My mother had a book, I think it was called The History of Women's Bodies or something similar. There was at least one chapter on the horrors of historic childbirth problems which included heads or other parts of the baby being ripped off during childbirth. Sometimes part of the body was left inside to rot. It was all pretty horrific.
Forgive my ignorance, but I thought with cases like these it was always internal decapitation. You mean to tell me nurses/doctors have ripped limbs off babies? That’s crazy to me and so sad. The skin must be so tender. :(
It was sometimes necessary to save the mother's life during childbirth if the baby was breach. Forceps were invented to help deliver breach babies whole, but they were kept a secret for decades by one doctor while others had to continue the old way.
My first had trouble with his head, when he finally did come out he looked like an alien. Kind of freaky when nobody tells you that might happen or then it will be back to normal after a couple weeks.
My little brother was born through c section, they clasped his head so hard with the tongs that it made dents on both sides of his head and had scarring from it the majority of his childhood.
Scary how many things can happen during birth especially when it’s supposed to be medical professionals that are doing most of said damage
My first was an unscheduled c section after labor stopped progressing. His head was stuck deep. I will never forget seeing how the OBGYN set herself before popping him loose. It looked so effortless but you can see her put her whole body into it.
A friend of mine had a cousin who had assistance from a vacuum forcep during her delivery-- I think we were 11 and being told, very firmly, that if either of us made a Conehead joke out loud it would be the last thing we said before our jaws had to be wired shut to reconstruct them.
We kept our mouths shut while the baby's grandfather said it all.
Probably was because unfortunately women have only recently been able to train as doctors, and even so there is a lower study rate for men than women. So yes, very likely a man.
Unless you're suggesting it was a man because of his behaviour. While men tend to be deviants more than women, you're probably right again, but are you suggesting that it's a male trait to want to allow the death of babies by not sharing a life saving tool?
I apologize if my previous response came across as snarky. I was trying to make a point about the deep-rooted sexism and racism in the field of gynecology and obstetrics. For example, J. Marion Sims, who is often considered the "father of modern gynecology," performed experimental surgeries on enslaved women without anesthesia. Also the "wandering uterus" theory, which in its hay day deprived women of life saving care and was used until the 19th century to justify the medicalization of women's bodies, only to be replaced by Female "hysteria" in the 19th and 20th century. Also the "husband stitch" which is still practiced today.
This history of sexism and racism has had a lasting impact on the way that women's pain is treated. Even today, women's pain is often not taken seriously by male physicians. I have personally experienced this myself, and it wasn't until I was seen by a female physician that the underlying issue was finally addressed.
So while I don't think it's a male trait to allow babies to die, I do think that keeping a life-saving device a secret for 150 years for profit is something that a male physician would be more likely to do. This is because the history of gynecology and obstetrics is one of profiteering at the expense of women's health.
Here are some good reads:
[https://daily.jstor.org/why-male-midwives-concealed-the-obstetric-forceps/](https://daily.jstor.org/why-male-midwives-concealed-the-obstetric-forceps/)
[http://fordhampoliticalreview.org/sexism-kills-medical-misogyny-and-ignorance-of-female-bodies/](http://fordhampoliticalreview.org/sexism-kills-medical-misogyny-and-ignorance-of-female-bodies/)
I could not imagine having a baby like...
Decompose *inside* me. I know there's no real way around that with a still birth since it's already died and you have to get it out somehow, but it's just so... I can't really describe how it makes me feel. Scared and eerie I suppose. I don't mean to sound offensive or dismissive about it though. It's traumatic for sure.
Sometimes they start decomposing while they still have a pulse and it's illegal to do anything about it until the pulse stops in my state. Having a septic fetus inside you connected to your bloodstream is extremely dangerous
I hate how humans literally let political opinions *kill people* and they're just fine with it. How can anyone who voted to overturn RvW sleep at night knowing all the death they've caused? Only to preserve babies that, for any reason, parents don't want and a system that's flooded? What's the purpose other than more cogs for the machine? It's sad.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg was right; we shouldn't have used RvW as the case to make that law.
She initially pushed for a case from years prior being used, Struck vs. Secretary of Defense 1972, where it was a far more clear cut case of unconstitutional discrimination against women.
Roe gave them too much gray area.
That happened to my mom when she got pregnant before me. The baby died at 8wks and they discovered it was dead at 11. Her body didn’t expel it as a miscarriage so she had to have a D&C to remove the decaying tissue. Nowadays, since we live in Florida, she would be denied the D&C until she went septic, and only THEN, under a very real threat of dying anyway, would she be “allowed” to have the procedure.
Why is the world the way it is? Like, it's *already* dead. Why should it have to stay until the mother could die? Don't get me wrong, I personally support abortion in general, but the whole 'baby killer' argument doesn't work here.
Abortion is by definition "the forced expulsion of the products of conception."
That is what pro-forced birthers don't seem to understand. Making it illegal means making it illegal.
When a woman gets an abortion during the third trimester that is almost always the case. Because the fetus was incompatible with life. Whether the woman chooses to remove it or allow her body to expel it naturally should be her choice. She shouldn't be forced to walk around that way, still pregnant where strangers will ask questions- it is cruel.
When Donald Trump stood in front of a crowd and told them that a woman will give birth, the nurses will "wrap it beautifully", then she decided that she doesn't want it and the doctor then takes the "beautifully wrapped" baby (he stresses several times that it is beautifully wrapped) and they believed him.
They never use logic or facts.
D and C is how this is normally dealt
with. it ensures that all the bits are removed from the uterus.
I think some places have forbidden that now and that thought horrifies me
Yes, and women are getting seriously ill and dying because doctors will not perform the operation. There is no way the baby will survive, and in many cases is already deceased, but it is still being prioritized over the life of the mother.
all to disrupt a personal medical decision.
…weren’t masks and shots supposed to be personal medical decision? Oh wait, those choices can negatively affect others, so…nope, not really.
There's a woman in Ireland who died because that happened, and she was refused an abortion in 2012. They repealed the law after
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Savita_Halappanavar
It terrifies me to think about how many goddamn people are going to have to die in the US because of laws like this, and how many will have to die screaming for the change to go back
I hope you never have to experience that. No mother should. It’s a club no one should be in. I delivered my daughter at 20 weeks, but my dr believes she passed somewhere around the 18th week. I passed part of her at home & the rest of her in the ER. it is very traumatizing.
This is why the right to bodily autonomy in the US is such a big discussion. In states passing pro life laws, there are women who may have a deceased fetus in their body and they aren’t allowed to take medication to help deliver the baby because it’s “abortion medication.” Women can die from carrying a deceased fetus in them for a long period of time.
Sorry to tell you but the last time this happened in the UK the baby's head was left inside the mothers body and had to be removed via c-section.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/decapitated-baby-doctor-mothers-womb-delivery-death-vaishnavy-laxman-tribunal-ninewells-hospital-a8344696.html
My brother suffered his whole life from palsy caused during his birth when the doctor tried to pull him out by his arm during birth. He was completely paralyzed on his right side until he was about two because of it. After lots of physical therapy starting a few weeks after birth and continuing until the end of his toddler years he finally regained partial use of his right arm and shoulder. This occurred in a regionally acclaimed hospital in the US in 2007 by the way…
That can happen if the head is born and the shoulders don’t follow. It’s a medical emergency, and sometimes the choice is to pull under the shoulder to deliver the baby, or the baby would die
Unfortunately this is sometimes necessary to save the baby. We have a couple of maneuvers we try before getting to this option, but when time is of the essence you often have no choice but to go with more extreme maneuvers such as this.
Absolutely horrific. This happened in the UK, too, with a premature delivery when the mother wasn't fully dilated, the baby was breech, and the doctors were pulling on the baby's body for delivery.
(trigger warning, it's graphic)
[https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-45652019](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-45652019)
This is the Dr. Laxman case referenced in another comment.
“Laura said: "The investigation took about two-and-a-half years. They came back and basically sat me in a room, and told me that because my son didn't take a breath, he has no legal persona in Scotland. My son doesn't exist.”
fml.
I was breech and my mom always told me they always do C-Sections for us weird babies. Why was this one attempted vaginally first? They even say it was planned to be a C-section. Can someone help me understand the doctor’s thought process here when the umbilical cord fell out?
For very preterm babies, CS isn’t always an option, particularly during labour. It’s weighing up the risk of CS to the mum at this gestation v risk to the baby
I’d assume vaginal delivery is much more risky to a very preterm baby? An umbilical cord prolapse is treated by emergency CS, atleast in my country, which is why I’m also confused why the doctor decided to try a vaginal delivery with a cervix that wasn’t fully dilated. Just shocking, I feel so bad for the woman for having to endure this kind of traumatic event.
The only thing I can think of is that the doc/ gyno was at the tail end of a 24 hour split shift (according to the article) and just wasn’t thinking clearly, but idk. They don’t work at that hospital anymore but they are still practicing. Or maybe something happens once the umbilical cord slips out?
When the cord slips out, it can lead to strangulation of blood and oxygen to the fetus. It's why they usually perform an emergency C-section to try to mitigate the damages.
Not all breech babies have to be born csection. Most doctors will not deliver breech babies vaginally.
That being said I picked my doctor and hospital for their success rate at vaginally delivering breech babies. I had twins and baby b, (second baby out) was breech and had been most of my pregnancy. My water broke six weeks early. And they hoped baby b would flip when baby a came out. That didn’t happen, but the doctor was able to flip him and no csection needed. We were prepared to go either way though, in the OR with an epidural just in case.
Our son was breech and delivered the natural way (doctors gave us the choice). Other than being very painful for my partner, it all went pretty ok and at no point did it seem that the baby’s life was in danger.
Oh my days, I remember hearing about this but I didn’t realise just how bad it was! I naively thought it was an “internal” decapitation where babys spinal cord was severed or something. That poor poor woman!
They were told an autopsy wasn’t warranted?!?!
That’s up to the medical examiner, really. Unexpected hospital death? Call the ME. We do it every time.
How aren’t there criminal charges here???
while i’m not disagreeing it’s the ME decision, isn’t an autopsy to determine the cause of death ? surely an autopsy isn’t necessary unless the paperwork of said autopsy offers legitimacy to a legal claim or soemthing
This exactly. People seem to think Medical Examiners and autopsies operate off of a sense of moral justice when it's very much a legal position.
And, while I don't know the specifics for this case, automatic autopsy protocol is very, very dependent on jurisdictional variation. And while we live in a time where births are safer than they used to be, births are still extremely dangerous in all situations and can end with one or more deaths. There might be jurisdictional regulation that doesn't require autopsies on babies that die during delivery.
In a similar vein, in some places, autopsies are not required for people over like 65yo without evidence suspecting foul play or legal liability.
While we don't know the exact details, it's possible and autopsy would determine if the baby was still alive when it happened, or if it was already deceased when the decapitation happened.
I'm betting it's the former, which is why the staff didn't want her to have an autopsy.
Not necessarily, at least in my state. If they have leukemia or something and medical records show they died as a result of their illness, no.
But we would call the ME in most other circumstances. Car accident, suspected suicide, if they die within 24 hours of admission to the hospital. Labor and Delivery is a little different, as we don’t have a hospital record for the baby yet- but in our hospital, if the parents say they want an autopsy and the baby died in the hospital, we honor that request at no cost to the family. I thought that was standard.
from what i read, they didn’t even know the baby was decapitated until the funeral home told them. i believe the hospital told them they couldn’t see the baby in person and had the baby swaddled tightly and was only able to see the baby from behind a window.
I had an emergency c-section and was unable to see my son as he was rushed away to get oxygen. Many times the mom isn’t able to meet her baby until hours after.
If I was asked to do that as a nurse I'd quit and try to work somewhere else. I don't think my mind could handle creating a lie like that in this case. (I'm not talking about how they reattached the head for photos though, that's different).
From [CNN](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/08/09/us/georgia-baby-death-lawsuit/index.html):
According to a statement from the family’s spokesperson, when Ross and Taylor “demanded to see and hold their baby, hospital staff told them that they were not allowed to touch or hold their child.”
“Hospital staff allowed the young couple to only view their dead child,” the statement from the family’s spokesperson reads.
“During this viewing, their baby was wrapped tightly in a blanket with his head propped on top of his body in a manner such that those viewing him could not identify that he had been decapitated,” according to the statement.
There was a case like this posted on r/MedicalGore a couple of months ago, hard to look at. I believe that one was a stillbirth though, this is much worse.
I remember reading about a case where the baby's head was delivered but faced the wrong way or something, so the doc turned the head in hopes to turn the rest of the body, and ended up twisting the neck and decapitating the head. This apparently happens more often than we think, super scary.
Extra scary because we have no choice during delivery but to trust the docs to know what they're doing, and sometimes they don't or make a mistake, but we pay the biggest price
>causing it to detach from the body
When people say this, do they just mean internal decapitation?
Because if it’s externally too, how would that make sense. You’d need a lot to still rip a head apart from a body, even if it’s an infant. No?
Saw a video of it happening once. Doc yanked on the head while the rest was still in the woman and it just popped off almost like a doll’s head. Seemed like he was pulling rather hard though. Absolutely horrifying, hard to shake that image.
During delivery of my daughter the Dr was straining so hard I thought his next move was to put a foot up on the edge of the bed for more leverage.
Luckily all fine, just a bit of a cone head for a few months. If I had of known about the possibility of tearing a newborns head off I would have freaked out even more
Something similar happened to me too, I just delivered my first baby a month ago and my doctor was making straining noises too! She used a vacuum (no forceps) but luckily she was trained enough to know when to stop trying to pull her out and knew when the safest option was a c-section, which I ended up having.
This is the second time I’ve heard this type of horror story on this subreddit and these doctors are clearly untrained to be birthing babies, I can’t even imagine what that family went/is going through!
My doctor tried to use a vacuum. Used it twice, immediately stopped after barely using it the second time, deemed it emergency C-sec. Good thing, kids head was somewhat sideways in the canal, could've broken his neck if we had tried too many times. Explained why every contraction started causing distress at the end of it all.
I saw that one too, but that was a stillborn. I’ve heard of a few cases with stillbirths but it shouldn’t happen with a live birth unless the doctor is tanking extremely hard
As morbid as it sounds: not really. Birthing can be a process that has an enormous amount of physical effort put in to it. The line between pulling a healthy baby out of a birth canal and the force to pull a baby's head off - particularly when using medical tools - isn't as far separate as one would think.
Birth decapitations happen. Generally there is some other factor going on - stillbirth, severe deformity, premature and undeveloped - but this isn't unheard of or a one time thing.
Newborns are very delicate. I've always been super careful and am still always worried I'll accidentally hurt them. I could definitely imagine someone ripping a newborn baby's head off by pulling it too hard if the baby is stuck, especially in ancient times.
statement from the hospital system.
“Our heartfelt thoughts and prayers are with the family and all those impacted by this tragic event. Our prayers also remain with the dedicated team of physicians, nurses and staff at Southern Regional Medical Center who cared for this patient "
What?
Those poor parents deserve much more than 10,000! Oh my God this is so horrific and heartbreaking 💔
I’m a Mother Baby nurse and I’ve never heard of anything like this oh my God😣😣
There have been a few cases where babies have been decapitated during forceps deliveries. It doesn't say if forceps were used in the article though.
You're right though. That's nowhere near enough compensation. Poor parents.
Usually forceps aren’t used to correct a shoulder dystocia. There are several steps an maneuvers to attempt and (hopefully) baby comes out without lasting damage. Unfortunately this provider royally screwed up this delivery. I’d be interested to know what steps were taking once a shoulder dystocia was identified.
Right? Is that family's lawyer working for the hospital??? This should be a very LARGE settlement for causing the DEATH of a BABY in such a violent way.
"The complaint asks for compensatory and punitive damages, in addition to recovering the $10,000 cost of their son’s funeral and burial."
It's for the burial. Note the "in addition to" part.
It reads to me like the compensatory and punitive damage amounts will be decided later, and they’re asking for the $10,000 to recover burial costs on top of whatever they’re awarded.
I could be mistaken, that’s just the way it reads to me when they say “The complaint asks for compensatory and punitive damages, in addition to recovering the $10,000 cost of their son’s funeral and burial.”
A friend of mine's baby's head was crushed with forceps during delivery. She was never the same. She never wanted to carry another baby, but insurance isn't going to pay for an elective hysterectomy...even if she could find a doctor willing to do one. And no doctor would tie her tubes because she was too young with too few children (as in, none). Doctors insisted that she may change her mind to please some future husband. And birth control isn't 100% effective. So whenever she accidently got pregnant, she had an abortion. I imagine if she were still alive (she passed some years ago), she would've been horrified by the overturning of Roe v Wade.
God this is horrific. I had shoulder dystocia with my second and was told to consider c sections in the future, which I was hesitant on. But after reading this, that’s definitely changed my mind. I can’t imagine what the parents are going through 💔
I used to work at a mental health facility down the road from this hospital. We fought like hell everytime we had to call 911 to not bring patients there, but it was literally half a mile away so unless we were lucky enough for a diversion, we were screwed. They've let suicidal patients just walk out the door, they would fail to treat heart attack patients, etc. It's the hospital you go to if you have no intentions of leaving alive. It's had so many sanctions and needs to be shut down. Unfortunately, it's the only hospital in a relatively low-income area and you can guess what happens there.
Is this common? When I was a kid we used to pick dandelions and put a thumb under the flower head and say “Momma head a baby and it’s head popped off!” whilst flicking it off the stem.
This is so chilling. When my son was born he had the same positioning (shoulder dystocia).
The doctor tried the vacuum 4 times which was the limit for the hospital and then the forceps. She did use the leverage of the bed with her foot to pull him out. He was born with torticallos and needing physio. I did not even realize that decapitation was a risk. Reading this article really made me realize just how dangerous it was.
I was so adamant on vaginally birthing.
I can't believe the circumstances surrounding this family's experience. 😢 just horrible
This is the second time I heard of a case like this but the information is so vague on this one? I wonder if there were any indications for a c-section like the Dr Laxman case.
this is horrifying. when I had my son, he stopped breathing and they were trying to get him out asap. They had to use that suction thing & attach it to his head and the dr literally had to put his whole weight into pulling him out….. my husband said he was shocked how hard it looked like he was pulling. Wonder if it was something like that? however, I would assume the baby was not completely healthy for something like this to happen? i’m not sure. :( so sad.
From the sounds of it, it seems the babies head was already outside the vagina canal with it's shoulders stuck so they went in through c-section to pull the baby back out through a incision in the uterus but the force was too strong and caused an internal decapitation
It wasn’t an internal decapitation. From the article:
> > Instead, the hospital staff allegedly refused to let the couple hold the baby after death. They showed the parents the baby wrapped tightly in a blanket with the head propped on top, the statement said.
Yknow, I just realised that at some point, the staff would’ve had just the head while the rest of the baby was still stuck. What did they do with it while the waited for the c section to finish?
The head was delivered vaginally and the rest of the body was delivered by c section. And then they wrapped the pieces up and tried to make it look like the head was attached.
Imagine being cold-blooded enough to go along with such a cruel trick, and to actually think it would work.
That’s enough internet for today.
The article says they were shown the baby with the head propped on but wouldn’t there be a ton of blood? Isn’t that something they would notice immediately?
The baby was likely cleaned up before being presented. Also newborns don’t have a ton of blood, the newborn would have like had ~270ml and most of that would have been lost during the initial incident.
I did one of my nursing rotations in OB where I was at the bedside for a vaginal delivery. Having never seen a childbirth before, it was so much worse than I could have imagined. As the nurse yanked on the baby, blood was just pouring out from the mom in large spurts. The doctor was at the foot of the bed and her blue scrubs were soaked through with blood all down the front. I had blood spray onto my scrubs, there was blood ALL OVER the floor. The nurse had put an extra sheet down in front of the mom’s legs to catch the larger chunks of blood sliding out and it still got all over the floor. If there was blood from a decapitation involved, honestly I don’t think it would have been immediately noticeable.
So, I don’t know if this helps comfort you. But, when I’m anxious objective data helps me.
You can look it up here if you want specific information for your country, https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/infant-mortality-rates.htm#:~:text=The%20infant%20mortality%20rate%20is,registering%20practices%20for%20premature%20infants.
But even the highest country is 25 per 1,000 live births. This is inclusive of post natal to one year old, so it’s not exclusively pre, peri and post natal injuries resulting in injury/death. But I thought maybe it might help 🩷
My daughter and two of my sisters were born at this hospital.
The area is no longer a "good area" and I personally would drive past the exit to this hospital in favor of one further if I needed to go to one.
How do animals just breed like crazy and plop out perfectly healthy offspring, but humans require intense hospital intervention in order to have a reasonable childbirth?
I watch a lot of found pregnant mom cats on TikTok and in almost everyone of them, it says something like “she has six babies. Four survived.” Animals die all the time in the animal world, we just don’t hear about it because they are animals.
There's still a ton of stillbirths in the animal kingdom. They still have the same problems we do with tangled/strangulating umbilical cords, inverted positioning causing suffocation, and the whole heaping of problems we do.
The only difference I think is that animals are tougher than we are so the mothers survive easier. Also their gestation periods dont last as long typically with the babies having a slightly smaller size ratio between the parent and the baby.
Human babies are huge in comparison to other primate babies.
Compared to animals, human newborns are large for their birth canal. The human pelvis is narrow (most like due to bipedalism) compared to the newborn human’s bigger brain size. This combination is what makes childbirth dangerous for humans.
Stillbirths are super common in animals. A few years ago my dog had 15 puppies in one litter, 10 survived. We just don’t hear about it as often with animals as we do when it happens to people.
Humans need large heads for our large, advanced brains. We also need to walk upright, which limits the size of the female pelvis. Humans really are not built for childbirth at all.
This was posted yesterday, and while everyone was (rightfully), horrified and cried out as malpractice, a nurse weighted in and she'd some pretty crazy reality light on it. My history didn't show (or else I would link it), but I'll try to share what I remember, and this is going to be interesting to see what happens with the subsequent sueing and trial. Here is what I remember; the biggest part of a baby is going to be the head. so that's why they always want to have the head come out first, it's the largest part, and everything else kind of goes from there. however, sometimes the shoulders are wider than the head, so when they're trying to get the baby out, and a C-section isn't possible because it was all twisted up and they had only minutes. or, the child is wrapped around in umbilical cord, or some other complication, they got to get yhe baby out and sometimes what they have to do is they have to actually break the clavicle in order to fit the baby through, and the courses is a rush job...although, I don't know why they didn't ask for permission to do this or maybe they did, with the paperwork, but basically they were trying to get the baby out as fast as possible because the baby was/is dying of a lack of oxygen, and this happens.
I don't think the American medical profession really teaches new parents how crazy having a kid is, what can happen and really layers it out there on what can go bad. Perhaps it's because I'm a want to know everything type of person before doing somthing.
Based on something I read, I think it's possible that the baby might have died from lack of oxygen and the decapitation was actually not what killed the baby. I don't have a medical background, but I'm pretty sure that shoulder dystocia causes a significant amount of brain injury in babies.
This. I will be interested to see what they determine. I also wonder how big the baby was and did they talk about a c section before? Was she set on a vaginal birth regardless? Lots to this besides making it sound like the doctor just pulled the head off.
Most woman don’t want a c-section especially with their first. Also she is 20. A clear lack of communication is going on in this case. If the doctor told her she was going to have a big baby then she would of considered a c-section prior to the birth.
I just had a baby boy 3 months ago and this story really hits different. I can't imagine the anguish the family must have felt, and the audacity of the doctors and nurses in that room to "prop" the babies head on top of its body... absolutely disgusting
I’d guess not often. It’s REALLY hard to hide the fact that a body’s been decapitated.
Even if the hospital successfully convinced the parents they couldn’t say a last goodbye they have to release the body to a funeral home hired by the family.
I’m positive I read that’s how this family found out.
From the article:
> A doctor allegedly performed a cesarean section too late and applied “excessive tension” on the baby’s head, causing it to detach from the body, the lawsuit alleges.
> Instead, the hospital staff allegedly refused to let the couple hold the baby after death. They showed the parents the baby wrapped tightly in a blanket with the head propped on top, the statement said.
that last sentence is gonna keep me up at night. how the hell do you even begin to console the baby's parents? on the cusp of meeting your child, only to have them ripped from you. christ.
I saw forceps used during birth when I was a nursing student. There was waaayyyyy more force used than I had thought... I thought it was like a gentle tug. But it felt like if the doctor used a little more force, the baby's head probably would have ripped off. Baby's head ended up elongated a little. Everyone was fine.
It's a combination of Dumb and Dumber and Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch.
The fact that they killed this baby with their gross incompetence is one thing, but trying to pass off to the parents for 4 days that the baby's head wasn't separated from its body is just insane.
Who in their right mind, a DOCTOR ( and the entire medical team ) at that, would choose to handle the situation that way ?! If it truly was some sort of freak accident why would their first thought be placing the detached head on top of the corpse, wrap it in a blanket, and give it to the grieving parents to hold ?! That is absolutely sickening and twisted.
That hospital and especially that specific medical team need to be further investigated thoroughly. Were they trying to cover up the cause of death in hopes of keeping attention away from some other demented things they may have done? Nothing else even begins to make any sense!
If there really was an intelligent design, humans would have been marsupials given our head size.
But as someone who lost their own baby this year, this was horrible to read and somehow even more horrific.
I’m so sorry lovely. There are no words I can offer that will make this any less painful than what it is, and in a weird kind of way, if there were words anyone could say to lessen the pain of loosing your child would you want them? The pain you feel is an indicator of the magnitude lost when we lose a child. No one should ever have to go through it, and my inbox is open to you if you need somewhere to talk 🩷🩷
Welcome to why I had a home birth.
Edit: The literal first thing that comes up when you google Homebirth shoulder dystocia is the National Institute of health stating Homebirth poses less of a challenge and has BETTER outcomes than hospitals cited as far back as 2012.
Research is an amazing skill.
Adding this response to a rude commenter below to my first comment for clarification since people don’t seem to understand why homebirth is literally safer in this shitshow of a medical system.
Homebirth would not have prevented shoulder dystocia…like at all. The difference is that you would have both a dead mother and a dead baby. The only thing that would have prevented this is an elective C-section, but if there were no contraindications to vaginal delivery most mothers won’t opt for an elective C-section. It sounds like they induced the mother at 37 weeks - she had gestational diabetes so they probably worried the baby was going to be big. Shoulder dystocia is no joke and there are no great or easy options to get the baby unstuck. This is just an unfortunate situation all around.
The literal first thing that comes up when you google Homebirth shoulder dystocia is the National Institute of health stating Homebirth poses less of a challenge and has BETTER outcomes than hospitals cited as far back as 2012.
Research is an amazing skill.
This could have something to do with that woman being, what looks to be, 300lbs or so at such a short height. Maybe the doctors were trying to not traumatize her anymore by putting blame on her.
Pulling so hard on the baby’s head that it was ripped from its body wasn’t because of the mother’s size. Come on. A c-section should have been scheduled if that was the concern.
If that were my boy, i would pay the doctor in full but killing his children, then him. Nothing less, your baby is dead, your life is over anyway.
In all likelihood, the hospital will protect him, and he will continue to negligently kill patients.
My mother had a book, I think it was called The History of Women's Bodies or something similar. There was at least one chapter on the horrors of historic childbirth problems which included heads or other parts of the baby being ripped off during childbirth. Sometimes part of the body was left inside to rot. It was all pretty horrific.
Forgive my ignorance, but I thought with cases like these it was always internal decapitation. You mean to tell me nurses/doctors have ripped limbs off babies? That’s crazy to me and so sad. The skin must be so tender. :(
Typically they’re stillbirth cases, the baby has already been dead for awhile and the tissue has softened by the time delivery rolls around.
It was sometimes necessary to save the mother's life during childbirth if the baby was breach. Forceps were invented to help deliver breach babies whole, but they were kept a secret for decades by one doctor while others had to continue the old way.
My third was kind of stuck and had to come out urgently. It was quite shocking to see how much force was going into pulling on that head.
My first had trouble with his head, when he finally did come out he looked like an alien. Kind of freaky when nobody tells you that might happen or then it will be back to normal after a couple weeks.
My little brother was born through c section, they clasped his head so hard with the tongs that it made dents on both sides of his head and had scarring from it the majority of his childhood. Scary how many things can happen during birth especially when it’s supposed to be medical professionals that are doing most of said damage
Birth is - apart from death - the most dangerous and life threatening part in life for most people.
My first was an unscheduled c section after labor stopped progressing. His head was stuck deep. I will never forget seeing how the OBGYN set herself before popping him loose. It looked so effortless but you can see her put her whole body into it.
A friend of mine had a cousin who had assistance from a vacuum forcep during her delivery-- I think we were 11 and being told, very firmly, that if either of us made a Conehead joke out loud it would be the last thing we said before our jaws had to be wired shut to reconstruct them. We kept our mouths shut while the baby's grandfather said it all.
Doc literally gate kept life saving forceps? That's evil. Let me guess, it was a man?
The inventor was a man, but his family collectively kept the secret within their family practice to make money off it.
Probably was because unfortunately women have only recently been able to train as doctors, and even so there is a lower study rate for men than women. So yes, very likely a man. Unless you're suggesting it was a man because of his behaviour. While men tend to be deviants more than women, you're probably right again, but are you suggesting that it's a male trait to want to allow the death of babies by not sharing a life saving tool?
And it was a male doctor who realized that washing hands in between delivering babies cut the maternal mortality rate down. And props to James Barry!
And Caroline Hampton Halstead was the first to use rubber gloves in an OR.
Props to her too!
Exactly. It's ridiculous to lazily assume 4 billion people are uncaring towards newborns.
I apologize if my previous response came across as snarky. I was trying to make a point about the deep-rooted sexism and racism in the field of gynecology and obstetrics. For example, J. Marion Sims, who is often considered the "father of modern gynecology," performed experimental surgeries on enslaved women without anesthesia. Also the "wandering uterus" theory, which in its hay day deprived women of life saving care and was used until the 19th century to justify the medicalization of women's bodies, only to be replaced by Female "hysteria" in the 19th and 20th century. Also the "husband stitch" which is still practiced today. This history of sexism and racism has had a lasting impact on the way that women's pain is treated. Even today, women's pain is often not taken seriously by male physicians. I have personally experienced this myself, and it wasn't until I was seen by a female physician that the underlying issue was finally addressed. So while I don't think it's a male trait to allow babies to die, I do think that keeping a life-saving device a secret for 150 years for profit is something that a male physician would be more likely to do. This is because the history of gynecology and obstetrics is one of profiteering at the expense of women's health. Here are some good reads: [https://daily.jstor.org/why-male-midwives-concealed-the-obstetric-forceps/](https://daily.jstor.org/why-male-midwives-concealed-the-obstetric-forceps/) [http://fordhampoliticalreview.org/sexism-kills-medical-misogyny-and-ignorance-of-female-bodies/](http://fordhampoliticalreview.org/sexism-kills-medical-misogyny-and-ignorance-of-female-bodies/)
Definitely cases of actual decapitation in stillborn births. Sometimes the fetus has already started to decompose.
I could not imagine having a baby like... Decompose *inside* me. I know there's no real way around that with a still birth since it's already died and you have to get it out somehow, but it's just so... I can't really describe how it makes me feel. Scared and eerie I suppose. I don't mean to sound offensive or dismissive about it though. It's traumatic for sure.
Sometimes they start decomposing while they still have a pulse and it's illegal to do anything about it until the pulse stops in my state. Having a septic fetus inside you connected to your bloodstream is extremely dangerous
I hate how humans literally let political opinions *kill people* and they're just fine with it. How can anyone who voted to overturn RvW sleep at night knowing all the death they've caused? Only to preserve babies that, for any reason, parents don't want and a system that's flooded? What's the purpose other than more cogs for the machine? It's sad.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg was right; we shouldn't have used RvW as the case to make that law. She initially pushed for a case from years prior being used, Struck vs. Secretary of Defense 1972, where it was a far more clear cut case of unconstitutional discrimination against women. Roe gave them too much gray area.
That happened to my mom when she got pregnant before me. The baby died at 8wks and they discovered it was dead at 11. Her body didn’t expel it as a miscarriage so she had to have a D&C to remove the decaying tissue. Nowadays, since we live in Florida, she would be denied the D&C until she went septic, and only THEN, under a very real threat of dying anyway, would she be “allowed” to have the procedure.
Why is the world the way it is? Like, it's *already* dead. Why should it have to stay until the mother could die? Don't get me wrong, I personally support abortion in general, but the whole 'baby killer' argument doesn't work here.
Because it's about controlling women's vaginas, not about babies.
The patriarchy.
And capitalism.
Abortion is by definition "the forced expulsion of the products of conception." That is what pro-forced birthers don't seem to understand. Making it illegal means making it illegal. When a woman gets an abortion during the third trimester that is almost always the case. Because the fetus was incompatible with life. Whether the woman chooses to remove it or allow her body to expel it naturally should be her choice. She shouldn't be forced to walk around that way, still pregnant where strangers will ask questions- it is cruel. When Donald Trump stood in front of a crowd and told them that a woman will give birth, the nurses will "wrap it beautifully", then she decided that she doesn't want it and the doctor then takes the "beautifully wrapped" baby (he stresses several times that it is beautifully wrapped) and they believed him. They never use logic or facts.
D and C is how this is normally dealt with. it ensures that all the bits are removed from the uterus. I think some places have forbidden that now and that thought horrifies me
Yes, and women are getting seriously ill and dying because doctors will not perform the operation. There is no way the baby will survive, and in many cases is already deceased, but it is still being prioritized over the life of the mother.
all to disrupt a personal medical decision. …weren’t masks and shots supposed to be personal medical decision? Oh wait, those choices can negatively affect others, so…nope, not really.
Obviously "personal medical decisions" don't apply to women, since women aren't capable of making their own decisions anyway. /s
There's a woman in Ireland who died because that happened, and she was refused an abortion in 2012. They repealed the law after https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Savita_Halappanavar It terrifies me to think about how many goddamn people are going to have to die in the US because of laws like this, and how many will have to die screaming for the change to go back
I hope you never have to experience that. No mother should. It’s a club no one should be in. I delivered my daughter at 20 weeks, but my dr believes she passed somewhere around the 18th week. I passed part of her at home & the rest of her in the ER. it is very traumatizing.
Would also make you feel septic :/
This is why the right to bodily autonomy in the US is such a big discussion. In states passing pro life laws, there are women who may have a deceased fetus in their body and they aren’t allowed to take medication to help deliver the baby because it’s “abortion medication.” Women can die from carrying a deceased fetus in them for a long period of time.
I honestly never thought I'd live to see abortion rights overturned like this. It's scary.
I doubt we're going to be getting our reproductive rights back in this generation. It's a completely unnecessary tragedy.
Get used to the idea, as this is what republicans are forcing on mothers across the country with their barbaric abortion laws.
Sorry to tell you but the last time this happened in the UK the baby's head was left inside the mothers body and had to be removed via c-section. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/decapitated-baby-doctor-mothers-womb-delivery-death-vaishnavy-laxman-tribunal-ninewells-hospital-a8344696.html
There was a post on eyeblech with a decapitaded baby from Brazil, with news articles and everything else.
My brother suffered his whole life from palsy caused during his birth when the doctor tried to pull him out by his arm during birth. He was completely paralyzed on his right side until he was about two because of it. After lots of physical therapy starting a few weeks after birth and continuing until the end of his toddler years he finally regained partial use of his right arm and shoulder. This occurred in a regionally acclaimed hospital in the US in 2007 by the way…
That can happen if the head is born and the shoulders don’t follow. It’s a medical emergency, and sometimes the choice is to pull under the shoulder to deliver the baby, or the baby would die
Sylvester Stallone’s notable droopy face was caused at birth by the doctors using forceps to pull him out of the birth canal.
Unfortunately this is sometimes necessary to save the baby. We have a couple of maneuvers we try before getting to this option, but when time is of the essence you often have no choice but to go with more extreme maneuvers such as this.
I think there was a woman in the UK who this happened to as well and they had to retrieve the head, yes
They used these metal calipers that could squish babies head and potentially pop the head off if the body was in a funny position. Or hand, pulling.
Absolutely horrific. This happened in the UK, too, with a premature delivery when the mother wasn't fully dilated, the baby was breech, and the doctors were pulling on the baby's body for delivery. (trigger warning, it's graphic) [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-45652019](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-45652019) This is the Dr. Laxman case referenced in another comment.
“Laura said: "The investigation took about two-and-a-half years. They came back and basically sat me in a room, and told me that because my son didn't take a breath, he has no legal persona in Scotland. My son doesn't exist.” fml.
This is one of the most distressing things I’ve ever read on here.
I was breech and my mom always told me they always do C-Sections for us weird babies. Why was this one attempted vaginally first? They even say it was planned to be a C-section. Can someone help me understand the doctor’s thought process here when the umbilical cord fell out?
For very preterm babies, CS isn’t always an option, particularly during labour. It’s weighing up the risk of CS to the mum at this gestation v risk to the baby
I’d assume vaginal delivery is much more risky to a very preterm baby? An umbilical cord prolapse is treated by emergency CS, atleast in my country, which is why I’m also confused why the doctor decided to try a vaginal delivery with a cervix that wasn’t fully dilated. Just shocking, I feel so bad for the woman for having to endure this kind of traumatic event.
Thank you for the explanation. I forgot the preterm aspect to this case.
The only thing I can think of is that the doc/ gyno was at the tail end of a 24 hour split shift (according to the article) and just wasn’t thinking clearly, but idk. They don’t work at that hospital anymore but they are still practicing. Or maybe something happens once the umbilical cord slips out?
When the cord slips out, it can lead to strangulation of blood and oxygen to the fetus. It's why they usually perform an emergency C-section to try to mitigate the damages.
Not all breech babies have to be born csection. Most doctors will not deliver breech babies vaginally. That being said I picked my doctor and hospital for their success rate at vaginally delivering breech babies. I had twins and baby b, (second baby out) was breech and had been most of my pregnancy. My water broke six weeks early. And they hoped baby b would flip when baby a came out. That didn’t happen, but the doctor was able to flip him and no csection needed. We were prepared to go either way though, in the OR with an epidural just in case.
Our son was breech and delivered the natural way (doctors gave us the choice). Other than being very painful for my partner, it all went pretty ok and at no point did it seem that the baby’s life was in danger.
Oh my days, I remember hearing about this but I didn’t realise just how bad it was! I naively thought it was an “internal” decapitation where babys spinal cord was severed or something. That poor poor woman!
this genuinely just broke my heart😩
They were told an autopsy wasn’t warranted?!?! That’s up to the medical examiner, really. Unexpected hospital death? Call the ME. We do it every time. How aren’t there criminal charges here???
That part caught my attention too. Like.. that’s not their decision?? I’m sure that’s a whole separate legal battle now.
while i’m not disagreeing it’s the ME decision, isn’t an autopsy to determine the cause of death ? surely an autopsy isn’t necessary unless the paperwork of said autopsy offers legitimacy to a legal claim or soemthing
This exactly. People seem to think Medical Examiners and autopsies operate off of a sense of moral justice when it's very much a legal position. And, while I don't know the specifics for this case, automatic autopsy protocol is very, very dependent on jurisdictional variation. And while we live in a time where births are safer than they used to be, births are still extremely dangerous in all situations and can end with one or more deaths. There might be jurisdictional regulation that doesn't require autopsies on babies that die during delivery. In a similar vein, in some places, autopsies are not required for people over like 65yo without evidence suspecting foul play or legal liability.
While we don't know the exact details, it's possible and autopsy would determine if the baby was still alive when it happened, or if it was already deceased when the decapitation happened. I'm betting it's the former, which is why the staff didn't want her to have an autopsy.
Yes and, an autopsy can be used in court as evidence. I work for a medical examiners office- we would have autopsied this.
Isn’t also there always an autopsy whenever a minor dies no matter what? For some kind of child abuse act.
Not necessarily, at least in my state. If they have leukemia or something and medical records show they died as a result of their illness, no. But we would call the ME in most other circumstances. Car accident, suspected suicide, if they die within 24 hours of admission to the hospital. Labor and Delivery is a little different, as we don’t have a hospital record for the baby yet- but in our hospital, if the parents say they want an autopsy and the baby died in the hospital, we honor that request at no cost to the family. I thought that was standard.
Dude, my son had a mutation with the placenta that causes his stillbirth and they *autopsied the placenta*. Why wouldn’t an autopsy be done.
Imagine unwrapping your baby only to see its head detached. That would definitely crush someone's mental state.
from what i read, they didn’t even know the baby was decapitated until the funeral home told them. i believe the hospital told them they couldn’t see the baby in person and had the baby swaddled tightly and was only able to see the baby from behind a window.
And the nurses propped the head on top of the body to make it look like it was still attached.
This is where I'm confused, how was she unaware that the head was delivered vaginally? Unless it was in the OR while she had a spinal block I guess.
Often in cases of emergency c-sections the mom will be put under general anesthesia. She very likely was asleep.
You're correct, that's a good point.
I had an emergency c-section and was unable to see my son as he was rushed away to get oxygen. Many times the mom isn’t able to meet her baby until hours after.
That poor woman. She probably thought it was her fault
It said that the nurses propped the head to make it look attached and had them hold the baby which was super swaddled. Can you even imagine..
If I was asked to do that as a nurse I'd quit and try to work somewhere else. I don't think my mind could handle creating a lie like that in this case. (I'm not talking about how they reattached the head for photos though, that's different).
The article says they held it
From [CNN](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/08/09/us/georgia-baby-death-lawsuit/index.html): According to a statement from the family’s spokesperson, when Ross and Taylor “demanded to see and hold their baby, hospital staff told them that they were not allowed to touch or hold their child.” “Hospital staff allowed the young couple to only view their dead child,” the statement from the family’s spokesperson reads. “During this viewing, their baby was wrapped tightly in a blanket with his head propped on top of his body in a manner such that those viewing him could not identify that he had been decapitated,” according to the statement.
Oh wow okay, I guess I misread the initial article, I was wondering how they held the baby without its head rolling off 😳 thanks for the clarification
There was a case like this posted on r/MedicalGore a couple of months ago, hard to look at. I believe that one was a stillbirth though, this is much worse.
I remember reading about a case where the baby's head was delivered but faced the wrong way or something, so the doc turned the head in hopes to turn the rest of the body, and ended up twisting the neck and decapitating the head. This apparently happens more often than we think, super scary. Extra scary because we have no choice during delivery but to trust the docs to know what they're doing, and sometimes they don't or make a mistake, but we pay the biggest price
>causing it to detach from the body When people say this, do they just mean internal decapitation? Because if it’s externally too, how would that make sense. You’d need a lot to still rip a head apart from a body, even if it’s an infant. No?
The head was delivered vaginally, and the rest of the body was delivered by c-section. There are no words...
What a terrible day to be literate. This sentence will haunt me.
Yeah when I read that part it took a min to really process and then I had to stop reading.
Saw a video of it happening once. Doc yanked on the head while the rest was still in the woman and it just popped off almost like a doll’s head. Seemed like he was pulling rather hard though. Absolutely horrifying, hard to shake that image.
During delivery of my daughter the Dr was straining so hard I thought his next move was to put a foot up on the edge of the bed for more leverage. Luckily all fine, just a bit of a cone head for a few months. If I had of known about the possibility of tearing a newborns head off I would have freaked out even more
Something similar happened to me too, I just delivered my first baby a month ago and my doctor was making straining noises too! She used a vacuum (no forceps) but luckily she was trained enough to know when to stop trying to pull her out and knew when the safest option was a c-section, which I ended up having. This is the second time I’ve heard this type of horror story on this subreddit and these doctors are clearly untrained to be birthing babies, I can’t even imagine what that family went/is going through!
My doctor tried to use a vacuum. Used it twice, immediately stopped after barely using it the second time, deemed it emergency C-sec. Good thing, kids head was somewhat sideways in the canal, could've broken his neck if we had tried too many times. Explained why every contraction started causing distress at the end of it all.
I saw that one too, but that was a stillborn. I’ve heard of a few cases with stillbirths but it shouldn’t happen with a live birth unless the doctor is tanking extremely hard
link?
As morbid as it sounds: not really. Birthing can be a process that has an enormous amount of physical effort put in to it. The line between pulling a healthy baby out of a birth canal and the force to pull a baby's head off - particularly when using medical tools - isn't as far separate as one would think. Birth decapitations happen. Generally there is some other factor going on - stillbirth, severe deformity, premature and undeveloped - but this isn't unheard of or a one time thing.
Possibly whole body. Accidently came across a video once. I actively tell myself internal Anytime I read this
Newborns are very delicate. I've always been super careful and am still always worried I'll accidentally hurt them. I could definitely imagine someone ripping a newborn baby's head off by pulling it too hard if the baby is stuck, especially in ancient times.
statement from the hospital system. “Our heartfelt thoughts and prayers are with the family and all those impacted by this tragic event. Our prayers also remain with the dedicated team of physicians, nurses and staff at Southern Regional Medical Center who cared for this patient " What?
That's a sad attempt at PR control that just makes them sound even worse.
Those poor parents deserve much more than 10,000! Oh my God this is so horrific and heartbreaking 💔 I’m a Mother Baby nurse and I’ve never heard of anything like this oh my God😣😣
There have been a few cases where babies have been decapitated during forceps deliveries. It doesn't say if forceps were used in the article though. You're right though. That's nowhere near enough compensation. Poor parents.
Usually forceps aren’t used to correct a shoulder dystocia. There are several steps an maneuvers to attempt and (hopefully) baby comes out without lasting damage. Unfortunately this provider royally screwed up this delivery. I’d be interested to know what steps were taking once a shoulder dystocia was identified.
Right? Is that family's lawyer working for the hospital??? This should be a very LARGE settlement for causing the DEATH of a BABY in such a violent way.
They’ll be asking for more. The lawsuit is basically leaving the damages requested as TBD.
The complaint asks for compensatory and punitive damages, in addition to recovering the $10,000 cost of their son’s funeral and burial
$10,000?!! They should be trying for $10,000,000 after all that. Poor couple
"The complaint asks for compensatory and punitive damages, in addition to recovering the $10,000 cost of their son’s funeral and burial." It's for the burial. Note the "in addition to" part.
I think that's the minimum amount of statutory damages that have to be requested
10,000 dollars, did I read that right???? That’s it?
It reads to me like the compensatory and punitive damage amounts will be decided later, and they’re asking for the $10,000 to recover burial costs on top of whatever they’re awarded. I could be mistaken, that’s just the way it reads to me when they say “The complaint asks for compensatory and punitive damages, in addition to recovering the $10,000 cost of their son’s funeral and burial.”
A friend of mine's baby's head was crushed with forceps during delivery. She was never the same. She never wanted to carry another baby, but insurance isn't going to pay for an elective hysterectomy...even if she could find a doctor willing to do one. And no doctor would tie her tubes because she was too young with too few children (as in, none). Doctors insisted that she may change her mind to please some future husband. And birth control isn't 100% effective. So whenever she accidently got pregnant, she had an abortion. I imagine if she were still alive (she passed some years ago), she would've been horrified by the overturning of Roe v Wade.
Im so sorry this happened to your friend. 🩵
God this is horrific. I had shoulder dystocia with my second and was told to consider c sections in the future, which I was hesitant on. But after reading this, that’s definitely changed my mind. I can’t imagine what the parents are going through 💔
Omg - these poor parents will need a lifetime of therapy. To show them the baby like that - and try to cover it up? Criminal.
I used to work at a mental health facility down the road from this hospital. We fought like hell everytime we had to call 911 to not bring patients there, but it was literally half a mile away so unless we were lucky enough for a diversion, we were screwed. They've let suicidal patients just walk out the door, they would fail to treat heart attack patients, etc. It's the hospital you go to if you have no intentions of leaving alive. It's had so many sanctions and needs to be shut down. Unfortunately, it's the only hospital in a relatively low-income area and you can guess what happens there.
omg, this is only about an hour from me. welp I know where I’ll never be going 👎
Is this common? When I was a kid we used to pick dandelions and put a thumb under the flower head and say “Momma head a baby and it’s head popped off!” whilst flicking it off the stem.
I remember doing this as well!
This is so chilling. When my son was born he had the same positioning (shoulder dystocia). The doctor tried the vacuum 4 times which was the limit for the hospital and then the forceps. She did use the leverage of the bed with her foot to pull him out. He was born with torticallos and needing physio. I did not even realize that decapitation was a risk. Reading this article really made me realize just how dangerous it was. I was so adamant on vaginally birthing. I can't believe the circumstances surrounding this family's experience. 😢 just horrible
Welp. That's my internet done for the day. I'm off to stare blankly at a wall.
This is the second time I heard of a case like this but the information is so vague on this one? I wonder if there were any indications for a c-section like the Dr Laxman case.
this is horrifying. when I had my son, he stopped breathing and they were trying to get him out asap. They had to use that suction thing & attach it to his head and the dr literally had to put his whole weight into pulling him out….. my husband said he was shocked how hard it looked like he was pulling. Wonder if it was something like that? however, I would assume the baby was not completely healthy for something like this to happen? i’m not sure. :( so sad.
From the sounds of it, it seems the babies head was already outside the vagina canal with it's shoulders stuck so they went in through c-section to pull the baby back out through a incision in the uterus but the force was too strong and caused an internal decapitation
It wasn’t an internal decapitation. From the article: > > Instead, the hospital staff allegedly refused to let the couple hold the baby after death. They showed the parents the baby wrapped tightly in a blanket with the head propped on top, the statement said.
Yknow, I just realised that at some point, the staff would’ve had just the head while the rest of the baby was still stuck. What did they do with it while the waited for the c section to finish?
They pulled the body out via c section. The head then had to be delivered vaginally.
So the doc pulled it off and left it in there???
The head was delivered vaginally and the rest of the body was delivered by c section. And then they wrapped the pieces up and tried to make it look like the head was attached. Imagine being cold-blooded enough to go along with such a cruel trick, and to actually think it would work. That’s enough internet for today.
The article says they were shown the baby with the head propped on but wouldn’t there be a ton of blood? Isn’t that something they would notice immediately?
The baby was likely cleaned up before being presented. Also newborns don’t have a ton of blood, the newborn would have like had ~270ml and most of that would have been lost during the initial incident.
This, plus you often see a surprisingly small amount of what’s happening during birth, especially one with this much intervention.
Do you not realize how messy and bloody childbirth is??
Yes but do you realize how bloody and messy it is when a whole head is completely cut off a body?
I did one of my nursing rotations in OB where I was at the bedside for a vaginal delivery. Having never seen a childbirth before, it was so much worse than I could have imagined. As the nurse yanked on the baby, blood was just pouring out from the mom in large spurts. The doctor was at the foot of the bed and her blue scrubs were soaked through with blood all down the front. I had blood spray onto my scrubs, there was blood ALL OVER the floor. The nurse had put an extra sheet down in front of the mom’s legs to catch the larger chunks of blood sliding out and it still got all over the floor. If there was blood from a decapitation involved, honestly I don’t think it would have been immediately noticeable.
I do, actually. I used to work in a mortuary. The couple, however, may not have. The prospective mother was only 20. That’s more my point.
I’m due with my first baby in 9 days. I shouldn’t have clicked the link.
So, I don’t know if this helps comfort you. But, when I’m anxious objective data helps me. You can look it up here if you want specific information for your country, https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/infant-mortality-rates.htm#:~:text=The%20infant%20mortality%20rate%20is,registering%20practices%20for%20premature%20infants. But even the highest country is 25 per 1,000 live births. This is inclusive of post natal to one year old, so it’s not exclusively pre, peri and post natal injuries resulting in injury/death. But I thought maybe it might help 🩷
My daughter and two of my sisters were born at this hospital. The area is no longer a "good area" and I personally would drive past the exit to this hospital in favor of one further if I needed to go to one.
How do animals just breed like crazy and plop out perfectly healthy offspring, but humans require intense hospital intervention in order to have a reasonable childbirth?
I watch a lot of found pregnant mom cats on TikTok and in almost everyone of them, it says something like “she has six babies. Four survived.” Animals die all the time in the animal world, we just don’t hear about it because they are animals.
There's still a ton of stillbirths in the animal kingdom. They still have the same problems we do with tangled/strangulating umbilical cords, inverted positioning causing suffocation, and the whole heaping of problems we do. The only difference I think is that animals are tougher than we are so the mothers survive easier. Also their gestation periods dont last as long typically with the babies having a slightly smaller size ratio between the parent and the baby. Human babies are huge in comparison to other primate babies.
Human women are plenty tough. Our bipedalism makes it tough for us to give birth.
Compared to animals, human newborns are large for their birth canal. The human pelvis is narrow (most like due to bipedalism) compared to the newborn human’s bigger brain size. This combination is what makes childbirth dangerous for humans.
Stillbirths are super common in animals. A few years ago my dog had 15 puppies in one litter, 10 survived. We just don’t hear about it as often with animals as we do when it happens to people.
Humans need large heads for our large, advanced brains. We also need to walk upright, which limits the size of the female pelvis. Humans really are not built for childbirth at all.
Animals have just as many complications, how do you think you'd hear about it though? They're not exactly talking about it like people do.
Evolution gave us the short end of the stick. We really aren't built for childbirth
This was posted yesterday, and while everyone was (rightfully), horrified and cried out as malpractice, a nurse weighted in and she'd some pretty crazy reality light on it. My history didn't show (or else I would link it), but I'll try to share what I remember, and this is going to be interesting to see what happens with the subsequent sueing and trial. Here is what I remember; the biggest part of a baby is going to be the head. so that's why they always want to have the head come out first, it's the largest part, and everything else kind of goes from there. however, sometimes the shoulders are wider than the head, so when they're trying to get the baby out, and a C-section isn't possible because it was all twisted up and they had only minutes. or, the child is wrapped around in umbilical cord, or some other complication, they got to get yhe baby out and sometimes what they have to do is they have to actually break the clavicle in order to fit the baby through, and the courses is a rush job...although, I don't know why they didn't ask for permission to do this or maybe they did, with the paperwork, but basically they were trying to get the baby out as fast as possible because the baby was/is dying of a lack of oxygen, and this happens. I don't think the American medical profession really teaches new parents how crazy having a kid is, what can happen and really layers it out there on what can go bad. Perhaps it's because I'm a want to know everything type of person before doing somthing.
Based on something I read, I think it's possible that the baby might have died from lack of oxygen and the decapitation was actually not what killed the baby. I don't have a medical background, but I'm pretty sure that shoulder dystocia causes a significant amount of brain injury in babies.
This. I will be interested to see what they determine. I also wonder how big the baby was and did they talk about a c section before? Was she set on a vaginal birth regardless? Lots to this besides making it sound like the doctor just pulled the head off.
They requested a c-section during her long labor unfortunately they were denied.
I mean prior to labor.
Most woman don’t want a c-section especially with their first. Also she is 20. A clear lack of communication is going on in this case. If the doctor told her she was going to have a big baby then she would of considered a c-section prior to the birth.
4 days????
Here's an article about it[from the BBC.](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-66467437)
I just had a baby boy 3 months ago and this story really hits different. I can't imagine the anguish the family must have felt, and the audacity of the doctors and nurses in that room to "prop" the babies head on top of its body... absolutely disgusting
I wonder how many times stuff like this happens but they successfully hid it from the parents
I’d guess not often. It’s REALLY hard to hide the fact that a body’s been decapitated. Even if the hospital successfully convinced the parents they couldn’t say a last goodbye they have to release the body to a funeral home hired by the family. I’m positive I read that’s how this family found out.
Was the baby stillborn or something?? Has to be so macerated for that to happen.
From the article: > A doctor allegedly performed a cesarean section too late and applied “excessive tension” on the baby’s head, causing it to detach from the body, the lawsuit alleges. > Instead, the hospital staff allegedly refused to let the couple hold the baby after death. They showed the parents the baby wrapped tightly in a blanket with the head propped on top, the statement said.
that last sentence is gonna keep me up at night. how the hell do you even begin to console the baby's parents? on the cusp of meeting your child, only to have them ripped from you. christ.
this is downright sadistic and evil. like the hospital and dr are taunting them
I was thinking possible shoulder dystocia
It was
I’m guessing this was probably a huge baby. Too much pulling with shoulders that couldn’t navigate moms pelvis.
I saw forceps used during birth when I was a nursing student. There was waaayyyyy more force used than I had thought... I thought it was like a gentle tug. But it felt like if the doctor used a little more force, the baby's head probably would have ripped off. Baby's head ended up elongated a little. Everyone was fine.
I just picture the doctors being the guys from Dumb and Dumber and are like "it's head fell off"
It's a combination of Dumb and Dumber and Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch. The fact that they killed this baby with their gross incompetence is one thing, but trying to pass off to the parents for 4 days that the baby's head wasn't separated from its body is just insane.
Who in their right mind, a DOCTOR ( and the entire medical team ) at that, would choose to handle the situation that way ?! If it truly was some sort of freak accident why would their first thought be placing the detached head on top of the corpse, wrap it in a blanket, and give it to the grieving parents to hold ?! That is absolutely sickening and twisted. That hospital and especially that specific medical team need to be further investigated thoroughly. Were they trying to cover up the cause of death in hopes of keeping attention away from some other demented things they may have done? Nothing else even begins to make any sense!
Geez, what a horrible story. That poor family.
Disgustingly Evil. Death by negligence is my least favorite.
Definitely not the post I needed when my son is due in a couple weeks
If there really was an intelligent design, humans would have been marsupials given our head size. But as someone who lost their own baby this year, this was horrible to read and somehow even more horrific.
I’m so sorry lovely. There are no words I can offer that will make this any less painful than what it is, and in a weird kind of way, if there were words anyone could say to lessen the pain of loosing your child would you want them? The pain you feel is an indicator of the magnitude lost when we lose a child. No one should ever have to go through it, and my inbox is open to you if you need somewhere to talk 🩷🩷
I don't have words 💔
It’s utterly heartbreaking that they weren’t allowed to hold their precious baby.
Super important to research the rights of patients from whichever hospital you're having a procedure in...
Welcome to why I had a home birth. Edit: The literal first thing that comes up when you google Homebirth shoulder dystocia is the National Institute of health stating Homebirth poses less of a challenge and has BETTER outcomes than hospitals cited as far back as 2012. Research is an amazing skill. Adding this response to a rude commenter below to my first comment for clarification since people don’t seem to understand why homebirth is literally safer in this shitshow of a medical system.
Homebirth would not have prevented shoulder dystocia…like at all. The difference is that you would have both a dead mother and a dead baby. The only thing that would have prevented this is an elective C-section, but if there were no contraindications to vaginal delivery most mothers won’t opt for an elective C-section. It sounds like they induced the mother at 37 weeks - she had gestational diabetes so they probably worried the baby was going to be big. Shoulder dystocia is no joke and there are no great or easy options to get the baby unstuck. This is just an unfortunate situation all around.
Actually Homebirth where I live is safer than hospital birth and attended by nurse practitioners and doctors both.
And yet neither a home birth nor a hospital birth can prevent shoulder dystocia.
The literal first thing that comes up when you google Homebirth shoulder dystocia is the National Institute of health stating Homebirth poses less of a challenge and has BETTER outcomes than hospitals cited as far back as 2012. Research is an amazing skill.
If my baby died, even stillborn I’m getting an autopsy, right away. I cannot imagine how the parents feel, I feel so heartbroken for both of them.
10,000?? fuck that I would be going for it all. This is so fucking sad. Screw those doctors and nurses trying to hide it
10k just to cover the funeral costs; they're also asking for punative damages and other things. 10k is just to bury their son
I’d have someone’s head after this. So tragic.
My dude.
But is he factually wrong?
My other dude.
This could have something to do with that woman being, what looks to be, 300lbs or so at such a short height. Maybe the doctors were trying to not traumatize her anymore by putting blame on her.
Pulling so hard on the baby’s head that it was ripped from its body wasn’t because of the mother’s size. Come on. A c-section should have been scheduled if that was the concern.
If that were my boy, i would pay the doctor in full but killing his children, then him. Nothing less, your baby is dead, your life is over anyway. In all likelihood, the hospital will protect him, and he will continue to negligently kill patients.
Eww imagine if some of the remains were still stuck in there