Many things can go wrong during the child birthing process, ranging from your baby suffering birth injuries to stillbirth. Minor injuries may occur during your child’s delivery, and these typically resolve without extensive treatment. However, some serious complications during childbirth can leave your baby with different types of birth injuries, like broken bones or nerve damage, which may be due to medical negligence.
Oxygen deprivation during birth can cause cerebral palsy, and Erb’s palsy can result in paralysis that may affect your child’s hands and arms. Therefore, it’s essential to know the proper steps to take if your baby’s birth injuries are due to medical errors and carelessness. Here are five steps to take if your child was severely injured during the delivery process.
1. Seek legal advice.
Many experts recommend seeking legal advice as soon as possible during this difficult time. Consulting an attorney is the best way to understand your legal rights and what your legal options are moving forward. If your child’s injuries stem from malpractice or negligence, the health care providers must be held accountable through a birth injury lawsuit. You may also be entitled to financial compensation to cover medical costs and other expenses. However, finding the right law firm to handle your birth injury case is essential to boost your chances of a favorable verdict. Leading personal injury lawyers such as Schwaner Injury Law will come in handy when seeking a strong legal team to represent you throughout the legal process.
Schwaner Injury Law is a personal injury law firm that helps clients navigate numerous personal injury cases, including slips and falls, car accidents, dog bites, and medical malpractice. They’re also recognized birth injury lawyers in Chicago. Schwaner Injury Law helps plaintiffs throughout the entire process of taking legal action against a culpable hospital in birth injury and wrongful death cases. Babies suffer birth injuries due to inadequate prenatal care or medical negligence. Also, many medical professionals choose Cesarean sections over vaginal birth if the birth canal is too small or the baby is too large. However, botched C-sections can cause a delay in oxygen supply to your child’s brain, leading to developmental delays. Cuts and lacerations are also risk factors for injuries, leading to permanent injury and disfigurement, and wrongful death may occur due to improperly performed C-sections. These birth injury attorneys can help you file birth injury lawsuits and wrongful death claims, helping you get fair compensation for damages if your child’s injury was caused by negligence. What’s more, these Chicago birth injury attorneys pursue clients’ best interests in all their cases, driven by a strong sense of compassion and conscience.
2. Get the right treatment.
Since your newborn’s health is vital, finding the proper treatment for common birth injuries is crucial to resolving these conditions, if possible. Consequently, consult your doctor about the specific health issue, and seek advice on physiotherapy, medications, and possible specialist treatments your baby might require. Also, consider obtaining a second opinion to ensure that you’re getting the best treatments for your child.
Finding the right treatments for conditions is always essential to resolving them quickly and reducing patients’ stress, whether it’s a birth injury or myocarditis. Myocarditis is a disease that causes inflammation of your heart muscle, creating scar tissue and causing the heart to enlarge and weaken. Viral infections, exposure to environmental toxins, bacterial infections, and autoimmune conditions, like Lyme disease and Lupus, are some of the leading causes of myocarditis. Some of the common symptoms of myocarditis are chest pain, fatigue, shortness of breath, irregular heartbeat, diarrhea, and swelling in the arms and feet.
3. Consider going for counseling.
Counseling might be a good step for you to consider because your own well-being is equally essential as your baby’s after childbirth. Birth injuries can be stressful and upsetting, so talking to a counselor about it will go a long way toward helping you manage this trauma better. Therefore, you can ask your general practitioner for advice and recommendations on helpful counseling services. Additionally, consider online forums and support groups that allow you to interact with parents experiencing similar situations.
You can attend these support groups online or in-person, especially if you’ve received your COVID-19 vaccine. Since COVID-19 is a public health menace in today’s world, it’s essential to immediately get tested if you experience symptoms like sore throat and difficulty breathing. Also, you can consider concierge COVID-19 testing if you’re a business owner or hosting an event in New York (NY) and New Jersey (NJ) to obtain accurate test results from nasal swab and antibody tests.
4. Explore your childcare options.
The back and forth that may come from taking legal action can be time-consuming and stressful, especially for parents with newborns. Consequently, childcare options are necessary to ensure that your baby is in safe hands. Family, friends, and reliable childcare services are typically your best bets to ensure that your child receives adequate care and attention while you pursue compensation for their injuries. Care options come in handy in a wide range of situations, whether dealing with newborns or seniors. Since many families don’t have the time and expertise to handle old family members, assisted living or hiring a caregiver is a great option to consider. Families in New Jersey can look into assisted living in Boonton Township, NJ, to ensure that their family members receive superior levels of care in their old age.
5. Keep accurate records.
Records are essential when pursuing birth injury claims, so prioritize keeping an accurate record of any interaction you have with the medical professionals in question. Email conversations, text messages, letters, and even verbal conversations are some of the interactions worth documenting as proof. Additionally, you can ask family members to act as witnesses during these communications, ensuring that you have reliable evidence to pursue lawsuits if need be.
Birth injuries can be traumatic for parents and their newborns, so finding the best course of action is always necessary. The five points above are helpful guidelines worth following to best handle the aftermath of your child experiencing a birth injury.
