Broken Femur

My baby (21 mths old) fell and hurt her leg.  We went her to the ER and they took an X-ray and told us she had broken her femur.  We felt sick when we saw the X-ray.  The orthopedic surgeon told us she wouldn't need surgery (what a relief) just a cast, a special cast called the Hip Spica cast.  

With in an hour we were admitted to the hospital and had a room in pediatrics.  They showed us a doll with the cast on to give us an idea of what our baby's cast would look like.  It looked very big and scary.  In order to put the cast on they would need to put our baby to sleep with anesthesia. They put and IV in her arm and we walked her down to the OR.

She was gone for about 2 hours.  We waited in our room and read information given to us about the cast and how to care for it.  After reading the 4 pages I had a lot of questions and wondered if I would be able to care for my baby in the best way possible.  It was all very overwhelming.  

When they brought her to us she was sleeping.  Peacefully.  It was so nice to see her free of pain.  I was worried about the cast but just to see her painless was so nice. 

 She slept for about 3 hours.  

(The doll with the yellow hip spica cast.)

When she woke up she was happy.  Playing with us and talking. She was ok! 

She never liked the IV. She was always trying to pull it out.  

They showed us how to change her diaper and told us to try to get her to drink something.  

Because she had been given anesthesia we had to stay overnight.  

She did pretty good in the hospital but cried most every time the nurses took her vitals because she thought it was going to hurt.  

The next day we went home.  They said her car seat was good enough and the best option.  Her cast was formed in a laying down position not a sitting position so any kind of sitting was hard but especially sitting in a car seat.  We tucked a small pillow behind her to give extra support.  The doctor said he advised against any road trips or excessive travel. 

At home we found that a giant bean bag was the best option for the first 2 weeks.  

(Until she learned how to scoot herself off of it.)  

To keep it clean we covered it with a blanket.  She spent most of the day here.  We even fed her on it.  It was a lifesaver.   

The doctor told us to keep her legs elevated the first few days, to change her diaper every hour to prevent leaks and at night time to change her diaper once a night and change her position twice a night.  

We felt very stressed and overwhelmed. 

After she had been in the cast for 1 week she learned how to roll.  She rolled everywhere.  She even rolled in her crib at night so we no longer worried about changing her positions at night or bed sores. 

Changing her diaper was very stressful the first week.  We figured out a system and it became much easier.  

Her inside diaper was the same size of diaper she wore before her cast.  (The hospital told us to use a size smaller but we found the same size worked a bit better.)  We pulled the velcro tabs off the diapers since we wouldn't be using them and for comfort.  The outside diaper was a size bigger to stretch around the cast and keep the inside diaper in position.  

We made sure to change her diaper every 1-2 hours.  If we ever went longer than 2 hrs we had leaks and wetness.  

Night time was a hard time to keep her dry.  We put blocks of wood under her crib to incline one side of her crib so it would help her pee to run into the diaper and not up her cast. It helped out a lot.  Anytime she would wake up during the night we made sure to change her but never woke her to change her. We had heard about other people who at night would add a maxi pad to their diapers, that did not work for us and created a bigger mess.