What To Do If Your Child Is Injured At Birth

Child bearing is usually a thing of joy! But what happens when a family is faced with heartbreaking consequences due to medical malpractices resulting in a childbirth injury.

What you have to do is sue such a healthcare provider for gross negligence and by the way if you happen to live in San Antonio, you should visit this page birth injury lawyer in San Antonio, they are the no win, no fee litigators when it comes to filing birth injury lawsuits. Check out this reliable source for you to know the difference between negligence and gross negligence.

If your family has experienced a birth injury before, you’d say it’s an unpleasant experience you wished never happened in the first place.

We will discuss various types of various birth injuries in this article and as you already know what to do when you encounter such cases, we will also look into possible ways this devastating experience can be averted.

What Is Birth Injury?

Birth injury refers to damage or injury to the child before, during, or just after the birthing process. This can include birth asphyxia or oxygen deprivation, contracting an infection, trauma and any other complications resulting from birth.

When a birth injury is due to medical malpractice it is usually as a result of the failure of the medical personnel to follow standard practises in caring or promptly handling any issues that cropped up before, during and after the child bearing process.

In some cases, birth injury resulted in permanent disabilities such as Developmental disabilities,

cognitive problems and cerebral palsy.

Now that you have an idea of what birth injury signifies. Let’s look at the various types of birth injury.

What Are The Types Of Birth Injury?

  • Brain Injury: Physical trauma during childbearing can cause damage to the brain. There are 4 main types of brain damage in the scenario where the child was exposed to trauma during childbirth. They are: hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, periventricular leukomalacia, intracranial hemorrhage and cerebral dysgenesis.

Hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy is a type of brain damage that occurs due to a lack of either oxygen or blood flow to the brain. The intracranial hemorrhage is known as bleeding in the brain while the Cerebral dysgenesis results in cerebral palsy— a permanent movement disorder in childhood.

  • Brachial plexus injury: This is an injury to the peripheral nerve. In minor cases, the nerves heal and full use of the hand and arm is recovered. In more severe cases, where the nerve was torn during the birthing process, the child may suffer permanent nerve damage and may not have full use of the shoulder, arm, or hand.
  • Drug-Related Injuries: These are instances where medications used to induce labour caused severe implications during the child bearing process.
  • Other common types of birth injury includes bruising, bone fractures, intra-abdominal wound and oxygen deprivation.

Signs of birth injury immediately after delivery

  • If the baby’s skin colour is blue or pale.
  • If the baby has a slow heart rate or requires resuscitation.
  • If the baby is disinterested in feeding or has difficulty feeding.
  • If the baby is stiff or flaccid.
  • If the baby experiences seizure.