Rhode Island Birth Injury Attorneys

Birth injuries can be caused by any number of things, including negligence, carelessness, and medical mistakes. Doctors might fail to take action in a crisis situation. Or, alternately, nurses and midwives may fail to monitor the unborn baby’s heart rate properly, which could ultimately lead to fetal distress.

If healthcare professionals fail to act quickly when the baby is in distress, he or she could be deprived of oxygen and suffer serious brain damage. In short, if the medical team is in any way unprepared for the baby’s delivery, or if they fail to respond to certain situations properly, the mother and unborn baby could suffer irreparable harm.

A few common reasons birth injuries occur include:

• Failure to perform a C-section
• Failure to monitor the fetal heart rate
• Failure to respond to fetal distress
• Improper use of birth tools, such as forceps or vacuums
• Failure to identify and treat maternal infections
• Failure to respond to or prevent preterm labor
• Improper medication administration or incorrect doses
• Failure to diagnose and treat infections and other medical conditions

If your child has shown developmental delays, physical injuries, or if he or she was in distress during delivery, you may have reason to believe a birth injury was involved. Birth injuries can cause infants severe pain, and may even result in permanent injuries, including brain damage, nerve damage, shoulder injuries, developmental delays, altered motor skills, paralysis, and more.

In worst-case scenarios, some birth injuries can prove fatal to the baby, mother, or both. If your child was harmed, don’t wait to seek justice. Caring for a child with a birth injury can be extremely taxing and costly, and you deserve the funds and resources to care for your child properly, especially if their injury was caused by someone else’s negligence or carelessness.

Birth injury and other medical negligence cases are notoriously difficult to prove, considering their technical nature and the fact that the plaintiff must show that the health care provider failed to act within the acceptable standard of medical care.

It can be difficult to prove exactly what happened in the delivery room, but our decades of experience in this field and our access to experts in medicine and obstetrics can help us expose substandard care and establish fault.

Our experience includes work in the following types of birth injury cases, among others:

• Birth asphyxia
• Cerebral palsy
• Shoulder dystocia
• Vacuum extractor and forceps injuries
• Brachial plexus injuries
• Erb’s palsy
• Placental abruption
• Maternal death
• Kernicterus
• Preeclampsia and eclampsia
• Anesthesia errors
• C-section errors
• Delayed C-section

Some injuries and traumas are inevitable at the time of birth, but others are avoidable. When injuries are included in the latter category, they are referred to as birth injuries and can inspire lawsuits.

According to the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project’s Statistical Brief, 5 to 8 of every 1,000 infants born in the United States suffer a birth injury as defined above.

In 2006, for example, there were 4.3 million childbirths and nearly 157,700 potentially avoidable injuries to mothers and newborns.

What Are The Risk Factors For Birth Injuries?

The use of assistive devices like vacuums or forceps increases the risk of birth injury in both mother and child. Other factors that contribute to birth injuries include:

• A large child
• An overweight mother
• Breech births (when the baby is not headfirst in the birth canal)
• Premature births
• Cesarean delivery

Before, during, and immediately after delivery, your medical provider has a responsibility to assess your risk factors and plan for a complicated or high-risk delivery if necessary. If they fail to do so, you can hold them liable for any injuries sustained by you and/or your child.

The key to proving a birth injury claim is hiring a good lawyer. When building your case, your attorney will recruit expert witnesses to assess your doctor’s behavior throughout your pregnancy and during your delivery. Typically, these witnesses are other medical professionals who specialize in the same field as your initial caregiver, so they will be able to testify as to whether or not your doctor’s actions fell below the accepted standard of care.

To prove a birth injury claim, you must prove your doctor owed you and your child a duty of care, that they deviated from the generally accepted standard of medical care, and that this deviation caused you and/or your child’s injury.