Birth injuries
When a delivery changed a family’s plans
Most births go well, and some injuries have no one to blame. But when a baby was starved of oxygen, or a delivery waited too long, a family deserves to know whether it had to happen.
We read the monitoring records, the delivery notes and the nursery chart together, with physicians who see these records every day.
We request the labor and delivery records and the newborn chart
Specialists review them before we accept a case
Long-term care needs are part of the review
What a delivery record shows
Hours of the record can matter more than the headline.
Heart-rate monitoring
The strips that show how the baby was doing, and who watched them.
Time to decision
How long passed between a concern and an action.
The first minutes
What happened at birth, and how the baby was cared for after.
Days in the nursery
Notes from the unit, tests that were run and the answers that came back.
Questions from families
My child’s diagnosis came months after the birth. Can that still be reviewed?
Yes, and it often is. We can only say whether it was care at the delivery after the records have been read, which is why we start there.
Do I need to decide quickly?
Time limits exist and can be shorter than people expect. They sometimes work differently for a child. Call early so that a lawyer can tell you which apply.
Will this affect my child’s care now?
No. You should keep seeing the same doctors for as long as you want to. Our work is separate from treatment.
What if the review finds nobody was at fault?
Then we will say so, and explain it in plain words. Some families tell us that answer was what they most needed.
Want a physician to read the delivery records?
Tell us when and where your child was born. We will walk you through the request for records.
There is no fee for the review, and no fee at all unless we recover money for you. Case costs such as record fees, expert review and filing fees are set out in a written fee agreement we go through with you before you sign.