Stoma placement

My pants fall a couple inches below my belly button, and my stoma is right around belly button level, so hopefully this will help. I usually tuck my bag into my pants because I don't love wearing baggy shirts. I've heard of others who let it hang under a shirt, so that's a good idea for some people. For me, having it tucked inside my pants feels more secure too. My wonderful health insurance paid for this thing that you wear around your stomach that you can tuck your bag into so it's more secure and harder to see when I wear more form-fitting clothes. Since my stoma is temporary, I really have been wearing sweat pants a lot since they're so comfortable. Hopefully some people with more experience will weigh in. Good luck!

Allswell, be sure to wear the jeans you like to your appointment to get your stoma site marked. For most people, there is some flexibility in where it goes, and you can get a feel for what would work best for you.

My stoma is about 3 inches below belly button and about 2 inches from hip bone. I only wear normal rise jeans and trrousers so they go above it as don't like feeling of it hanging over waistband of trousers and also then restricts what tops you can wear.

Be sure when you go for the appointment for the siting of the stoma that you have input intto where it will go as you are the one that has to live with it and don't be bulldozed by the surgeon/nurse as most are great and take your wishes into account but some seem to not listen very well. I was lucky and had a great surgeon who made sure it was sited so can wear most things except very low hipster trousers and he also cut around a tattoo so he didn't ruin it even though it made his job harder.

So the bag can actually go under the pants? Regular pants though obviously not skin tight. That doesn't cause pressure?

Mine is completely below the waistband of my pants and it has never been a problem....even with my compression running tights and it doesn't get much tighter than that when it comes to pants!

Allswell - I definitely wear tight pants with no problem. You just need to empty a little more often. As for my recovery from Step 1, it was definitely easier than I'd thought. I was inpatient for 7 days total with lots of pain meds, but after I got home I took very few. The worst part was just tiring easily and not being able to do everything I wanted to do for a few weeks. I'm 8 weeks out now and feeling great, I'm back to doing just about everything I was pre-surgery and feeling a million times better than when I was dealing with the UC. That was the most surprising thing, how even though I was in pain from the surgery, I felt soooo much better than I'd felt in years. That's one really good thing that'll come your way!

It's nothing like a regular bowel movement. It just comes out, and mostly I can't tell at all. That's why you have to be careful when changing the bag -- you can't control it.

Sometimes I do feel pressure behind my stoma, depending on what I ate, or if I stretch a particular way, I push stuff out.... but it's nothing like a bowel movement.

I had my abdomen marked in two places a few days before my surgery, and the ostomy nurse did the marking. She told me that I really don't want it on the belt line for reasons mentioned. Mine is about two inches down and about one over from my belly button, and about the same dimensions from my hip bone. This is a perfect placement for me and I have almost no problem concealing it with most styles of pants I wear. The only thing, and I bet this applies to most of us, is that I can't let the bag get too full or it will balloon on top. At that point it does become more noticeable if someone were to be looking. I imagine it would be even more noticeable in the summer when my clothing is more snuug fitting.