What is Birth Injury? – Birth Injury Overview

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Video Transcript

Timestamps
0:00 Intro
0:27 What Do Birth Injuries Include?
1:26 Birth Injuries During Labor

Hey, my name is Francois Blaudeau and I’m an OB/GYN doctor in Birmingham, Alabama, and also a lawyer. And I’m here to talk to you a little bit about birth injury. 

0:27 What Do Birth Injuries Include?

A birth injury, we really think about it in two different ways. One is injuries that kind of occur at the time that the baby’s actually born. And usually, the mechanical force-related birth injuries has to do with injuries from the application of forceps delivery or the doctor’s placing some forceps to help deliver the baby’s head. And sometimes the forceps aren’t properly applied for the application of a suction device to help the delivery of the baby. Or sometimes the mechanically different maneuvers that the doctor may do to try to assist the baby with stuff to come out.

So birth injuries can occur from mechanical forces having to do right up to the point of delivery. It’s kind of rare to have a birth injury, a mechanical-related birth injury from a C-section, but occasionally you can have an issue where the baby is cut inadvertently during a C-section and suffers some type of injury related to the C-section process.

1:26 Birth Injuries During Labor

The other type of birth injuries are injuries that occur during the process of labor. And those types of injuries tend to be injuries that occur to the fetus. Typically those are injuries that occur from issues with the labor itself. And that can be decreased blood flow through the placenta to the baby where the baby’s exposed to decreased blood flow. It could be bleeding that occurs during the course of labor that causes the baby to also bleed and have issues with the baby’s heart rate and blood pressure. And also relates to levels of oxygen and the baby’s receiving. And during the course of labor, if the baby doesn’t get enough oxygen, sometimes that can cause some permanent brain injury and it can cause cerebral palsy type issues.

So generally speaking as doctors talk about birth injuries, we’re talking about a group of injuries that occur around labor, the active part of labor, either while the baby’s in the womb or at the point of delivery.

So if you feel like during the course of your labor your baby suffered a birth injury, we can help you understand what happened. I’ll go through the records for you, and let you know whether or not we think the standard of care was met.

So as physicians and lawyers, part of what we do is to help patients understand kind of what happened to them. And not every instance is a lawsuit warranted. Sometimes things just happen, it can’t be avoided. But there are sometimes where the standard of care is not followed and babies get hurt. And certainly, in those kinds of cases, we want to be here to look at and review your records and tell you whether or not we think you have a case that warrants moving forward with the lawsuit.

So reach out to us, click on the website below. Thank you.