What About Work?

This question came up on the DDH Facebook group I am a part of so I thought it might be worth while to do a quick post about what we are doing.

We are so blessed that I am still on maternity leave (until August 29th) and because Brice is also a teacher he only had three more days left of work before summer break when Mackenzie got her first cast.  Therefore we were both able to be home with her for two whole months during the cast time.  We will both be back at work though at the beginning of the new school year.  When we found out she would be getting the cast, we immediately started planning and trying to figure out what we would do when the time came to go back to work.

A few of our options were:

• take an unpaid leave from work so one of us could stay home with her until the cast came off
• have Brice's mom come out and stay with us for the few weeks in September that Mackenzie will still have the cast (she is a retired school teacher); or,
• send her to the dayhome that we had lined up already

It took Mackenzie probably about a week and a half to two weeks to get used to being in the cast.  At 9 months old she adapted incredibly well.  I doubt she even remembers what it is like to not be restricted by the cast.  After that week and a half to two weeks she got back to sleeping well and being back to her regular happy self.  If you are a parent who is not able to take an extended leave from work to care for your child in a spica I would suggest trying to take at least two weeks when they first get the cast.  

Especially now that Mackenzie only has one leg casted, but even before, we were so impressed with how well she was doing.  Diaper changes were not nearly the nightmare we expected.  She crawls around and plays independently.  She is honestly just her regular happy self.  This made our decision to both go back to work much easier.  

The original plan was to have Mackenzie's Grandma come and stay with us for the 2-3 weeks she would still be in the cast.  After that she would go to the dayhome.  However, with the ease of caring for her in the cast, we decided to leave the decision up to her day home provider about whether she would like her to start there from the get go.  She seemed to be quite willing to take her despite the cast.  We went and visited her the other day so that she could see what the cast looked like and how Mackenzie adapted with it.  She had done a bunch of research online as well, and like us was impressed with how well Mackenzie was doing.  She told us she would be happy to take her.  In fact, she seems more concerned with dealing with Mackenzie's dairy allergy than the cast.

So, rather than have Mackenzie have to make two transitions, first with Grandma and then to the day home, we decided to go straight to the day home.  We are hoping for the best come September!