How do you wear your pouch?

This is something I have noticed when looking at photos of other ostomates we all have different ways of angling our pouches when we change our bags. I have tried it a couple of different ways and for me personally I like mine straight down or with a slight angling to my groin. It may seem odd for this sort of thing to intrigue me but it really does!

Some people wear theirs horizontally which personally completely baffles me and when I tried it I hated it! Whether it was because it made me feel like more attention was drawn to my stomach which heightened my body dysmorphia I don’t know. Also the emptying just doesn’t seem very straight forward! However there must be a pretty good reason that they do otherwise why would they do it?

Some have their pouch angled into towards their groins which I can kind of understand if for nothing else but emptying. However and again this is totally personal I think it would look more awkward as it filled up.

I have seen people angle their pouch away from their body which I guess if you aren’t sitting on the toilet to empty makes more sense but wouldn’t that mean it sort of wraps around or towards your hip depending on the size bag you wear?

So once again I took to Twitter and ran a poll to find out what the consensus was with the online ostomy community there as I have found they are always happy to talk about their ostomies! Plus like me they often love a good poll as long as there has been sufficient time for them to see it and we had 106 votes this time; so the choices were:

• straight down – 53%
• angled towards your groin – 32%
• away from your body – 11%
• horizontally – 4%

In no way is this saying how you wear your ostomy appliance is wrong or right as what should matter is what works for YOU! This post is just intended to raise awareness of different ways in case it works better for you! How do you wear your pouch and what are your reasons behind it?