A birth is almost always an extreme event in a couple’s life. Extremely beautiful, extremely painful, extremely scary. However, a man from Australia seems to have grossly underestimated this: He claims that witnessing the birth of his child put a massive mental strain on him. And he blames the hospital where his wife gave birth via cesarean section.
Anil Koppula took legal action against the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne for what he said was a breach of its duty of care. The man states that he was in the delivery room in 2018 when his partner gave birth to their child there by cesarean section. Koppula was horrified by what he saw.
According to the Herald Sun newspaper, he claims he was “encouraged” and “demanded” by hospital staff to be in the room during the C-section. But the sight of his wife’s “internal organs” and blood has remained indelibly in his memory ever since. The father claims that this caused “the onset of a psychotic illness.” As a result, his marriage also broke up.
For all of this, he went to court to demand compensation from the clinic – amounting to one billion euros. However, he was unable to convince the judge that both his illness and the end of his marriage were due to the experience in the delivery room. The hospital also denies that it has not fulfilled its duty of care: fathers have the opportunity to inform the medical staff at any time during the birth if they are not feeling well.
Ultimately, there was no compensation for the allegedly traumatized father. By the way, it is not known how the mother is coping with everything she has experienced.
Sources: “UniLad”, “7News”
