Ashley and Leland Jones recently filed a wrongful death lawsuit “on behalf of their daughter, Rowyn, who was born on October 16, 2016, and died the next day.” In the lawsuit, the couple allege that their daughter’s death was “caused by a botched delivery and a failure to order a needed Caesarean section,” and names Dr. Ashley M. Lane, nurse Chelsey Roberts, and Bolivar OB/GYN LLC and its parent company, Signature Medical Group, Inc. as defendants, according to the suit.
When most expecting parents visit their hospital to deliver their unborn child, there’s a certain expectation that everything will go well and that the doctors and nurses will look after the laboring mother. For one Polk County woman, however, this was not her experience, according to a wrongful death lawsuit she and her husband recently filed in Polk County Circuit Court. The lawsuit was filed by Ashley and Leland Jones “on behalf of their daughter, Rowyn, who was born on October 16, 2016, and died the next day.” In the lawsuit, the couple allege that their daughter’s death was “caused by a botched delivery and a failure to order a needed Caesarean section,” and names Dr. Ashley M. Lane, nurse Chelsey Roberts, and Bolivar OB/GYN LLC and its parent company, Signature Medical Group, Inc. as defendants, according to the suit.
So what happened? What were the events that lead to the death of the infant and why does the couple believe their doctors and hospital are to blame? Well, it all began back on October 15, 2016, when Ashley began experiencing the early stages of labor. After spending some time laboring at home, she and her husband went to the hospital and were admitted. However, Ashley’s labor wasn’t progressing as it should, according to the lawsuit. As a result, Dr. Lane allegedly “ordered that Jones be given Pitocin, to cause contractions, when she should have ordered a Caesarean section to facilitate the delivery of the baby in a safe and timely manner.”
DanielReche via Pixabay, www.pixabay.com
For those who don’t know, Pitocin is a hormone that is often administered to laboring women to help kickstart labor contractions or make them more powerful so that labor speeds up. In addition, it’s been proven to help keep bleeding after childbirth under control and is sometimes used to deliver an infant when a miscarriage occurs. However, when Ashley was given Pitocin, it didn’t have the desired effects and instead caused her unborn daughter’s heart rate to “drop repeatedly during labor,” according to the lawsuit. Once she was born, the infant was immediately “placed in neonatal intensive care, and died the following day.”
Heartbroken, the couple filed their lawsuit and is hoping for some form of justice to come from it.
This isn’t the first time that Pitocin has been to blame for birth injuries or deaths over the years, however. In fact, in January 2017, a “Pennsylvania jury awarded $14.5 million to an Ohio couple who said that inappropriate use of Pitocin resulted in their son being born with cerebral palsy.” Then, in 2011, a “woman whose daughter was born with brain damage, allegedly due to the side effects of both Pitocin and Halperin,” was awarded $144 million by a Michigan jury.
Sources:
Wrongful Death Lawsuit Filed Over Botched Delivery, Failure To Order C-Section
Join the conversation!