Spica Cast - Day 1

When we got home from the hospital with Mackenzie the first thing we set to work doing was trying to figure out how to keep her comfortable and how we should position her.  We already had our bean bag chair from when she was in the brace.  We also had borrowed another bean bag chair that was actually shaped like a chair from Brice's parents.  We tried her out in that chair and gave her one of her favourite toys, a rattling monkey, and she was just as happy as could be.  I can't tell you how happy this made us.  To see her just taking everything in stride and carrying on like nothing was any different made things so much easier for us as her parents.

We built a little "nest" on the floor with a pillow and a rolled up towel and she laid there happily on her back playing with an empty water bottle from the hospital while we got supper organized for both ourselves and her.  At this point she hadn't had any solid foods since supper the night before.

After supper we put her on her stomach, again building up supports underneath her to try to minimize the pressure from the cast, and to our utter amazement she immediately started spinning herself around and trying to army crawl.  She definitely isn't as fast as she was, she has a little extra weight and a lot less help from her feet, but she can move!

We put her to bed at about 6:00 because she was just so tired out from the day and lack of napping.  After we put her down we finally had some time to process the day and everything that had occurred.  Brice had done a lot of research online reading up about the procedure and what to expect.  I on the other hand would get extremely emotional and I think I was almost in denial to some extent and I was seriously un-prepared for caring for a child in a spica cast.  We set right to work searching online for any products or information that could help us get through the next 12 weeks with a child in a spica.

The first day was emotionally more difficult than we expected.  We took some time to mourn.  We were mourning the loss of our "normal" child, the things she would miss out on being able to do this summer.  The things we will not be able to do.  We needed to take some time to feel sad about the situation.  But to be honest, as soon as we saw our baby who was just as happy and content as ever, we were instantly taken to a good place.  We can do this.  We will  get through it.  Yes, there will be some difficult moments ahead and it will not be as "easy" as caring for a child who is not in a full body cast, but we will make it.

Night 1 in the cast was honestly terrible.  Mackenzie has been sleeping through the night from about 7 pm to 7 am since she was just over 3 months old (minus a few weeks where she was teething like a mad woman) and now woke up every hour from 6 pm until 3 am.  Most of those waking she could be quieted back down with just a minute or two or reassurance from us, she was still mostly asleep and I'm guessing that she would wake up and not be able to roll over like she would normally do and then get upset.  I did end up nursing her back to sleep a couple of times that night.  She slept from 3 until about 5 am and then again from 5:30 to 8:30 before waking up happy again for the next day.