Our stillbirth and neonatal death experts recently secured a £200,000 settlement for a family who lost two babies, one after the other, as a result of avoidable medical errors.
Complications arose during the family’s first pregnancy starting with abdominal and chest pains at 28 weeks. A hospital admission followed in order to carefully monitor mother and baby with test results showing evidence of liver and kidney issues and pre-eclampsia.
A caesarean was correctly planned for the following day to safely deliver the baby prematurely. The hospital failed to check the position of the baby before proceeding to the c-section. Omitting this critical step meant that the registrar performing the surgery was going in blind. With no idea whether the planned incision was right for the baby’s position, and in order to deliver them without harm, it was soon discovered that an additional cut was required.
The registrar conducting the procedure only discovered that the baby could not be delivered safely after the initial incision was made resulting in an unnecessary and risky delay. A further incision had to be made to deliver the baby. Sadly, the placenta – the baby’s lifeline – had separated during the course of their delivery with the catastrophic, and preventable outcome of a stillbirth.
Distraught following the loss of their baby, and eager to try for another, our clients were advised by the hospital to wait between three to six months before trying to get pregnant again.
The advice was wholly incorrect, and posed a serious risk, as the type and number of incisions made during the birth of their first child required a period of 12 months to heal adequately before a further pregnancy could safely progress.
Our client trusted the advice provided by her hospital and was delighted to be pregnant again just six months later. At 31 weeks into her second pregnancy, our client suffered a substantial uterine rupture.
This was directly linked to her first caesarean during which the hospital proceeded firstly with the wrong incision type – after not checking how the baby was lying; then conducting a T-shaped incision – which was also incorrect and carried a greater risk of future complications – then wrongly advising that she would only require a short period of three to six months instead of a year to heal adequately.
The outcome of the hospital’s astonishing series of errors meant that our client suffered the stillbirth of her second child. To add to our clients’ catastrophic and traumatic double loss, they were sadly advised that future pregnancies would not be possible.
The hospital did not formally admit liability. We secured £200,000 in compensation which in part covered the cost of the family’s subsequent IVF treatment and the safe birth of their third child via a surrogate.