Adjusting to the spica cast was not fun for my little girl(or me), but it happened quickly. We had to modify a lot. You don't realize how much it will affect your life until it's on. Like a politician, we had to pass the bill before we could find out what was in the bill. In the days leading up to her first surgery and her cast, I got overwhelmed with reading about it and what we'd need and how to manage. My brain just shut off and I decided to take it easy on supplies until the cast was on. I'm really glad I did.
Sleep was pretty hard to come by for the first 10 days or so. I required a lot of this.
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| Number one supply you'll need with a child in a spica cast: coffee |
My little girl was always a tummy and side sleeper. There weren't enough pillows to put her on to make her happy on her back, so for the first 4-5 days, she was up every 30-60 minutes. It got slightly better after that, but she was up every 1-2 hours, which was still pretty bad. Finally, out of desperation I put her on her belly to sleep. We saw a whole lot of improvement. We still had bad nights, but it wasn't a nightly thing.
Our high chair became a thing of the past. With her legs casted as wide as they were, just like her car seat, she didn't fit. We came across a pretty awesome alternative(and cheap too!) called a
TotSeat. A few pillows on one of the dining room chairs and the TotSeat and we were in business. She could join as at the table.
Extra pillows definitely came in handy. Thank goodness I'm a pillow hoarder. Two for under her when eating, extra pillows in bed, extra pillows when laying on the floor. Our trusty Boppy pillow was a big help too.
Diapering got much easier as I got the hang of it. All of the stuff I read online really blew it out or proportion, making it seem like a bigger chore than it really is. People recommended using things like spatulas to get the small diaper up the cast, they even make tools to help, but all of this was overkill. Thank goodness I didn't spend any money on that stuff. I can fit my hands up the cast just fine to stuff the inner diaper on. It was no time flat before I could manage diaper changes in 3 minutes or so, with nothing extra needed. It just involves some extra flipping and stuffing. We did have a few blowouts but God bless Gore-Tex lining. It took a lot of baby wipes but they were easily managed.
Miss Thang proved how resilient babies are. Within 5 days of having her cast put on, she was crawling again. Within a week, she was pulling herself to standing again. She could entertain herself again, crawling to her toys, so something fancy like a spica table wasn't needed.
With it being summer, we were pretty much home bound. We can't go out shopping or out to eat much because she doesn't fit into standard highchairs or in the front of shopping carts. We did manage to get out to the store once, but we had to lay her down in the back of the cart with pillows, leaving zero space for the things you need to buy. Plus people can't see the baby in the cart and they think you are talking to your groceries and it kind of freaks them out.
Two weeks after having her cast put on, we went in for a check and x-rays, to make sure her leg was good and in place. So far, so good, everything looked great.
We took advantage of having her legs immobilized and gave her her first pedicure.
Aside from having to stay at home and having issues with sleep(and let's be honest, she's been a horrible sleeper since birth so this wasn't exactly a huge change), we all adapted very well. The first 6 weeks flew by without any incident, and we were scheduled for our first cast change after those 6 weeks were up.
