Baby poop isn’t for everyone… for those of you who can relate to exploding diapers keep reading… for everyone else, this may be one you want to skip…

Peanut has gotten a lot more active the last few weeks. It’s a great thing – she’s catching up on a lot of her developmental milestones. She loves to sit by her box of toys and pull each toy out one at a time, play with it for a while, and then throw it. And though she can’t quite crawl yet (she’s getting very close) she’s figured out she can roll to get closer to what she wants. She’s also figured out how to push her self backwards and make a complete circle when she’s on her stomach – like I said before, she’s very close to crawling.

While all of this progress is great, there is one draw back – ostomy bags and mobility don’t mix. To completely understand this, let’s review the anatomy lesson the DW gave a while back. The intestines are made up of the duodendum, jejunum, ileum (these three make up the small intestine) and the colon (large intestine). Peanut lost her ileum and colon to the necrotizing enterocolitis, so when she has her reconnection surgery the end of her jejunum will be connected to what’s remaining of her rectum.

The photo shows Peanut’s ostomy covered with a new bag. (If you’re wondering about her larger red birthmark, you can read up on that here.) The bright pink dot inside the bag is Peanut’s stoma – which was created when the end of her jejunum (part of her small intestine) was brought out a surgically created “opening” for the discharge of waste.

To keep things simple, the ostomy bag is made up of two parts the wafer and the bag itself – there are other accessories for helping with removal and adherence, but that’s just details. The wafer is hard to see in the picture, but it is a tan colored pad slightly larger than the white ring on the bag that is super sticky on one side and smooth on the other. We cut a hole in the center of the wafer just large enough to fit the stoma through. The wafer is then adhered to the skin and provides a protective layer between the skin and the poop. The white portion of the bag – which is another sticker – is then stuck to the smooth side of the wafer. Poop comes out of the stoma and is collected in the bag without touching the skin.

Peanut is spending a lot of time on her stomach and sitting upright. Both of these positions are not ideal for the bag and means we end up changing her bag 2, sometimes 3, times a day. The bags simply aren’t sticky enough and flexible enough to withstand all the movement. Also not helping things are Peanut’s quick hands. There’s been at least a half dozen times now that she’s grabbed her bag and tore it off (surprisingly, it seems to hurt her less when she tears it off than when we need to remove it and use a adhesive remover to help). There’s also the fact that Peanut loves to roll over and sleep on her stomach now…

Her outfit was nothing compared to the sheets. Have I mentioned that the DW has become somewhat of an expert at stain removal? In the long run it’s not a big deal, as the bag is only temporary until her next surgery. Plus, if she were a “normal” baby it’d simply be the back of her outfit that looked like that instead of the front.