It's always a good idea to empty or change your stoma bag before you go to bed as it will help to prevent your bag from filling up too much overnight and disturbing your sleep. A full stoma bag is always at risk of leaking and that's not something you want to experience during the night.
Change or empty your bag before bed
Always change or empty your bag before going to sleep. If your bag overfills at night you are at risk of a leak. Going to bed with an empty bag can reduce anxiety about leaks and significantly improve the quality of your sleep.
Closed bags may need changing 1 to 3 times a day. There are also drainable bags that need to be replaced every 2 or 3 days. These may be suitable for people who have particularly loose poos.
Making sure your bag is secure
Another cause of stoma bag leakages at night could simply be because you haven't secured your bag properly before you get into bed. Check that your seal is secure getting in to bed so that you don't wake up to any unwelcome surprises.
Sleeping on the side the stoma is on will also be okay. The mattress will support the ostomy pouch as it fills. Sleeping on the opposite side from your stoma is fine too, you can just hold a pillow up against your abdomen or set your pouch on a pillow next to you so the weight as it fills does not wake you up.
Keeping hydrated with an ileostomy, colostomy and urostomy
You should try to drink 6-8 glasses of water each day along with any other drinks such as tea or coffee.
Eating and drinking directly before bed can cause your stoma to be more active overnight and will result in a full bag. If you find that, regardless of what you do, your stoma is very active at night, you can try taking something like Imodium to slow down your output.
In general, people with an ostomy can eat and drink what they want unless the surgeon or ostomy therapist has given counter-advice. But as before the surgery some food may be easier to digest than others – and right after surgery it may be helpful to pay some extra attention to the signals from your body.
You can bathe or shower with or without wearing your pouching system. Normal exposure to air or water will not harm or enter your stoma. If you're showering without your pouch, remove the skin barrier too. Try to create a routine that coincides with when you're due for a pouch change.
A colostomy is an operation to divert 1 end of the colon (part of the bowel) through an opening in the tummy. The opening is called a stoma. A pouch can be placed over the stoma to collect your poo (stools). A colostomy can be permanent or temporary.
About Your Wet Colostomy
After your surgery, your urine (pee) and stool (poop) will leave your body through your wet colostomy stoma. Your stoma will have 2 parts (see Figure 1): A urinary diversion. Your urine will flow from your kidneys, through your ureters, and out of your body through your urinary diversion.
After a stoma, the bottom part of the bowel no longer has poo passing through it, but it still produces mucus. Dead cells from the lower bowel or rectum may be mixed in with the mucus. The mucus may leak out of the anus, or you may feel the urge to go to the toilet.
If the stoma does not protrude above the skin, the stool may get under the pouch seal and cause leakage. A convex pouching system can provide some pressure around the stoma to force output to get into the pouch and not under the skin barrier seal.
Try to include a low fibre starchy food (bread, potatoes, pasta, rice) and protein food (peanut butter, eggs, meat, fish, cheese) at each meal and snack. This will help to slow down the digestion of food through the bowel allowing more time for your body to digest and absorb.
Ostomy output of more than 1,500 mL, or about 6 cups of stool in 24 hours, is high ostomy output. High ostomy output can put you at risk for dehydration, poor nutrient absorption, and weight loss.
Drink sports drinks (such as Gatorade or Powerade) and oral rehydration solutions (such as Pedialyte). These drinks will help replace your fluid loss quickly, especially if your ostomy output is high. A high output is more than 1000 milliliters (about 34 ounces) per day.
Instead of going to your bladder, urine will go outside of your abdomen. The part that sticks outside your abdomen is called the stoma. After a urostomy, your urine will go through your stoma into a special bag called a urostomy pouch.
You'll need to remove the entire unit (pouch and wafer) and replace it, making sure that the wafer is securely attached to your peristomal skin before leaving the restroom. Regardless of if you're using a one-piece or a two-piece pouch, you'll need to put your used ostomy bag into something you can discard it in.
Many people enjoy leaving their skin uncovered for 15 to 30 minutes after taking their pouching system off. This is called a skin break. Taking a skin break can help with irritation or keep it from happening. You can decide if you want to take a skin break.