In Alabama, a woman cried foul after she suffered a traumatic childbirth experience in a birthing center, and in the process collected $16 million in damages.
Caroline Malatesta’s story began when she was pregnant with her fourth child at 32-years-old.
Prior to her labor, she did what most expecting mothers do: she researched for hospitals that would give her the kind of delivery in which she would feel in control.
She found Brookwood Women’s Center, a center that promises women a “personalized birth.”
In the end, the hospital’s slogan, “Your Birth, Your Way,” won her over.
So imagine her dismay when the big day finally came and instead of giving a calm and empowering birth the way she imagined having, she found herself restrained, with her son’s head held inside her for six minutes after he initially crowned.
“It left her with a serious and extremely painful condition: pudendal neuralgia, which affects a nerve that runs through the pelvis,” said Theresa Edwards in her She Knows story.
Carlene eventually filed a lawsuit, saying the experience felt like a bait and switch.
The jury agreed with her, finding the birth center “in violation of the standard of care for labor and delivery nurses.” They also categorized the center’s marketing as “reckless misrepresentation of fact.
Caroline and her husband received at least $16 million for damages.
Many were crying foul over the settlement. Read their reactions on the next page
Crying foul
Many people were unconvinced by Caroline’s claim, though.
Pregnancy can be a traumatic experience for women, they say. And that if everyone complained of a childbirth experience they didn’t like, hospitals would go bankrupt.
But according to Theresa, this is a misinformed and dangerous way of thinking about the incident.
Yes, childbirth is painful and messy, but there’s difference between painful, unexpected childbirth and childbirth that leaves the mother with post traumatic stress disorder.
“That kind of trauma is real, and it is lasting. It isn’t a painful birth or even a complicated or emergency birth situation,” Theresa says. “It’s a hellacious one that affects a woman’s quality of life in a way so negative as to be debilitating.”
As for the money, Carlone said she simply wanted to work with the center to resolve the problem. They refused. She also said that such entities would not be willing to act unless there are large sum of money involved.
In fact, the bad press and the money lost can even help stop similar events from happening to other women.
“Cases like this one should shock and anger us, but not because of a dollar amount,” says Theresa. “If this type of trauma and fallout look normal to us, then Malatesta isn’t the problem. We are.”
READ: Caesarean section goes horribly wrong at a Cebu hospital
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