Parents Settle Claim With Doctor After Their Baby Is Stillborn
By: J. Hernandez
Submitted: 2010-11-27 20:42:20 | Word Count: 594
A woman who has hypertension goes to get guidance from her doctor when she finds out that she is pregnant. Her doctor refers her to an obstetrician who will provide her care during her pregnancy. After after having a discussion about her hypertension with her obstetrician, he discontinues her use of the hypertension medication due to concern over the health risks it could have on her unborn child. Her doctor therefore chooses to control her hypertension through diet and manages to keep her blood pressure down for awhile. But a soon thereafter, even with her best efforts, her hypertension returned and the doctor prescribed her one-half of her normal pre-pregnancy dose.
Despite the mother taking medication for her hypertension, she begins to suffer from headaches, nausea, vomiting and blurred vision, which progressively become more frequent later on in her pregnancy.
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Due to her symptoms she consistently sees her physician who determines she has modest preeclampsia and prescribes her a larger dose of the blood pressure drug. During one visit following one of these episodes, the physician notes that the mother has begun to leak amniotic fluid and that there are calcifications on her placenta. This is troubling and could cause harm to the mother and her child.
After the ultrasound, the physician informed the woman that the leakage was not significant and she shouldn't worry. He did not inform her that the nutritional levels in her womb had decreased and that it could have an effect on her child. He failed to inform her that her child had a heightened risk to expeience complications related to fetal hypoxia (being deprived of an adequate oxygen supply). And, furthermore, he did not perform any tests on the child to see how the child was doing.
At the next appointment with the physician, the woman stated that she had headaches, that the baby had reduced movement and that she had sinus drainage in her ears. The doctor decided he would need to induce her the following week due to the progression of her situation. The maternal grandmother, who was at the appointment, asked if they could induce labor right then and there since the child's heartbeat was strong, but the physician told her the child was better off in the womb.
The following week the expectant mother went into her doctor's office to have her baby. After the ultrasound, the technician, began to act strangely, gave her the video and then left the room. A nurse for the doctor brought her into a small room, which was not regular exam room. There her physician advised her that her child did not have a heart beat. She then goes to a hospital and the death of the child was confirmed. After this she has to suffer going through labor, knowing her baby was dead. She and her husband held their dead baby and emotionally planned for her funeral. Following this tragedy the parents filed a malpractice lawsuit against the physician, asking for damages relating to the loss of their child, including emotional distress. With the efforts of the law firm that represented them, the parents were successful in reaching a settlement for $650,000.
Author Resource:-
Joseph Hernandez is an Attorney accepting birth injury medical malpractice cases. You can learn more about stillbirth and other birth injury cases such as group b strep and erbs palsy matters by visiting the websites
