Well, having had a child ‘killed’ by a doctor myself in 1979, my firstborn son, I wish we had sued since the bastard continued to practice and is still practicing today. We went to a lawyer before the baby had died and he suggested we get on with our lives rather than spend years in court. After losing our child we learned that we were not his first victims. My sister found a newspaper article about an identical case to ours but the child lived and was severely brain damaged, a malpractice suit with an ‘undisclosed’ settlement resulted. To look up the bastard doctor today, there is no public record of malpractice suits against him. Both the child that lived and mine that didn’t were vaginally delivered but should have been C-sections. In my case I am small boned, I had two beautiful healthy babies afterwards, both by C-section, I gave birth the following year, same month, so it took me 18 months of pregnancy to bring a baby home. My doctor bragged that he didn’t use forceps, and did this the day after the birth and after the baby had been whisked away to a children’s hospital in Newark, NJ after he had turned blue in the nursery. He died at 6 weeks old of a cerebral hemorrhage. I had a perfect pregnancy and he was perfect in every other way. The doctor at the children’s hospital was so saddened, it was all over his face, he knew it shouldn’t have happened. My baby was in with the preemies in the neonatal unit, he was the biggest one in there, 7.7 lbs at birth and he even gained a little more during his 6 weeks of life. Without suing who knows how many more babies the bastard doctor killed in these last 35 years.
Also, my daughter went through nearly the same thing as me. She’s a little heavier than I was but same height. She went through nearly full labor but the baby wasn’t coming out. We had both mentioned the possibility of needing a c-section to her doctor when she was pregnant but were ignored. She needed an emergency C-section when the baby’s heartbeat was fading..her doctor used suction instead of forceps trying to get him out, most barbaric thing I’ve seen when I looked up what that is, and it stretched the baby’s head to near cone-shape..it took quite a while for it to look normal even though the doctor said it would be days. My husband and I were literally dying in the waiting room reliving what happened to us, not believing it was happening to our daughter. The hospital plays musical chimes over a speaker system when a baby is born..when those chimes went off for our beautiful grandson Nathan, almost 8 yrs. ago now, tears were flowing everywhere.
To the subject at hand, I still wish we had sued.
and they nearly killed my daughter, between going through labor and then a C-section, she lost so much blood her lips were white. There are good doctors and there are not so good doctors. Like my mother says, some pass at the bottom of the class.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I understand now, the many reasons one might sue even after a baby’s death. Thank goodness you and your husband had enough faith to try again for a baby. Some couples don’t make it through such an episode and stay together. There may be hard feelings that never go away about something the other said in a moment of unexpected anguish. I’m certain those bells were the most beautiful sound a parent (or grandparent) could hear. I don’t know if hospitals still do it that way.
My sympathies for the loss of your firstborn.