Disclosure: collaborative post
Pregnancy and a child’s birth can be extraordinarily special for a mother. A life is growing inside you, a brand-new person you will soon have the opportunity to meet. There are few more memorable moments than the first time you hold your newborn in your arms.
Of course, all mothers hope that their infant turns out to be healthy and birth defect-free. However, sometimes, the worst can happen. What is infinitely more upsetting than a naturally-occurring birth defect is an injury inflicted on your child by a careless or negligent doctor.
Here’s what you should do if this sort of calamitous situation occurs.
Decide if You Want to Take Legal Action
In the United States, the estimate is that 7 out of every 1,000 children suffer a birth injury. That’s a disturbing statistic. If your child is one of those to whom this has occurred, you’ll need to figure out whether you want to charge the doctor or the hospital with negligence.
Part of doing that is going to be contacting a lawyer with expertise in this area. The consultation should be free, and the lawyer can give you a straight answer as to whether you have a case.
One of the conditions that might qualify includes hypoxia, where the child didn’t get enough oxygen to the brain during birth. A medical professional might not have monitored the child sufficiently directly after the birth. A doctor may have applied too much pressure to the child’s head with forceps, inflicting brain trauma.
Certain other injuries or conditions might warrant legal action as well.
Talk Over What Happened with Any Other Relevant Party
You’ll also probably want to talk with any co-parent or partner about what you feel is the best action to take. If you’re raising the child alone, you can decide on your own what the best path is moving forward. If there’s another person in the picture who is helping to raise the child, then they should have some influence on what you ultimately choose to do.
You might have to decide whether it is the best move to pursue legal action or whether you feel that going down that path would be too painful. Remember, though, that if you fail to take action, you might be stuck paying for additional medical treatment for the child that never would have been necessary had the medical professionals at fault not been negligent.
Get the Mental Help You Need
Even if the child survived what took place, negligence or inappropriate action on a doctor’s part (or a nurse, or some other medical professional) might have mentally put you in a dark place. It’s traumatic when your child suffers a birth injury, especially when it was preventable.
You might need to seek professional help, such as counseling, to try and work through what happened. Talking about your anger, frustration, pain, and concerns about the future might help you figure out whether you want to pursue legal action.
Make Sure to Take Care of the Child
While it matters what you decide to do, from a legal standpoint, you also still have a responsibility to take care of the child. Assuming they survived what took place, you have to get the best care for them, in light of the injury and what it means for their development.
Some doctor-inflicted birth defects are more severe than others. If what happened damaged the child’s brain, for instance, then you will need to closely monitor them in the weeks and months ahead.
You’ll have to learn about what to look for and enlist competent medical professionals to explain to you what the injury is likely to mean for the infant during development.
You Might Have to Overhaul Your Life Completely
You were hoping to have a healthy infant. Now, after what took place, your life and expectations have changed.
You may have to look into installing ramps in your home if your child has reduced mobility, or arranging specialized transportation once they’re old enough to start attending school. It all depends on the extent of the damage from the injury. The child might need physical or speech therapy, as well.
As a parent-to-be, you always hope for the best, and you try to surround yourself with the medical professionals in which you have the most confidence. Sometimes, though, the worst happens. You have little alternative but to pick up the pieces and try to move forward, for the child’s sake.
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