Serious complications that endanger the health of an unborn baby can develop when a pregnant woman begins labor. When a woman is admitted at a hospital for labor and delivery the expectation is that her progress will be closely monitored, that the physicians and nurses involved in her care will be able to recognize any signs of complications, and that they will take the right action at the right time. The failure to do so can result in permanent harm to the baby and may leave the physicians and nurses who were responsible for the harm to the child liable for medical malpractice.
Consider the following case:
A hospital admits a woman who was in active labor from her pregnancy. The nurse who monitors the woman's progress interprets the results from the fetal heart rate monitor as reassuring. This continues for nine hours. Then the situation changes. The fetal heart rate monitor shows a continuous increase in the unborn baby's heart rate. The rate reaches 170-180 beats per minute. The obstetrician in charge of the woman's care is aware of the change in the rate at which the baby's heart is beating but views the situation as a normal labor requiring no emergency steps. In keeping with this position the obstetrician eventually performs a vaginal delivery.
After the delivery the baby is transferred to NICU. While there he is in prolonged initial depression and experiences respiratory distress. Testing reveals that he has bleeding in the brain with an accumulation of blood under the scalp. Within days an MRI shows that the baby has brain damage. The type of brain damage is consistent with the loss of oxygen prior to birth - a situation that would account for the extreme fetal distress noted in the fetal heart rate monitor. A few days later he began having seizures. As the baby grew it became clear that he has serious difficulty with speech, and he has problems with motor control. The law firm that handled this case reported that they were able to obtain a settlement on behalf of the child and his family in the amount of $1 million.
This case illustrates an all too common phenomenon. The doctor was presented with a situation in which the unborn baby was clearly in fetal distress. The doctor nonetheless continued as though labor was proceeding normally. The doctor saw the complication taking place and worsening literally right before his eyes. It is as if as time went on this doctor's threshold for recognizing that the baby was in trouble became more and more difficult to meet so that even when the fetal distress was at a critical point, the doctor still proceeded with a vaginal delivery instead of performing an emergency C-section.
This doctor acted as though the patient was a woman with a perfectly normal labor. All the signs necessary to recognize that the baby was in fetal distress and needed immediate attention were there, right in front of the doctor. It is difficult to say whether this doctor learned anything from this mistake so as not to repeat them again with another child in the future. Once a doctor has made a mistake that permanently harms a child, however, an experienced birth injury attorney can help the family achieve a recovery that protects the child's future.
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