Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Diapering with a Spica Cast

So, diapering has never been fun, but with a spica cast it takes on a new challenge.  Since it's really important to keep the inside of the cast dry, diaper changes need to happen frequently.   Even with frequent diapers, the risks of getting things wet or stinky and dirty are pretty high.  So, here's what we did this time.

We use an extra small diaper on the inside of the cut out and a really large diaper on the outside.  So, for Ryan who is about 33 pounds and 6 years old, we used a size 3 Pamper for the inside and a size 6 Huggies diaper on the outside.

The two diaper system works pretty well most of the time.  However, if his little boy parts were not positioned just right, we had an issue with urine going up into the cast.  To solve this issue, I used a maxi pad without wings to line the top front portion of the cast, being careful to only stick it to the cast  and not his wound dressing.  This created another barrier.


(If you look right about where the green bar is you can see the maxi pad around the edges of the cast.)

We also found that sometimes stinky and dirty "things" would get on the edge of his cast on the backside.  To make for easy clean up, we just lined the edges with mini pads.  This also helped to prevent the cast from bugging his skin.

I never thought I'd store maxi pads in my family room and I never thought I'd hear myself say to my 15 year old son, "No, that's a mini pad, I need a maxi pad."  And, I never thought my 6 year old son would need them.  But I sure am thankful for their helpfulness!

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