Why do birth injuries still happen?

You may think that birth injuries to newborn children and mothers are next to impossible. Birth has become extraordinarily safe over the last few decades. That makes it all the more distressing if you experience one of these tragic incidents.

Any doctor is likely to tell you that childbirth is a risky process. Regardless of the painkillers, surgeries or specialized tools obstetricians and their teams might use to get better outcomes, there are still many things that could go wrong. When these events occur, it is often essential to determine whether everything happened naturally or if it was the responsibility of a negligent medical professional.

The Merck Manual has a great deal of information available in its resource for birth injuries in infants. This would be a good place to start if you wanted to demystify some of the potential risks that birth poses to a child. The article states that many newborns have minor injuries and that most problems resolve naturally.

This information is available to everyone, but you will probably find the Merck resource to be quite a complex read. Even so, it pales in comparison to the amount of detail in the professional entry on the same subject. The extensive training obstetricians typically undergo to attain their credentials includes all of this data and more — a fact that could make it particularly difficult to understand how a competent doctor could be involved with an injury to your newborn child.

Everyone makes mistakes — even your doctor could have trouble with a difficult birth. However, some mistakes fall well outside an acceptable range of outcomes. Please do not use this as legal advice. It is only general information.