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Holly Baumstark’s doctor scheduled a cesarean section for the birth of her second child, a girl. Her son had arrived through an uneventful C-section, and she and her husband expected a similar experience. On the morning of the surgery, in 2019, she shopped on Amazon for newborn ballerina dresses.
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But once she was on the operating table, doctors at Piedmont Rockdale Hospital, near Atlanta, found a big problem: Ms. Baumstark’s placenta had fused with scar tissue left on her uterus from the previous surgery, a dangerous complication known as placenta accreta. Her husband, Lee Blasingame, watched blood gush from her belly as their daughter was born.
Fifteen hours later, Ms. Baumstark, 27, died from internal bleeding. She never met their daughter, Nevaeh, now 6.
“We tell Nevaeh stories about Mama Holly,” Mr. Blasingame said in an interview. In February, a jury awarded his family $42 million in damages after he sued a doctor for improperly managing the complex delivery. (The doctor is appealing the verdict.)
Placenta accreta used to be very rare, affecting 1 in 4,000 pregnancies in the 1970s. But as cesarean surgeries have become more common in recent decades, so has accreta. While its prevalence has been hard to pin down, one report found a rate as high as 1 in 272 deliveries.