When your Caesarean goes wrong, trust your gut
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Maybe it’s the way your concerns were brushed off as complications arose during labour, or how your recovery is so much worse than you could ever have expected. Perhaps it’s that nagging feeling that what happened to you shouldn’t have happened at all.
Here’s what the expert team from Maliganis Edwards Johnson want you to know: if your instincts are screaming that something went wrong in your pregnancy or labour, those instincts may be right.
C-Sections are a major surgery, says Managing Partner Kater Waterford, and can be an entirely appropriate and necessary choice for many women. However, there’s a massive difference between “this poor outcome is an unfortunate but known risk” and “this shouldn’t have happened to you”.
Maybe your baby was showing clear signs of distress, but staff didn’t recognise the growing emergency and respond within a reasonable period. Perhaps monitoring equipment wasn’t used properly, or the decision to perform a needed ac-section came too late.
Or maybe labour went sideways fast, and you needed a medical intervention, but communication between staff was terrible. Understaffing meant critical delays. The warning signs were right there, but nobody moved quickly enough when seconds actually mattered. By the time they finally acted, your baby had already suffered oxygen deprivation or you had suffered major damage to your pelvic floor.
Sometimes it’s the surgery itself that goes wrong and leaves the patients facing long-term consequences.
“If what happened to you fell below a reasonable standard of medical care, you have a right to investigate a claim for compensation. Compensation isn’t just about money, it’s about getting you what you need to move forward,” says Kate.
“It can help cover the medical bills that keep piling up, replace income you’ve lost because you physically can’t work yet, or fund the ongoing care or therapy you need for both physical and psychological recovery. The common law rights of compensation exist so that people who suffer injury due to negligence can be put back financially in the place they would have been without the negligence. You should not be financially punished for someone else’s mistakes, especially whilst you’re trying to heal and care for your baby.”
She says if complications have caused serious mental health symptoms or affected your fertility or ability to have more children, that’s potentially compensable too.
“It’s also about challenging a system that can often leave women behind. Through legal action, you can sometimes contribute to making the system safer for the next patients by having your story heard, and incentivising the system to change.”
You’re not looking for someone to blame because birth was hard. You’re a parent who trusted the healthcare system to keep you and your baby safe, and you’re questioning whether that trust was betrayed.
Kate Waterford at Maliganis Edwards Johnson specialises in exactly this. Recognised as a ‘Pre-Eminent’ medical negligence practitioner in the ACT by the renowned Doyle’s Guide, she has for years specialised in birth trauma cases and can help you to work through what happened to you was part of a normal birth process or actual negligence.
No jargon, no judgment, just an honest legal assessment of your situation. Because you deserve to know whether what happened to you and your baby was preventable.
