Mother Awarded $16M After Traumatic Childbirth Experience

The decision to give birth to a child naturally or with pain medications is a hotly contested issue. It’s also an extremely personal decision for the family and more specifically the mother giving birth.

Caroline Malatesta was pregnant with her fourth child at 32 years old, and she decided to try the Brookwood Medical Center located in Birmingham, Alabama. While Malatesta’s previous three childbirth experiences were medicated, she was intrigued by this new medical center and its mission to provide a comfortable yet natural childbirth experience.

“Brookwood had a TV ad where a doctor was talking about ‘natural childbirth,’ and how they were really embracing that concept,” said Malatesta in an interview. “Hearing a doctor talk about it definitely added a layer of legitimacy for me that maybe natural childbirth could be better.”

The doctor from Brookwood that met with Malatesta promised her that she would be able to go through labor “in any position, not necessarily on the back” and that she wouldn’t need constant monitoring.

At around 20 weeks, Malatesta switched from St. Vincent’s, her previous medical center, to Brookwood. Then, in the middle of the night on March 12, 2012, she believed her water had broken. She went into Brookwood but the doctor wasn’t available yet, so the nurses cared for her.

Nurses are fully trained for situations like this, and normally they’re responsible for assisting in the delivery of a baby as well as supporting the infant and woman throughout labor. Most new mothers leave the hospital extremely grateful for the great work that the nursing team did, but that was not the case in Malatesta’s experience.

It began when Malatesta first entered the birthing room and was told by the nurse that if she didn’t use the restroom right away, she wouldn’t be able to during labor. Malatesta’s doctor told her that she would be able to be mobile, but her doctor was not the one present.

“From that point forward, it just became a back-and-forth case of ‘But my doctor said I could’ answered by ‘But you don’t get to,’ Malatesta shared. “The nurse treated me like a disobedient child!”

Everything else was very different from the promises in the advertisements. The ads said that women could wear their own clothes, but Malatesta was forced to wear a gown. The doctors said that you could give birth in any position, but Malatesta was forced to give birth on her back.

Throughout the whole delivery, Malatesta and her husband felt she was handled very aggressively. At one point, it seemed as if one of the nurses was holding the baby’s head firmly to stop it from being delivered.

Malatesta’s doctor rushed in a few minutes later and finished the delivery, and Malatesta’s son Jack was born.

Although happy to have given birth to a healthy baby boy, Malatesta remained disturbed by how she was treated at Brookwood. After her delivery, there were signs of an injury and she was having ongoing “abnormal nerve sensations” like pins and needles, numbness, and burning.

It only got worse as she was unable to have sex and forced to move in with her parents so they could care for her. Eventually, she found out that she was suffering from PTSD and pudendal neuralgia, which is a permanent and debilitating neural condition.

Malatesta requested to speak with the vice president of the center and sought a meeting with hospital administration, but she was refused. Although not wanting to go through the litigation process, she came to the realization that she had no other choice.

After an extended process, Malatesta and her family were awarded $16 million from Brookwood as a result of the jury finding the center guilty of medical negligence and fraud. While the financial retribution is nice, the health issues that Malatesta is left to deal with are believed to be permanent by her doctor.

Some say Malatesta took the case too far, but many women that have had similar experiences have reached out to her to share their stories. Some of their experiences even took place at the same hospital.

In the end, this case has earned maternity care some much-needed discussion on what safe and proper treatment actually is.