What Caused My Child's CP?

Cerebral palsy is a condition that arises directly from a brain injury. When you’re trying to determine what caused a child’s CP, the task always comes down to finding out what caused the brain injury.

There are numerous different ways that this type of an injury can occur and an attorney for birth injury claims will be trying to determine whether or not medical negligence played a role in the injuries your child suffered.

Some causes.

The most common cause of cerebral palsy that people sue over is the child being starved of oxygen during the birth process. This can happen because of the position the mother is in, the umbilical cord being wrapped around the child’s neck or because of other situations that cause compression somewhere that strangulation results from it. Midwives can be sued in these situations, as well.
In other cases, the child’s injury occurs while they are in the womb. There may be too little amniotic fluid in the womb, for instance, and that may lead to the child developing CP. A recent case in Maine revolved around a situation like this. Sometimes, the child should have been delivered earlier, via cesarean section, and it wasn’t done in time, causing the child to suffer the brain injury.
There are also cases where a child is exposed to something that causes the disease. There may be a contaminated medical supply used at some point during the birthing process or another situation that ends up causing the baby’s brain injury. If the medical supplies were the issue, there may be cause to sue for a defective product or medical negligence, depending upon the exact situation.

Getting assistance.

A Texas cerebral palsy lawyer can sit down with you and discuss your case. Whenever a child is diagnosed with cerebral palsy, an investigation is undertaken to determine how they got the disorder. The results of this investigation sometimes point directly toward medical negligence as the cause, but sometimes not.
If your attorney believes that you have a valid claim, they may want to take on your case and represent you on contingency (i.e. you don’t pay a penny unless the case is successful). If not, they’ll simply tell you as much. The expenses related to the care of cerebral palsy are very intimidating, and families have a right to see if they can seek compensation as a way of helping them to pay for those expenses. The only way to find out, however, is to talk to an attorney.