To Clot or Not to Clot?

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!  Today was a very long and tiring day for Zachary, and even for Daddy.  Mommy and Daddy began the day at 9am mass because they were too exhausted to make it to 11pm on Christmas Eve, and arrived at St. Joe's to bring some Christmas cheer around noon.  Zach seemed to be doing rather well, and his central catheter IV that was implanted last night to administer antibiotics was working well.  He slept for a while after Mommy and Daddy arrived, but that did not stop them from keeping with tradition and watching ELF at Zach's bedside on Mommy's laptop.  After waking, feeding, and taking Christmas portraits (above) in the early afternoon, Zachary never settled down enough to go back to sleep, and was rather irritable for several hours.  Jodee and Mark arrived soon thereafter and were treated to the finer side of child rearing with many "Zach Attacks" of crying, squirming, and overall grumpiness.  We thought he was possibly a little over stimulated and was beyond his sleep window, but tried our best to calm him and have him get a little sleep.  It was around this time that we noticed his IV was backing up just slightly with blood. Dianne, today's nurse, came in and flushed it through with saline, but a short time later Zachary's IV machine began chiming in with occlusion warnings.  This led to a rather lengthy procedure by the nurse practitioner, and eventually the neonatologist to attempt to flush out his IV line to allow further fluids and antibiotics to flow properly.  It seems some of the blood that had backed up into the IV had actually clotted and blocked the tube from functioning properly. Zach appears to have blood that clots very quickly and efficiently, which is very good for overall health, but is not good at all for things like blood samples, and IV's.  After several attempts, and several different medicines, they decided to remove the catheter all together and insert a new one later this evening.  Having not slept much at all, and putting up a pretty good fight during most of the procedure, they decided to allow Zach to rest and feed once more before beginning anything new.  At this point he was so over exerted that he basically passed out and slept for an hour.  Daddy was more than ready to join him, having stood by and watched the whole procedure and been worried throughout.  Luckily, Cindy and Amanda arrived and were able to enjoy seeing Zach when he was much more his normal self, and resting comfortably.  They even brought him a really soft blanket that Santa had dropped at their house by mistake, he must have known they were coming in today!  After getting some much needed rest, Zach awoke for a very brief time and fed until he fell asleep once more with bottle in mouth.  After spending a full day at the NICU Mommy and Daddy were drained, and decided to head home to rest themselves.  Tonight's plan is to insert the new catheter, continue his antibiotics, and hopefully get him back to his routine of wake, feed, sleep, repeat.  Merry Christmas once again all of you, and God Bless - Brian + Kimmie