GoFundMe · https://www.gofundme.com/f/medical-and-funeral-expenses-for-baby-gwen
Her parents declined the vitamin K shot, and the ER didn't stock it. Every adult in her story has a case that holds up until someone questions it.
He who pleads his cause first seems right; until another comes and questions him.
Proverbs 18:17
On the night of Aug. 20, 2023, Stephanie and Eric Biesenbach carried their 11-day-old daughter, Gwen, into Lonestar 24HR ER in New Braunfels, Texas. It's a freestanding ER next to a car wash, and Gwen's belly button wouldn't stop bleeding. Her parents had declined the vitamin K shot at birth and given her oral drops, which they trusted would protect her. Dr. Nicole Malouf tried seven ways to stop the bleeding over nearly three hours. The ER didn't have the shot on hand. The transport team gave it at 3:45 a.m., and Gwen died shortly after 9, nearly 11 hours after she came in.
ProPublica told her story on Nov. 8, three days after one of two new JAMA studies found vitamin K bleeding in newborns up 347% from 2017 to 2025. Every adult in it has a case, and each one points somewhere else. "We did our own research," Stephanie says, while the expert reviewing a possible lawsuit blamed the oral drops. Malouf, for her part, says she did "everything that I could with the resources I had." Stephanie's mother, Lauren Hoel, a longtime nurse practitioner, says the doctor should have sent a newborn straight to a NICU, and the Texas Medical Board largely agreed. It found Malouf missed the disorder and was slow to transfer Gwen, and its penalty was 24 hours of continuing education.
Proverbs has a line for any dispute, and every adult in Gwen's story is its first speaker, sure of a case nobody had questioned yet.
The proverb's point is that nobody gets to be right alone. Stephanie never asked her mother about the shot, because she knew exactly what Hoel would say. Malouf was questioned only afterward, in front of the board, and she recalls one member telling her, "Well, I just don't believe you." She grieves that night too: "I still have my three daughters, and now she has lost hers."
The proverb won't pick one of these adults to blame. A case nobody questions in time doesn't stay harmless, and in the 11 hours that began in that ER by the car wash, someone ended up paying for it. That night it was the one person in the room who couldn't make a case at all.
Sources
A Texas baby bled for 11 hours. Her parents had declined the vitamin K shot, and the ER didn't have it.
ProPublica
U.S. infant bleeding episodes jump as vitamin K refusals rise, studies find
NBC News / Reuters
Infant bleeding cases surge as parents reject vitamin K shots
The New York Times (via Star-Advertiser)
Declining use of newborn vitamin K shot linked to higher risk of infant bleeding
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Increased infant bleeding tied to lower acceptance of newborn vitamin K dose
CIDRAP