Dr. Amy Quinn, director of the University Health neonatal ICU (NICU), was 25 weeks pregnant when she developed preeclampsia, a serious condition characterized by high blood pressure. Because of this, she had to deliver her baby, Hadley, at 2 pounds 6 ounces.
“I was admitted to the hospital for monitoring, and then my blood pressure just got too high where it wasn’t safe to stay pregnant any longer,” Quinn said. “I was induced and it took quite a while for her to deliver, but when she delivered she was very small.”
At 2 pounds 6 ounces, baby Hadley was put in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). She was premature and needed help breathing, so doctors intubated her and then put her on a ventilator.
“The day after she was born … (we learned) she had pretty significant bleeding on both sides of her brain,” Quinn said. “We switched modes from worrying about her breathing to worrying about the bleeding in her brain and the progression of that and the procedures that she needed to go through.”
Dr. J.B. Cantey is a neonatologist at University Health. “The bleeding itself can injure the brain, but what can also happen and what happened in Hadley’s case, is when the blood clots, it gets sucked down the pipes of the way the spinal fluid normally circulates and it can cause a blockage,” Cantey said.
Cantey and the NICU team took steps to remove that fluid to decompress some of the pressure on Hadley’s brain. She had multiple spinal taps to decrease some of that fluid.
“By coming to a multidisciplinary consensus, we were able to find something that worked for Dr. Quinn and Hadley, both as mom and as doctor,” Cantey said.
The procedure was so effective that Quinn was able to avoid other more invasive surgeries for Hadley.
“Without University Health I don’t think I would have the happy and healthy child that I have now,” Quinn said.
