“Meconium” is a fancy medical term that basically means a baby’s first poop. Why should baby poop be a problem during labor and delivery? Because Meconium Aspiration Syndrome (MAS) can cause injury to a baby.
Birth injury attorney Laura Brown is here to let you know why seeing meconium during the birthing process could be a red flag.
If you’ve heard the term meconium, meconium is the medical word and it basically means baby poop. So meconium, if the baby is stressed during labor and delivery for a variety of reasons it could be something that doesn’t turn out to be a problem, it could be a signal of a developing problem that’s going to be significant.
But if the baby is stressed that could cause the baby to release meconium. When the mother’s water breaks, so the bag of water ruptures, if there’s meconium in the water that’s identifiable by doctors and nurses and so that can tell them that there may be a sign that this baby is or has been under stress.
It can be a signal that they need to watch carefully to see if there any signs on the fetal heart monitor strip that the baby is not getting enough oxygen. If the meconium passage is pretty severe and the baby has actually ingested some of the meconium in the amniotic fluid, then the baby can take that meconium into his lungs and can develop something called meconium aspiration syndrome, which impairs the baby’s ability to breathe and get oxygen to his brain.
So if you’ve heard the term meconium, if you think that meconium was identified in the birth of your child, and you have questions about whether or not that relates to an injury, feel free to give me a call. We’ll talk about what happened with you, look at your records and see if we can identify if there was a preventable solution that made this injury preventable.
