What Are the Warning Signs That Something Went Wrong After Labor & Delivery?

There are a few things that can be a sign that something went wrong during the labor and delivery with your child. Often it’s, what is the child’s condition of birth? Is he or she what we call depressed, and this means they have decreased tone, they’re not breathing on their own. They need more assistance and a baby who comes out and is crying. Often these children are unresponsive at birth, they’re glue, and they require neonatal care. It’s not diagnostic that the child suffered a brain injury, but it’s the first time. And so then what the neonatal team will look at is to do a neuro exam to see how the child responds, its reflexes, is it’s starting to breathe on its own. They look at things like blood gasses to see if the baby is acidotic, which is acid building up in the baby’s blood, which ultimately gets to the brain. And then they’ll do head imaging to look at the baby’s brain to actually see did it suffer a certain pattern of injury that’s consistent with oxygen deprivation during labor.