New Mother Awarded $350,000 After Medical Negligence Experience While Giving Birth.

18 August 2023

As a first-time mother, Martina was excited about giving birth and finally getting to meet her baby. The experience was meant to be one of the best moments of her life, but medical negligence has left an ongoing mark on their family.

Mother awarded settlement after experiencing medical negligence during birth

Martina and her wife, Anya, presented to hospital when Martina’s contractions became closer together and her waters broke. Everything happened very quickly, and despite her contractions not being as intense as she’d expected them to be, Martina gave birth to her son after just five hours of labour.

“I was actually surprised at the time because my contractions weren’t as strong as people made them out to be. I thought I was lucky,” Martina says now. “That changed very quickly.”

Martina and her son were discharged the morning after the birth to recover at home. They didn’t realise that Martina hadn’t fully delivered the placenta, which can happen when contractions aren’t strong enough to completely remove it. The midwife attending the birth hadn’t checked to make sure that the whole placenta had been expelled.

Things went downhill slowly. Martina wasn’t healing properly, she constantly felt sick and dizzy, but nothing was obviously wrong. She was scared to hold her son while she was standing up. Four weeks after giving birth she collapsed and was rushed to hospital.

The retained placenta had become infected, causing Martina’s ongoing pain and dizziness. She suffered a secondary postpartum hemorrhage and was quickly losing blood. The doctors performed an emergency removal surgery to extract the remaining placenta tissue.

Unfortunately, the surgery was conducted incorrectly, and the problems continued. Martina was hospitalised again and had to undergo a second removal procedure. The physical impact was immense, but the mental toll was equally significant. She developed severe post-partum depression and PTSD.

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Increasingly concerned, Anya started researching Martina’s experience, and discovered that she may be able to make a medical negligence claim. They approached Law Partners and were matched with their solicitor James. He was able to go through the details of Martina’s experience and put together a case against the hospital for medical negligence.

“It was meant to be the best experience of my life, but it turned into the worst. I didn’t know any better, and I certainly didn’t know I could get compensation,” Martina describes. “Law Partners changed everything for me.”

Martina was awarded $350,000 to assist with her recovery.

“James was brilliant. His hard work got us the result that we needed,” Martina says. “Now I can focus on being the mum I want to be.”