My son is a rough and tumble 10 year old and we use his arms all the time. When he is in school, he does prefer the left since he throws with his right when he plays at recess. We do cannula down in the middle of his triceps area. When he swims, we pull a terry wristband/sweatband up over the pod to reduce drag and reduce the chance of it coming off. I imagine this would also be a good technique for many sports.
He has only knocked a pod off of the arm once, when he was crawling out from underneath a desk and misjudged his clearance.
Hi there:
My daughter is almost 5 and has been on the pod for a little over a year. I went through exactly what you are saying at the beginning, feeling like you needed an extra hand for pod changes if you were to pinch up, hold the PDM, etc. We do not pinch up, but like some of the others press down slightly on the top of the pod near the cannula to avoid the kickback. My daughter wears the pod on her bum or lower back.
We found that the side of the arms get bumped pretty easily, but if you go to the very backside of the arm then it seems a bit safer from doorways and other people. Good luck!
My son is 6 and very slender. He wears his on his thighs, arms, and butt. He doesn’t have enough fat on his belly, we kept getting it in the muscle. He’s wear it on his arm only if I’d let him. We pinch but only slightly. If we pinched too much then we’d have a failure.
Insulet rep told me that they are not advising people to pinch any longer, but that the pressing down on the top helps with the kickback. I have found that to be true. We tried pinching and not pinching and had troubles both ways. Now we don’t pinch at all and just press down slightly on the end to prevent the kickback. It works very well for us, she only uses upper arms.
Mary…interesting.
For what it’s worth we’ve been pressing down to prevent kickback too and it’s been working great. I’ve also been storing a dryer sheet with the pods and wiping it down with one before I insert. And I’ve been putting a little double faced tape on the pod where it tends to pull off the adhesive patch. So I guess I don’t know exactly what’s behind our success, but I’m very glad things are working well right now.
Thanks to everyone who posted with their experience!
I use a piece of Flexifix across the pod and onto the other side so that it extends past the adhesive and onto her skin. That way if she catches it on something, it won’t pull the adhesive off from the pod. Not one issue since we have been doing that. Flexifix is clear so you can’t even see it.
We have never had issues with static except with the Dexcom receiver from taking it in and out of her pocket. They said it isn’t any problem, but she could use a dryer sheet in her pocket if she wants. She doesn’t want to do that, and I can’t blame her!
