Is My Baby’s Developmental Delay A Birth Injury?

For parents who are noticing that their new baby is not hitting standard developmental milestones, it could be from negligent or medical malpractice your child suffered during birth.

A serious birth injury during a traumatic delivery can impair your child’s ability to hit developmental milestones. About seven of every 1,000 babies born in the United States will suffer a birth injury, according to Paleopathology of Children.

Can A Traumatic Birth Cause Developmental Delays?

Unfortunately, during labor and delivery, if something goes wrong, it can cause your baby to have developmental delays that affect them for the rest of their lives. Not all birth injuries are the result of medical malpractice, but if yours is, your family may be able to file a suit to help win support for your child and damages.

Some traumatic birth issues that can cause developmental delays are:

• If the doctors or nurses negligently failed to monitor your baby's oxygen intake before and/or after delivery
• If a doctor doesn’t perform reasonable care to keep your child from being born prematurely and the baby suffers brain damage as a result
• Head trauma the baby sustained during birth, such as excessive pressure on the head
• A doctor’s failure to perform a Cesarean section due to the baby’s size
• A delayed C-section
• Umbilical cord issues
• Prolonged labor
• Nerve damage to the baby
• Improper medication or doses that are given to the mother or baby

These issues can lead to Cerebral Palsy, Erb’s Palsy, and other conditions that can affect your baby’s ability to reach developmental milestones similar to others their age. 

How Do I Know If My Baby Has A Developmental Delay?

Identifying if your child has a developmental delay starts at home and can be confirmed with your pediatrician or additional testing.

Developmental delays can appear in the form of cognitive, social and emotional, language and speech, gross motor skills, and/or fine motor skills.

The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) developmental milestones start at six weeks old and continue until age seven. Parents can review these milestones to see if their baby is smiling at the right time, waving, saying their first words, and playing at the recommended rate. Parents should also watch to see if your baby is no longer able to complete a skill they previously could.

If your child starts not to meet these developmental milestones, call your baby’s doctor right away, or schedule an appointment immediately.

What Kind Of Damages Can I Win In A Birth Injury Lawsuit?

If your baby suffered a serious injury during birth due to medical malpractice, your family and the baby will have to deal with the ramifications for the rest of the baby’s life.

By filing a medical malpractice suit for the birth injury, your family has the potential to win damages for:

• Medical expenses for your baby
• Ongoing care for your child
• Costs to cover physical, speech and occupational therapy for your child 
• Any costs associated with assisted living, which your child may need now or later in life
• Money for the loss of future income or ability to work
• Shortened life expectancy
• Pain
• Suffering for you and your child

What Do I Do If My Baby Has A Development Delay Because Of A Birth Injury?

If your baby is developmentally delayed and you feel it is because of an injury they suffered during birth, reach out to the lawyers at Ross Feller Casey right away.

Birth injuries can have devastating effects on the rest of your child’s life, and as parents, you want to have the resources to provide adequate care for your child. Ross Feller Casey is recognized as the leading birth injury law firm and has an unmatched record of winning multimillion-dollar recoveries in birth injury lawsuits.

Our firm has experts and doctors on staff to assist with your case. We take all birth injury cases on a contingency basis, so you don’t have to pay our team unless we win the case for you.