby might have suffered from oxygen deprivation before the surgery. Complications during the C-section surgery itself, related to anesthesia or surgical technique, though less common, are also possible.
Does the hospital or doctor have to tell me if a birth injury occurred due to a mistake?
Ethical medical guidelines encourage transparency and open communication with patients and families, especially when an adverse event occurs, but medical staff may not always proactively disclose that an error or deviation from care directly caused an injury. Sometimes the connection isn't immediately clear even to them, or they may be reluctant to admit a mistake. This is one reason why seeking an independent review of the medical records is so important if you have serious concerns and unanswered questions about what happened.
How is causation established in a birth injury legal claim?
Establishing causation means proving a direct link between the healthcare provider's breach of the accepted standard of care and the specific injury your child sustained. You must prove that the mistake directly caused or worsened the injury. This typically involves a detailed analysis of all medical records by both legal and independent medical professionals. Their job is to demonstrate that, more likely than not, 'but for' the negligent act or omission, the birth injury would not have happened, or its severity would have been significantly reduced.
What role does prenatal care play in preventing birth injuries?
Comprehensive prenatal care is a cornerstone of a healthy pregnancy and delivery, and plays a significant role in preventing certain birth injuries. Good prenatal care allows healthcare providers to identify potential risks early on. These include detecting a baby that is growing unusually large (macrosomia), identifying maternal health conditions (like gestational diabetes or preeclampsia) that could complicate delivery, or recognizing an abnormal fetal position. When these risks are known in advance, the medical team can create a tailored birth plan, make informed decisions (such as planning for a C-section if a vaginal delivery appears too risky), and be better prepared for potential complications during labor, thereby reducing the chances of many types of birth injuries.
Your Child's Future Matters
If something about the circumstances of your child's birth doesn't sit right with you, or if you're now facing the unexpected and difficult challenges that come with a birth injury, you don't have to navigate this complex situation alone. Help is available to find answers and explore your options.
Call us today at (888) 894-9067 for a no-obligation consultation. A knowledgeable birth injury lawyer will help you find the clarity you deserve and pursue the resources your family needs for your child's future.