“Could you imagine scheduling your son’s circumcision and possibly having him die?” said Tim Groth
A newborn baby’s parents say he nearly bled to death and is fighting for his life after he was circumcised at a New York City hospital.
Tim and Gabrielle Groth welcomed a baby boy, Cole, on March 31. Due to a congenital heart disease, the infant had a stent placed to ensure proper blood flow. After its insertion, Tim said in a GoFundMe post that Cole was “one of the healthiest babies on the floor” and was set to be discharged from the hospital.
However, the baby’s health allegedly took a turn for the worse after he was circumcised the evening of April 14. Hours after the routine procedure at NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, “Cole nearly bled to death,” Tim said.
“I walk in and he is extremely pale. He is crying like I’ve never heard before,” Gabrielle told CBS News. “It was not my healthy boy I saw just the day before.”
NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital tells PEOPLE in a statement that they “cannot comment” on the incident due to “patient privacy policies.”
Tim recalled watching his son’s health deteriorate.
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“Throughout the night, for 10-plus hours, our son bled almost to death,” Tim added. “The vital organs of his body lost blood and oxygen, and he suffered liver damage, kidney damage, brain damage. How does that happen in a cardiac NICU?”
Tim said Cole was taken into emergency surgery. The couple says they were later told that their son’s intestines had died and turned black, and there was feces in his abdomen that all needed to be cut out.
“Cole now sits in ICU left cut wide open with countless tubes, medications, fluids, etc, helping us cling to the hope that he might live,” Tim said on GoFundMe. “Words can only touch the surface of the pain Cole, my wife, our family and I feel physically and emotionally from this.”
As of April 20, Cole remains at the hospital in critical condition. Tim said the newborn undergoes daily transfusions and had four surgeries in the past week. The worried father hopes sharing their family’s story will prevent this medical emergency from happening to others.
“There is no place for carelessness in medicine in our country,” he said. “Could you imagine scheduling your son’s circumcision and possibly having him die? We don’t want any other families or babies to experience the pain and heartbreak we are going through.”
“We are living a nightmare,” he added.
Gabrielle told CBS that she and her husband are just waiting for the day they can bring Cole home.
“I want him to know how strong he is and the strength he showed, and how much he fought,” she said.
