It was the result she has campaigned for, but the award of $16 million from a hospital following a malpractice lawsuit is bittersweet for US mum-of-four Caroline Malatesta.

 

Caroline, from Alabama, was awarded the sum after a traumatic birth experience at Brookwood Medical Centre which saw her fourth child ‘held in her vagina’ by nurses, to prevent its birth.

 

Caroline wrote about her traumatic experience in Cosmopolitan magazine in shocking detail.

 

 

The brave mother’s concerns were raised from the outset, with changes to her birthing plan. She was told to use the bathroom right away, because she wouldn’t be able to leave her bed for the rest of the labour – an order completely at odds with what she had agreed to.

 

She recalled: “I told her that my doctor said I’d have wireless monitoring and that I would be able to be mobile, but the nurse said my doctor wasn’t on call. From that point on, it became a back-and-forth of “But my doctor said I could” and “But you don’t get to.” The nurse treated me like a disobedient child!”

 

Then, when she wanted to get down on her hands and knees for the labour, she was ‘flipped over’ by nurses who ordered her to get on her back.

 

 

The worst part, however, came when a nurse ‘held her baby’s head into her vagina to prevent him from being delivered’.

 

“The nurses were holding me down, and I was struggling — really struggling. I grabbed the side of the bed, and at one point, I even put my foot up against the nurse’s shoulder and face to try and get leverage to flip back over, but was unsuccessful,” she wrote.

 

This ordeal lasted for six minutes, until the doctor arrived to take over and actually deliver Caroline’s son.

 

 

The relief from letting her labour progress naturally was overwhelming: “I felt immediate relief, because that deep pressure of her holding the head in against the force of my contractions was finally released. That’s why I’m so horribly injured, because she kept holding the baby in.”

 

Two years on, and Caroline has been left permanently affected by her ordeal. She now suffers with a chronic nerve condition called pudendal neuralgia as well as PTSD.

 

Caroline also revealed that, due to the pain she endures every day, she cannot have sex anymore as she needs to conserve her energy.

 

 

After filing a malpractice case against the hospital, the verdict was finally returned this week – and a court found that Caroline’s trauma was, indeed, a ‘direct result of misrepresentation’ by the hospital.

 

Speaking of her relief over the verdict, Caroline added: “This verdict is a wake-up call for hospitals that don’t take women seriously. It’s a wake-up call that they need to review the way they’ve been doing things and make changes. Sadly, I think it took this verdict to make them wake up.”

 

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