What is the best way to keep track of plastic strain in Abaqus?

Hi everyone,
I want to build a sequentially coupled analysis of crack growth due to hydrogen diffusion under stress.
It includes two models which have different element types but share the same nodes.
First, the elasto-plastic stress and strain are calculated around a crack tip in one model, the material follows Ramberg-Osgood plasticity model;
then the stress of the previous model is used in a mass diffusion model, once the crack  tip concentration has passed a criterion, the crack grows and a new crack length is set in the stress model and the cycle is repeated.
My question is how to import the plastic strain from one stress analysis to the next one so that the region relaxed by the crack growth keeps its plastic strain?
From the documentation I guess there are 2 possible methods:
1 using *initial conditions, type= plastic strain
But looks like I have to set the plastic strain for each nodes, since the "file = " option is not available.
2 using a restart file for the stress analysis
But it looks like the boundary condition in a restart analysis can't be changed.
I really appreciate if someone could give me some help.
Q