A child who is born facing an uphill battle because of injury or illness is never easy for a parent. But what can be more frustrating is if that injury was preventable but happened because of a medical staff’s negligence. One Texas couple is trying to prove that in court, suing a hospital for injuries their daughter sustained during her birth.
The couple, from Round Rock, Texas, is also suing the board of governors of the university system that owns the hospital, which is in another state. The lawsuit contends that the newborn girl was born in July 2010 with hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, which has left the girl with neurological impairments and the continuing need to see doctors and therapists.
The girl’s mother alleges in the suit that she went to the hospital three days before the delivery because she thought she was leaking amniotic fluid. Fetal monitoring and tests indicated that nothing was wrong and the woman was sent home. But when she checked back with the doctor two days later, when labor was scheduled to be induced, she had noticed that the fetus wasn’t moving as much.
When the girl was born, she had no heart rate and was not breathing. According to the lawsuit, the hospital failed to properly monitor the woman’s labor and the fetus’s deteriorating condition. It also charged the hospital with delaying a cesarean section, which could have prevented the child’s injuries from occurring.
The girl has had multiple hospitalizations and requires constant care in her everyday life. The family has a right to seek the compensatory damages that their lawsuit is requesting. While we may think of delivering a child as routine, there are risks, and hospitals need to be equipped to handle them.
Source: The Record, “Texas couple say WVU Hospitals caused daughter’s injuries after birth,” Kyla Asbury, July 23, 2012
