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Quinn Paola Pfeiffer was born Thursday, October 24th at 7:14am. After her warrior mama Christa labored for 53 hours trying to bring Quinn into the world her heartrate dipped and the midwives at the birth center decided to transfer Christa to St. Joseph's hospital. When we arrived there around 6am the OB on staff recommended based on the fact that Quinn's heartrate, though good, didn't have much variability that Christa go in for a c-section. Quinn was born less than 45 minutes later. Although Quinn was born at 40 weeks 1 day she was only 5 lbs 5 ounces at birth and had swallowed meconium in the womb so was quickly taken to the NICU. Within her first hour of life, the test results from Quinn's cord blood showed that more steps were going to need to be taken to support the small but mighty Quinn.
The cord blood test indicated that there may have been a potential for restricted oxygen and blood to Quinn's organs and as a precaution, she was almost immediately put onto a cooling blanket for "brain cooling" which has cooled her body temperature to 91 degrees for 72 hours. This treatment has been shown to reduce the likelihood and severity of long-term impairments. Quinn will remain in this cooled state until 7am Sunday morning when the doctors will slowly start to warm her and at this time there will be the possibility of learning more information that cannot be ascertained while she is still cooled.
Over the past 24 hours a lot of interventions have had to happen to support Quinn including being intubated to breathe fairly soon after being born and being fed through a port in her belly as well as two blood transfusions. She may be small but boy is she mighty and we can all tell that she has a lot of fight in her. She didn't hesitate to pipe up and protest with the initial IV.
Mama Christa is doing awesome. She was able to walk all the way to the NICU this morning to see Quinn (not a short walk) and is recovering from surgery at a pace much better than expected and may even be able to be discharged tomorrow (Saturday). Mama Jessica has not left Christa's side since her labor began at 2 am Tuesday morning except to be with Quinn and has shown the most immense strength and love. Although this is certainly not how any of us expected the most joyous of days to play out Christa, Jessica and Quinn are the three strongest women I know and watching them support and love each other through this has truly been a blessing to witness. There is no doubt that this is going to be a long journey so thoughts, prayers, energy, vibes, juju, etc. are all welcome!
“Come all without, come all within. You’ll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn”
-Bob Dylan
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K13hH0pJx5s 
