The term “fetal distress” refers to symptoms indicating that an unborn child may be experiencing health conditions that put their life at risk. Medical professionals have an obligation to respond to fetal distress. Failure to do so can result in injury or death. If medical professionals let your child’s fetal distress go unaddressed, our Elizabeth fetal distress lawyers want to work with you.
The legal team with O’Connor, Parsons, Lane & Noble wants to help you hold the right parties accountable for the medical malpractice that contributed to your child’s fetal distress. Our Elizabeth birth injury lawyers can help you file for financial compensation, making it easier for you to pay for upcoming medical expenses while covering other losses.
We bring over 200 years of combined experience to bear when working with families like yours. Contact us today to learn more about the steps we can take to support you as you pursue justice for the mistreatment that you and your child have faced.
Recognizing Fetal Distress
There are clear symptoms that can let professionals know that your child needs medical attention. These symptoms, including an abnormal heart rate or oxygen intake, are indicative of fetal distress, or instances wherein your child needs intervention to ensure their long-term health.
Medical professionals need to monitor you and your child carefully to prevent or respond to fetal distress. Professionals who fail to provide you with the support that you need can let fetal distress go unaddressed for longer than acceptable, resulting in your child’s serious injury, lifelong disabilities, and sometimes death.
What’s more, our Elizabeth medical malpractice lawyers know that professionals who don’t know how to treat fetal distress but attempt to do so, or who don’t listen to advice from more experienced outlets, can cause the birth injuries they were trying to prevent.
How Do Professionals Miss or Cause Fetal Distress?
Some of the most common instances of fetal distress result from a medical professional’s failure to monitor a child in need or delaying their response to symptoms of distress. If, for example, medical professionals do not monitor fetal heart rate, they won’t notice when they need to intervene and prevent fetal distress.
Likewise, hesitating to perform life-saving procedures, including C-sections, can leave a child without oxygen for long enough that their health ends up permanently impacted. It’s difficult to make these decisions while under stress, but medical professionals need the training to do so if they want to ensure fetal health while preventing birth injuries.
Finally, our Elizabeth fetal distress attorneys know that there’s a chance that medical institutions in New Jersey may fall short of the industry’s standard of care. If the professionals taking care of you and your child cannot provide you with reasonable medical support, you can argue that the entire institution engaged in negligence, leading to fetal distress and all of the losses therein.
When to Contact an Elizabeth Fetal Distress Lawyer
If your family finds itself dealing with the fallout of unaddressed fetal distress, you’ll need to keep working with different, more attentive medical professionals to address your child’s injuries, lifelong disabilities, and other complications. It’s hard to find the time to take legal action against negligent parties when you have your child’s life to think about.
What’s where our fetal distress lawyers serving Elizabeth, NJ, come in. We can help lay the groundwork for a fetal distress case by investigating the negligent behavior that led to your child’s injuries. We can speak with witnesses, contact experts, and outline the cost of the losses you sustained as a result of medical negligence.
We do this so you have the opportunity to ask for fetal distress damages. A settlement can’t undo the damage done to your child’s health, but the financial support can make it easier for you to pay for the additional treatments your child needs to live as healthy a life as possible.
How to Ask for Fetal Distress Compensation
When the time comes to demand that medical institutions, professionals, or other liable parties compensate you for the losses you and your child sustained as a result of their negligence, our team accounts for your economic and non-economic losses. These can cover the lifelong costs you and your child have to contend with because of fetal distress injuries.
The losses that we integrate into your request for support can include:
- The cost of ongoing medical expenses, including hospital stays, medications, physical therapy, and additional surgeries.
- The cost of child care needs, including in-home assistance, mobility aids, and professional care.
- The cost of the child’s lost earning ability, if fetal distress makes it so a child cannot support themselves in the future.
- Pain and suffering, in addition to emotional distress and reduced quality of life.
You can discuss whether or not you might receive punitive damages for fetal distress with your attorney. However, we cannot include a request for punitive damages when first filing a fetal distress lawsuit on your behalf. It’s up to a judge to award you punitive damages, as they punish a liable party in an effort to prevent similar fetal distress incidents in the future.
Trust O’Connor, Parsons, Lane & Noble With Your Case
Are you or your child suffering from the consequences of unaddressed fetal distress? O’Connor, Parsons, Lane & Noble can advocate for you. Our fetal distress attorneys serving Elizabeth, NJ, can represent you in conversations about your right to damages based on your experience with medical malpractice.
We have an extensive history of helping families like yours financially recover in the wake of life-changing mistreatment. Our founding attorneys can provide you with insights won while serving on the defense side of the equation. That experience makes it easier for us to build a case that insurance adjusters and liable parties will struggle to refute.
Contact us today to set up your free case consultation and get justice for your child’s fetal distress.