The family of a mother who died while giving birth has filed a lawsuit on Thursday seeking $42 million from a New York hospital.
Christine Fields, 30, of Brooklyn, New York, reportedly passed away after giving birth at Woodhull Hospital in November. Her family claims hospital staff did not properly perform an emergency C-section and monitor her post-surgery.
The mother, who has two other children, was conscious and responsive after the baby was born but went into cardiac arrest the next day. The family’s attorney said there was pooling blood, which occurs when the blood is unable to pump back to the heart and collects in the extremities.
Attorney Ira Newman spoke with PIX11, saying, “Her baby’s heart rate drops, and there’s fetal distress. She’s rushed in for a C-section, and we are investigating and have learned from the [medical examiner’s] office that there was pooling blood.”
A $42 million lawsuit has been filed against the hospital. Denene Witherspoon, the mother of Fields, claims her daughter was “healthy.”
“I miss my daughter so much, and I need to know what happened to my daughter,” she told media outlets.
“My daughter was healthy, my daughter was 30, my daughter did everything right. She had had a birthing plan. Nothing was followed according to her birthing plan, and now I don’t have my child, and it just hurts so much. that was my heart. She made me so proud, and now I don’t have that in my life anymore. Now, I have to help raise three kids that don’t have a mother.”
Fields leaves behind three children, including her newborn child and her fiancé Jose Perez, who has been left devastated.
“We were looking forward to a wedding this year, but she ended up pregnant and we put it on hold. We just thought it was going to be a regular birth like the first, second kid,” Perez told the New York Daily Mail.
Fields’ autopsy results are pending. Family lawyer Sanford Rubinstein said: “Three children, ages 3, 5 and a newborn infant, will now be raised without a mother. This is tragic. This family had no reason to think this wasn’t going to be a healthy childbirth.”
The mother’s tragic passing comes three years after the death of Sha’Asia Washington, who also died during an emergency C-section at the hospital in 2020.
City data from 2019 shows that black mothers across the five boroughs are more than twice as likely to die giving birth than white mothers, PIX11 News reported.
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