Most parents breathe a well-deserved sigh of relief once labor and delivery has finished and their new baby is placed in their arms. They assume that the hard part is over and it’s smooth sailing from now on.
This relief is understandable, however, newborn babies are incredibly vulnerable. Furthermore, parents don’t always know what to look for when it comes to serious and potentially life-threatening health conditions in new babies. Whether you’re a first-time parent or an experienced parenting pro, caring for a brand new baby is an exciting and nerve-wracking experience. Babies change so rapidly, even seasoned parents often forget how to tend to a newborn’s needs.
Babies don’t come with an instruction manual, so parents must rely on the help and advice of doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals. When something seems wrong or “off” with their child, they depend on doctors to help them determine the problem and how to address it.
Unfortunately, doctors don’t always give parents and babies the attention they deserve. In some cases, a busy doctor may brush off a parent’s concerns or fail to really listen to what a parent is saying. Perhaps the doctor simply has too many patients to care for, or maybe the doctor thinks the parent is a bit of a hypochondriac when it comes to noticing every cough, sneeze, or sniffle their baby makes.
Undoubtedly, there are some parents whose hypervigilance sends them rushing to the doctor too often. In other cases, however, parents know something is wrong, even if they lack the medical expertise and training to pinpoint the problem. In our neonatal birth injury practice, we have handled many heartbreaking cases in which parents were refused help on multiple occasions or sent home from the ER with a sick baby who later suffered a serious or fatal complication.
Although neonatal injuries can occur in a variety of ways, certain injuries tend to appear over and over again.
Common neonatal injuries include:
- Meconium aspiration syndrome
- Mismanaged or untreated jaundice
- Infections
- Meningitis
- Seizures
- Low blood sugar (neonatal hypoglycemia)
- Periventricular leukomalacia
- Encephalitis
There are many different health complications that can occur during the neonatal period. If your newborn has suffered any kind of injury related to medical malpractice, you should speak to our Nationwide birth injury lawyers right away, as there are strict time limits for filing these types of cases.