Ivy Rose Spica Chair

The day we got home from the hospital with Mackenzie in the spica cast we went straight to work searching online to find out how to make her as comfortable as possible.  One of the things that kept coming up again and again were Ivy Rose Spica Chairs.

Stephanie makes absolutely beautiful chairs custom built to each individual kid's cast.  Every spica cast is different and may even vary from one cast to the next in the same child due to getting the hips in the most stable position for that individual.  After some conversation back and forth via email we decided on a basic "jelly-bean" chair.  While there is the option to have your chair personalized with Stephanie's beautiful paintings we were in a hurry to get the chair as soon as possible and honestly didn't have the brain power at that point to decide on a design.

We were told that there were two other chairs that she had on order to make on Monday but that our chair would be built and shipped on Wednesday.  We received it that Friday so we only went 1 week in total without having it.  And very much appreciated the rush to get it to us.

We decided on purple for the chair.  It has a painted table top and on the reverse side is chalkboard which would be lots of fun for a child a little older.  It was personalized with Mackenzie's name on the back of the chair and a nice message on the chalkboard.

The seat is cut out to accommodate a child in a spica cast so that they are able to sit upright.  There is a "seat belt" type strap to hold the child in place.

Mackenzie uses the chair for all of her meals if we are at home.  When she has finger foods I put down a plastic placemat on top of the table to protect it a bit.  She also plays in there regularly as her only other option is to be laying on the floor on her stomach.  We try to keep her off her back when she is awake because she sleeps on her back.

Her new favourite game is to take the toys from the chair and drop them over the side.  Usually she starts with the table full of toys and in about 10 minutes it is empty!

This chair has been amazing.  I don't know what we would do without it.  Thank you Stephanie for building these chairs for our Hip Kids.

I only wish we had a more portable one so we could take it with us wherever we go.

My hope is that we will be able to pass this chair on to someone else who can use it when Mackenzie is finished with it.  It was quite expensive to have it shipped up to Canada and hope that it can be used and loved by someone else after we are finished.