How Do Birth Injuries Affect The Psychological Well-Being Of The Family?

Despite advanced medical services available in the United States, American children often suffer from an unfortunate problem called “birth injuries.”

Many parents have the misfortune of learning how their children have been born injured and shall suffer from life-long health issues. These injuries may prevent the child from developing correctly or functioning effectively.

Therefore, one can imagine the severe psychological trauma suffered by parents. How do birth injuries affect your family’s mental well-being?

A family doesn’t just encounter psychological challenges after these birth-related issues! But they also face several financial problems because of expensive healthcare for newborns.

What are birth injuries?

However, before discussing the mental health issues arising from birth-related wounds, let’s discuss the definition of these injuries.

What exactly are birth injuries, and how do they occur? A brief Google search will reveal that birth injuries are caused by complexities happening during the process of childbirth.

Your doctor may exert a great amount of pressure on the newborn and harm the baby unintentionally. Also, a doctor may use forceps to deliver the newborn, injuring the child’s head, neck, or shoulders.

Many other reasons can also result in birth injuries because not every disability arises from a doctor’s negligence. Here are some other reasons why birth injuries can happen during the process of childbirth:

• Heavier infants
• Prolonged childbirth process
• The infant can be born prematurely
• The mother may have a wrongly-shaped pelvis
• The fetus can be positioned awkwardly inside the womb

How to deal with birth injuries properly?

However, many cases of childbirth occur due to a healthcare practitioner’s negligence. For instance, some doctors utilize vacuum extractors to deliver the newborn. These tools can physically injure babies.

Also, oxygen deprivation may lead to brain-related injuries. So, what can parents do when a doctor does cause a birth injury? Well, contact lawyers specializing in birth injury malpractice cases to seek justice on your behalf and demand compensation from the guilty party.

These attorneys help parents file medical malpractice lawsuits and receive compensation for their child’s suffering. This compensation allows you to take care of your baby’s medical needs. Here’s how you can successfully sue your doctor right now:

• Contact an experienced attorney.
• Gather the required documents to prove your point.
• Talk to another doctor to show that the guilty doctor deviated from accepted medical norms.
• Talk to witnesses (such as the nurses present at the childbirth) to testify the doctor’s negligence lead to the birth-related injury.
• File the case before the statute of limitations expires and then expect the guilty party to make a decent offer to settle this matter out of court.

How do birth injuries affect your mental health?

Now, how do birth injuries affect a family’s mental health? Learn that the trauma of knowing that a baby has been born injured can be psychologically challenging for parents.

Sometimes, parents can’t live with the fact that their newborn has a birth-related disability. This denial may lead to several issues with the child’s upbringing and harm family dynamics.

First, we must learn how to identify the condition your newborn suffers from. Some of the most common birth-related problems among newborns are as follows:

• Erb’s palsy
• Skull fracture
• Nerve injuries
• Cerebral palsy
• Brachial plexus injuries

However, not every birth injury’s fatal; some may even heal with time. For example, studies indicate that 80% of newborns diagnosed with Erb’s palsy recover from this and regain muscle control.

Thus, you shouldn’t lose hope after receiving a traumatizing diagnosis about your baby. Just learn that these birth-related issues must never harm your relationship with your spouse and children.

However, not every family’s immune from conflicts. So, birth injuries can harm your family’s mental health by doing these:

1. Children suffering from congenital disabilities need healthcare and rehabilitation. These expenses easily exhaust parents and hamper their psychological well-being.
2. Not every parent can prepare for a child suffering from a birth injury. Maybe, the child doesn’t interact with you the way infants are supposed to interact with people. So, parents may feel rejected or ignored by the newborn.
3. Unfortunately, many parents are living in denial about their newborn’s disability. They’re afraid that the child won’t find acceptance in society and this deep-rooted dread about the offspring’s well-being makes parents reject the existence of the disability.
4. How are siblings handling this misfortune? Many parents neglect how one child’s birth injury has affected other children. They become responsible at a tender age to take care of that sibling and may make the healthy child feel resentful, confused, and abandoned. In some cases, a healthy child will even feel guilty about not being born with a birth injury.
5. How to take care of your marriage when your baby suffers from congenital disabilities? Well, studies have shown that some couples can’t withstand taking care of a newborn suffering from birth injuries. The myth about autistic children’s parents having an 80% chance of divorce has been debunked. But experts estimate that these couples are still 10% likely to separate after receiving an autism diagnosis about their newborn.
6. Conflicts among parents can affect children and harm their mental health. Research shows how parents engaging in intense conflicts unintentionally injure their offspring’s well-being. So, birth defects eventually cause stress, depression, and burnout among family members. Also, the burden of raising a newborn who underwent a birth injury can make the whole experience more dreadful for already-exhausted parents.
7. Many children with birth injuries grow up to lead normal lifestyles. However, certain taboos are associated with these children that haven’t ceased to exist and make living difficult for a person with disabilities. Watching your offspring mocked, stared at, and discriminated against is infuriating. However, parents must learn to become patient. Don’t allow mockery to lose control over yourself. It’ll only harm your psychological well-being.

Conclusion

Birth injuries aren’t uncommon in our country, as 1 in 33 American babies suffer from birth injuries every year. We discussed the definition of birth-related injuries, why they may occur, and how parents should seek justice from the guilty party.

But our primary concern was to study how these injuries affect people’s mental health and become challenging psychologically. So, we discovered that birth defects could harm an individual’s marriage, negatively influence siblings, and even force parents to start living in denial.

But, a parent must learn to overcome these feelings. Don’t neglect your spouse, other children, and the people in your family.

Love your child and know that, even if they can’t show it, they also love you very much!