Rude Awakening...

So Mabel fell asleep a little later last night because Zack and I ate dinner a little bit later than normal. It was only a half an hour later that she actually fell asleep, and then shortly after we decided we should strike while the iron was hot and try to sleep ourselves. That was a little after 9:00. I have been hoping to catch up on some kind of sleep since our nights have not been good for a while now.

At 10:20 or so Mabel started to cry, I looked in the monitor and saw she was stuck on her side again. So I got up, went to her room to pick her up and reposition her. She was so sleepy and she just wanted me to hold her a bit, so I did. I sat down in the rocking chair and then I noticed...my arm was wet. Oh NO! Mabel was wet! I put her on the floor to change her and she seemed so relieved that I realized right away what was the problem. As I undressed her I quickly realized that the pee soaked her sleep sack, onesie, cloth outside diaper, inside diaper and gulp...the cast! It appears that she was in some kind of weird side position that must have created a gap in her diaper so when she peed it just got everywhere. Poor Mabel was not happy when I undressed her and she realized she was still wet and now cold. She was screaming! Gone are the care free days of thinking that when a baby pees on their PJ's and sheet that what makes for a rough night - the days are long gone of just changing her and washing her down and changing the crib sheet...oh no, now we have this stupid spica to deal with and that can't come off and that needs to stay dry - takes FOREVER to dry and most important not smell!

I wrapped Mabel up in a cozy blanket to keep her warm. She was really crying now, poor thing was probably confused as to why I wasn't just fixing this uncomfortable problem. I couldn't do this on my own, not in the state Mabel was in and with the amount of pee that I could feel, so I needed to wake up Zack. I got the hair dryer, put Mabel on the floor with three cozy blankets and Zack sat next to her and tried to keep her calm and entertained. She screamed for about 15 minutes and even tried to go back to sleep. I was elbow deep in her spica cast with that hair dryer just trying to get it dry...it takes forever! Luckily we have done this before with her first cast, I found the trick is to get your finger tips inside the cast and move the cotton and lining around so the air can really get in ther to dry out the pee. It is a major pain and really hard to do when the baby doesn't know what the heck you are doing! About 20 minutes in Mabel suddenly got excited and started to smile, giggle and dance. The good news for us is she wasn't screaming anymore and was happy and obviously felt better...bad news is she probably wouldn't go back to sleep easily...oh well one thing at a time.

It took about a hour and a half to dry the cast with the hair dryer on cool. I packed more cotton on that side of her diaper under the cast in hopes of keeping the diaper against her skin and maybe avoid this again...another annoyance and lesson learned was earlier this week Mabel had a leak, luckily then it didn't get on the cast just her cloth diaper and PJs...but the annoyance is we only have two cloth diapers and two sleep sacks that fit her! Last night I was at a loss...lesson learned, but in my defence I had thought to myself when she soiled her last PJ set that I needed to do laundry the next day because that was our only spare...I've been really tired and focused on so many other things so I forgot all about it. Trust me I won't forget about this!

Looks like I'll be starting some laundry this morning and possibly getting the hair dryer out to make sure everything is fresh in that cast. Christmas is next week and I can't have Mabel in a stinky cast when visiting the whole family! I just don't think you can make people understand how much work goes into keeping this cast clean and dry.

All I have to say is this is classic...I can't wait until this odyssey is over with! I stand by my last post of being sick of this cast! I wonder what stories we'll have about the brace? I can't imagine it would be this interesting!