Here it is, the end of 2008, and the best treatment that doctors have for treating hip dysplasia is a spica cast or a pavlik harness or surgery, of course. For those of you that don’t know what a spica cast is – it is a body cast that they put your child in for an undetermined amount of time, to immobilize the hip joint that enables the socket to form properly around the joint.
Our experience was not great. We took our daughter into the children’s hospital at the “supposedly” best university in the southeast to have her treated. We were told she may get one of the three options – surgery, cast or harness. We were hoping for a harness because it was the least traumatic but we wouldn’t know until she came out to the recovery unit.
I was the only one allowed back into the recovery area with her and I saw her in the body cast and screaming like I have never heard her like before. Turns out 6 month old babies don’t like being in body casts anymore than we would. The way the cast was formulated was it went up to her chest and all the way down to one ankle on her left leg (the affected hip) and down to her knee on the right leg. Her legs were streched far apart like she was riding a horse and bent at the knees. She resembled a mummy sumo-wrestler.
The doctors didn’t tell us anything and we had to learn (and are still learning everyday) how to deal with this stupid cast so I am writing this to inform any other stressed out spica cast victims’ parents how to make life happier for you and your child.
1. Comfort – Your child will find great comfort in things like bean bags and hammocks because they mold to support their body without applying pressure to different points.
2. Safety – As of this post, I only found one car seat on the market that can be used for children in spica casts and that is the Hippo Model and runs about $500. Unless you find one on ebay for $75 and bid on it only to be outbid by a dollar in the last hour by some asshole (which is what happened to me). In that case, you may just get a larger car seat and take a saw to the sides so that your child can sit in it without getting her legs hung up on the sides and the impossible angle that the legs provide from being in the cast. I cannot recommend the latter because I don’t know how safe it is but I am hoping that it is safe because I don’t have $500 to spend on a car seat right away.
3. Cleanliness – Definitely stay on top of the diaper changes. You do not want any liquid to get down into the cast by any means because it will smell very bad and you have to get the child through the cast until the next casting. We use a small size for the interior diaper (placed between the child’s skin and the cast on the inside) and a larger than normal size for the exterior diaper (placed around the outside of the cast). We have found that the cast smells eventually and to treat the smell, we put hand sanitizer on a q-tip and applied the hand sanitizer on the inside of the cast to kill off the smelly bacteria. It really works and it vaporizes quickly so I don’t worry about the chemicals against my daughter’s skin.
4. Research – There are a lot of websites and blogs dedicated to spica casts so be resourceful and you’ll feel a lot better about your situation.
5. Strollers – We found that our daughter wouldn’t fit into the normal stroller because of the angle of her legs hitting the sides (the same problem as the car seat) so we put a folded up towel in the runner stroller so that it supports a triangle position beneath her lower back and angled her bottom toward the end of the seat (far forwards). Then we extended the straps as far as possible so that they would actually hook around her lower body (her upper body doesn’t get strapped in because the straps can’t reach that far). The situation is not ideal, but she deals with it okay and it enables us to transport her. Since the cast, her body weight has doubled and I cannot carry her around for extended time periods like on a simple grocery shopping trip.
6. Clothes – Our doctors told us that our daughter “couldn’t wear clothes – just wrap her in a blanket.” Ummm…no. It is October now and I am not doing to wrap my daughter in a blanket all winter – that is stupid and ridiculous. Plus, other sites advise to keep the cast dry and one spit-up and she would be finished! So this is what you do – dress your child in oversized shirts and coats (just a couple generous sizes up work fine) and for the legs, you can either cut off the top of your husband’s tube socks and put them on the legs or you can use your own brightly colored socks to really make a statement! The other day, I put Ava in my halloween socks (black/white striped with skulls) and she looked like a baby rocker chick. That outfit, accompanied by the jogger stroller setup (described above) and everyone in the store was trying to not get caught staring at us.
7. Patience – Just speaking from my experience, Ava took about 3 days to get used to the spica cast. We (the parents) hate the cast much more than she does. It is important for her to have it and at much as it sucks, the time will come when this will all be a bad memory so just hang in there and we will do the same.
