A major USA TODAY study found that hospitals are performing much too may episiotomies despite nationwide guidelines that call for the procedure to only be used in the case of emergencies. Since 2006, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has advised performing the procedure sparingly. “Mothers who receive episiotomies – an incision at the [...]

Pediatricians, obstetricians, gynecologists, and other birth-delivery doctors should anticipate many of the things that might go wrong during the birth process, in the delivery room, and during the recovery. Experienced doctors reduce the known risks before the delivery and act quickly to take corrective actions when problems occur during the delivery. According to Stanford Children’s [...]

Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy is a form of perinatal asphyxia, which is caused by systemic hypoxemia and/or reduced cerebral blood flow, according to Medscape.com. HIE is the cause of 840,000, or 23%, of all neonatal deaths worldwide. When labor is prolonged, the baby spends too much time in the birth canal with restricted blood flow and raised [...]

A bombshell article recently published in USA TODAY uncovered surprising information about the maternal mortality rate in the United States. Writer Alison Young researched four years for the piece “Hospitals know how to protect mothers. They just aren’t doing it,” which revealed the startling news that the U.S. is now the most dangerous place in [...]

Giving birth is a natural and (usually) safe process, with your obstetrician and other medical staff on hand to help it along and assist mother and baby in the event of any complications. During the birth process, babies are especially vulnerable, and if a doctor fails to treat, or improperly treats, a complication or condition, [...]

Pregnancy is, as everyone says, a magical time. And it very much is, when you stop and think about how much work your body is doing all by itself. Take the umbilical cord, for example. This cord tethers mother and baby together, providing the fetus with all the oxygen and nutrients it needs to grow [...]

Parents and other family members of children who are the victims of preventable injuries at birth due to substandard care provided by medical personnel during pregnancy, labor, or delivery have the option to pursue legal action. Cases that involve birth injury often involve an allegation that medical staff fell short in their obligation to deliver [...]

When you think of medical malpractice, what comes to mind might include a doctor making an honest mistake, a miscalculation, or some confusion in communication among the medical team ended in an error that harmed a patient. But would you think that a doctor, who was in the process of delivering a baby who was [...]

Ideally, the birth process is easy and uneventful. Every few seconds, somewhere on earth a baby is born, and most of those journeys from the mother's womb into the world will be largely uneventful. In a small percentage of cases, birth injury occurs that creates trauma –physical and emotional, for both infant and mother. Traumatic [...]