Pregnancy should be a time when you feel supported and protected by your medical team. When that trust is broken because your doctor missed something as serious as gestational diabetes, the consequences can be devastating. Parents whose babies suffered birth injuries because their GDM went undiagnosed often wonder if they have legal recourse. The answer is yes, you may have grounds for a medical malpractice lawsuit if your healthcare provider's failure to screen for or diagnose gestational diabetes resulted in serious harm to you or your child.
What Is Gestational Diabetes and Why Does It Matter?
Gestational diabetes (GDM) is a condition where pregnant women develop high blood sugar levels, even if they never had diabetes before. It typically appears between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy and usually resolves after delivery. But while it's happening, GDM poses real risks to both the mother and baby.
When gestational diabetes goes undetected, the extra glucose in your blood crosses the placenta and causes your baby to produce more insulin. This leads to excessive growth, creating what doctors call macrosomia, where babies weigh over nine pounds at birth. These larger babies face a much higher risk of getting stuck in the birth canal during delivery, which can lead to shoulder dystocia and permanent nerve damage. Meanwhile, mothers with undiagnosed GDM are at increased risk for dangerous complications like preeclampsia, a condition involving dangerously high blood pressure that can lead to stroke or organ failure.
The medical community has established clear protocols for screening pregnant women for gestational diabetes precisely because these risks are well-known and preventable. When doctors fail to follow those protocols, and serious injuries result, that can constitute medical negligence.
Can You Sue for Failure to Diagnose Gestational Diabetes?
You can sue a healthcare provider for failing to diagnose gestational diabetes if their negligence directly caused harm to you or your baby. Medical malpractice cases aren't about doctors making honest mistakes or poor outcomes that no one could have prevented. They're about providers failing to meet the accepted standard of care that any competent doctor would have followed in the same situation.
In New York, like most states, you need to prove four specific legal elements to win a medical malpractice case:
- You must show that a doctor-patient relationship existed, which establishes that the provider owed you a duty of care
- You need to demonstrate that the doctor breached that duty by failing to meet the standard of care
- You must prove causation, meaning the breach directly caused your injuries
- You need to show that actual damages occurred, whether that's medical expenses, ongoing care costs, pain and suffering, or other tangible losses
The challenge in these cases often comes down to proving what should have happened versus what actually happened, and connecting that failure directly to the harm suffered.
What Doctors Are Supposed to Do About Gestational Diabetes
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) sets the standard of care that doctors are expected to follow when screening for gestational diabetes. These aren't suggestions. They're established medical protocols based on decades of research showing how to best protect pregnant women and their babies.
According to ACOG guidelines, all pregnant women should be screened for gestational diabetes between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy. The standard approach is a two-step process. First, you take a 50-gram one-hour glucose challenge test. If that test comes back abnormal, you then take a more comprehensive 100-gram three-hour oral glucose tolerance test to confirm the diagnosis.
But for women with certain risk factors, waiting until the second trimester isn't good enough. If you have a history of gestational diabetes in a previous pregnancy, obesity, or a family history of diabetes, you should be screened much earlier, potentially in your first trimester. This early screening allows doctors to catch and manage the condition before it causes complications.
When your doctor follows these protocols and screens you appropriately, gestational diabetes is highly manageable. With proper monitoring, dietary changes, and sometimes medication, the risks to both mother and baby drop significantly. The tragedy occurs when providers skip the screening, misinterpret the results, or ignore clear warning signs.
Common Ways Doctors Fail to Diagnose Gestational Diabetes
Medical negligence in gestational diabetes cases typically falls into a few recognizable patterns. Understanding these can help you identify whether your situation might warrant legal action.
The most straightforward failure is simply not ordering the glucose screening test at the appropriate time. If you never received screening between 24 and 28 weeks, and you developed complications consistent with undiagnosed GDM, that's a red flag. Similarly, if you had clear risk factors like previous gestational diabetes or significant obesity, and your doctor didn't screen you early in pregnancy, that could constitute a breach of the standard of care.
Sometimes the screening happens, but doctors mishandle the results. Borderline or slightly elevated glucose levels might get dismissed as "not that high" or "probably fine," when they actually warrant follow-up testing or closer monitoring. In other cases, lab results get lost in the shuffle, never making it to the doctor who needed to see them, and no one follows up with the patient.
Another form of negligence involves ignoring obvious clinical signs. If a patient is showing symptoms consistent with gestational diabetes or if risk factors are mounting, but the doctor waves them off without proper investigation, that failure can have serious consequences. Even after a positive diagnosis, negligence can continue if the provider fails to adequately monitor fetal growth, check placental health, or adjust the birth plan based on the baby's size.
What Injuries Can Result from Undiagnosed Gestational Diabetes?
The legal concept of damages requires that actual harm occurred as a direct result of the medical negligence. In gestational diabetes cases, the potential injuries range from temporary complications to permanent, life-altering disabilities.
For babies, the most common issue is macrosomia, which creates a cascade of risks during delivery. When a baby weighing over nine pounds tries to pass through the birth canal, shoulder dystocia can occur, where the baby's shoulder gets stuck behind the mother's pubic bone. The emergency maneuvers required to free the baby can cause permanent nerve damage, particularly to the brachial plexus, the network of nerves that controls arm movement. This results in conditions like Erb's palsy, where children lose function in their arm, sometimes permanently.
Even more devastating outcomes occur when the difficult delivery leads to oxygen deprivation. Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) occurs when a baby's brain doesn't receive enough oxygen during birth. This can result in cerebral palsy, developmental delays, seizure disorders, or other neurological conditions that require lifelong care and treatment.
Mothers face their own set of risks from undiagnosed gestational diabetes. Preeclampsia is significantly more common in women with GDM, and when it's not identified and managed early, it can progress rapidly to life-threatening complications including stroke, liver damage, or kidney failure. The presence of a macrosomic baby also dramatically increases the likelihood of needing an emergency cesarean section, which carries its own surgical risks and typically involves a longer, more difficult recovery than a planned C-section would.
How Strong Does Your Case Need to Be?
Medical malpractice cases are among the most complex types of personal injury litigation. You can't simply show that your doctor didn't screen you and that your baby was injured during birth. You need to establish a direct causal connection between the failure to diagnose and the specific harm that occurred.
This means having medical experts who can testify that a competent doctor in the same situation would have screened you for gestational diabetes, that such screening would have detected the condition, and that proper management of diagnosed GDM would have prevented or significantly reduced the injuries that occurred. You'll need medical records documenting what screening was or wasn't done, what risk factors were present, and what complications arose during pregnancy and delivery.
The stronger cases typically involve clear deviations from standard protocols. If you were never screened at all during the recommended window, that's more straightforward than a case where screening happened but results were interpreted differently than they should have been. Similarly, if you had multiple risk factors that should have triggered early screening and your doctor ignored them, that's compelling evidence of negligence.
The severity of the resulting injuries also matters from a practical standpoint. Medical malpractice cases are expensive to pursue, requiring expert witnesses, extensive medical record review, and potentially years of litigation. Cases involving permanent injuries like cerebral palsy, Erb's palsy, or serious maternal complications are more likely to be worth the significant investment required to see them through to resolution.
What Compensation Can You Receive?
When medical negligence causes serious harm, New York law allows you to recover compensation for both economic and non-economic damages. Understanding what's recoverable helps families assess whether pursuing a claim makes sense for their situation.
Economic damages cover the tangible financial losses you've suffered and will continue to suffer. This includes all past and future medical expenses related to treating the injuries caused by the negligence. For a child with cerebral palsy resulting from oxygen deprivation during a difficult delivery, this could mean decades of physical therapy, occupational therapy, medical equipment, medications, and potentially surgeries. It also includes lost wages if you had to leave your job to care for an injured child, or reduced earning capacity if the mother suffered permanent complications that prevent her from working.
Non-economic damages compensate for pain and suffering, emotional distress, and loss of quality of life. These are harder to quantify but no less real. A child living with permanent nerve damage in their arm will face limitations and challenges throughout their life. A mother who developed preeclampsia that went unmanaged may have suffered terrifying symptoms and lasting health effects. These experiences deserve recognition and compensation.
In cases involving truly egregious negligence, punitive damages may also be available, though these are rare and reserved for situations where the provider's conduct was particularly reckless or intentional.
How Long Do You Have to File a Lawsuit?
New York has strict time limits for filing medical malpractice lawsuits, and missing these deadlines typically means losing your right to sue entirely. For adults, you generally have two and a half years from the date of the malpractice to file your lawsuit. But for cases involving birth injuries to children, different rules apply.
When a child is injured due to medical negligence during pregnancy or delivery, the statute of limitations is often extended. In many cases, the injured child has until their tenth birthday to file a lawsuit. However, there are exceptions and complications to this rule, particularly depending on when the injury was discovered and what specific type of claim you're pursuing.
These deadlines are strictly enforced by New York courts. Even if you have a strong case with clear evidence of negligence and severe injuries, filing one day late can result in your case being dismissed entirely. This is why it's crucial to consult with an attorney well before any deadline might expire. Building a medical malpractice case takes time, including gathering records, consulting with medical experts, and preparing the detailed paperwork required to file.
What Happens Next If You Think You Have a Case?
If you believe your doctor's failure to diagnose gestational diabetes led to serious injuries, the first step is gathering your medical records from your pregnancy and delivery. These records form the foundation of any potential case and will be the first thing an attorney reviews when evaluating whether you have grounds to sue.
A qualified medical malpractice attorney will review your records and typically consult with medical experts who can assess whether the standard of care was met. These experts, usually OB-GYNs or maternal-fetal medicine specialists, can identify deviations from accepted protocols and provide opinions on whether those deviations caused your injuries. Not every bad outcome constitutes malpractice, and these expert reviews help separate cases with merit from those that unfortunately just involve poor luck or unavoidable complications.
Be prepared for the process to take time. Medical malpractice cases in New York often take years to resolve, whether through settlement or trial. But for families dealing with permanent injuries that will require care and treatment for years or even a lifetime, pursuing accountability and compensation can make a significant difference in their ability to provide for their child's needs.
Did Your Child Suffer a Birth Injury After Your Doctor Ignored Your Gestational Diabetes?
Get a free case review to learn more about your legal options.
Summing It Up
Gestational diabetes is a serious condition, but it's also manageable when caught early through proper screening. The medical community has clear guidelines about who should be screened, when screening should happen, and what to do with the results. When doctors fail to follow these protocols and that failure causes harm, families have the right to seek compensation through a medical malpractice lawsuit.
If your baby suffered birth injuries like Erb's palsy, cerebral palsy, or other permanent damage, or if you developed serious complications like preeclampsia, and you were never properly screened for gestational diabetes despite being in the recommended screening window or having risk factors, you may have grounds for legal action. The same is true if you were screened but the results were mishandled or ignored.
These cases require proving that your doctor deviated from the accepted standard of care and that this deviation directly caused significant harm. With medical records, expert testimony, and legal representation experienced in birth injury cases, families can hold negligent providers accountable and secure the resources needed to care for their injured loved ones. No amount of money can undo what happened, but it can provide for necessary medical care, therapy, and support that might otherwise be financially out of reach.
