How to Recognize Birth Trauma In Your Newborn

The birth of a new baby is a joyous moment for parents, but when that joy is dampened by a difficult birth experience or one in which complications or a medical emergency occur, it’s essential for parents to be alert to signs of a birth injury during the early hours and days of their newborn’s life. Recognizing a birth injury sooner rather than later allows a newborn to receive critical medical care to minimize the adverse impacts of the injury.

If you suspect medical negligence played a role, a Phoenix birth injury lawyer can help you understand your legal options and seek the compensation your family deserves.

Understanding Birth Injuries In the United States 

The medical community describes any injury or harm that occurs to an infant during the labor and delivery process as a birth injury or birth trauma. It’s not uncommon for Amercians to believe that birth injury is a thing of the past, but birth injury statistics remain troubling, occurring in an estimated 7 in every 1,000 deliveries, or averaging about three birth-injured babies born every hour in the U.S. alone.

Birth injury symptoms may appear immediately after an infant’s birth, or develop during the hours or days after delivery. Sometimes, birth injuries aren’t apparent until much later, when a child begins missing milestones; however, in these cases, there may have been early signs of birth trauma in the newborn that the parents missed. Even more alarmingly, the medical professionals who evaluate the newborn sometimes overlook early warning signs of birth injury.

Symptoms of Birth Trauma In a Newborn

No two infants are the same, and it’s important to note that some non-birth-injured newborns may display one or more features that could be misinterpreted as indicating a birth injury where none exists; however, an infant with one or more of the following signs of potential birth trauma should undergo a thorough medical assessment and close monitoring by parents:

• Forceps marks or bruising on the head or face
• Raised, reddened area on the scalp after a vacuum delivery
• Broken limb or clavicle
• Dislocated shoulder
• Jaundice
• High-pitched, persistent crying
• Arching the back while crying
• Low oxygen levels during post-birth monitoring
• Low heart rate
• Unusual stiffness or floppiness
• Sensitivity to light or noise
• Broken blood vessel in one or both eyes
• Weak reflex response
• Difficulty breathing
• One or more motionless limbs
• Excessive drooling
• Feeding problems, such as difficulty with sucking, swallowing, or breathing while feeding
• Twitching
• Seizures

Most states, including Arizona, offer early intervention programs to regularly assess children with suspected developmental delays and provide crucial support to parents and children during a child’s early developmental years.

Symptoms of Birth Trauma as a Child Develops

Identifying the signs of birth trauma in a newborn is the best way to ensure that a child receives critical care and the earliest possible intervention to support their development; however, it’s not always possible to identify birth injury symptoms during the early days of infancy. In these cases, birth trauma may manifest as developmental delays and other symptoms during a child’s early months and years. Later symptoms of birth trauma include the following:

• Missing milestones, such as late crawling and walking, and speech delay
• Problems with balance and coordination
• Cognitive delays, or difficulty with memory, focus, and learning
• Eating problems
• Difficulty holding utensils or grooming tools, such as a hairbrush or a toothbrush
• Difficulty with fine motor skills
• Problems with hand-eye coordination
• Hypotonia (low muscle tone)
• Hypertonia (high muscle tone, or stiffness and rigidity)
• Vision or hearing problems
• Tremors, tics, and muscle spasms
• Seizures

As children with birth trauma become school-aged, many experience learning and behavioral challenges.

What Causes Birth Trauma?

Birth injuries result from complications that arise during labor. The doctor and medical team have a legal obligation to treat their patient at the level of care accepted by the medical community, including assessing a woman’s risk of complications during labor and delivery.

This duty also requires the nurses to carefully monitor a laboring mother and infant’s progress and notify the doctor of any changes in the medical status of either. The doctor has a legal duty to perform emergency actions in response to signs of labor and delivery complications, including ordering an emergency C-section. When the care team or doctor breaches their duty of care, the result can be birth trauma.

Common causes of birth trauma include the following:

• Prolonged labor
• Premature labor
• Cord prolapse (umbilical cord delivered ahead of the infant)
• Use of assistive devices during delivery, such as forceps or a vacuum extractor
• Breech birth or other atypical fetal position
• Shoulder dystocia (baby’s shoulder becomes trapped under the mother’s pubic bone)
• Cephalopelvic disproportion (baby’s head is too large for the mother’s pelvis)
• Gestational diabetes in the mother
• Obesity and/or high blood pressure in the laboring mother
• Umbilical cord compression or entrapment
• Fetal aspiration of meconium (baby’s first stool)

A birth injury results from medical malpractice when a laboring mother’s care team neglects to respond promptly and appropriately to any of the above factors. Delayed C-section, medication mistakes or failures to provide appropriate medication, improper use of forceps and vacuum extractors, and improper delivery methods (such as incorrect repositioning for shoulder dystocia) are common cases of birth trauma caused by medical malpractice.

Recovering Compensation for Birth Trauma

Some birth injuries are mild and the child fully recovers, for instance, when a forceps delivery causes mild bruising on the baby’s scalp. However, some birth injuries result in serious long-term challenges, such as cerebral palsy, resulting from hypoxia (disruption of oxygen to the infant’s brain), or Erb’s palsy, which sometimes results from shoulder dystocia and causes partial or complete paralysis of the arm.

When a doctor’s, nurse’s, or other caregiver’s negligent failure to uphold the legal standard of care causes birth trauma, the family may recover compensation for their economic losses and the emotional impacts of the birth injury. For example, a successful birth injury claim in Arizona or elsewhere results in the recovery of damages like the child’s lifelong medical, therapeutic, and special educational expenses and a parent’s lost income or reduced earning ability due to becoming a full or part-time caregiver to a disabled child. The parents may also recover compensation for emotional damages, such as compensation for the child’s pain and suffering, diminished quality of life, and the parents’ emotional anguish.

If you believe negligence caused your child’s birth injury, a Phoenix medical malpractice lawyer can help you evaluate your claim and pursue the compensation you deserve. Although a birth injury claim does not erase the harm caused to a child and their family, it brings relief for the financial consequences of the birth trauma and gives families a sense of justice for their losses.