Kaliborio

I am back on my usual shit. Obviously, some people lose continence in ways that are related to their diapers. Either they lose it intentionally, through untraining (see, e.g., The twelve month diaper-training program), or they lose it incidentally — and generally to a lesser extent — through the incentive pressures of 24/7 (see, e.g., Practical 24/7: A guidebook, or Understanding Infantilism's qualitative survey on the topic). I've noticed that a lot of people feel they can't get their continence back. The likelihood of a given person with diaper-related continence issues having this view seems to be directly linked to the amount of time those continence issues have been present. It doesn't seem to be an attitude thing; some like it, some hate it, but they agree on the conclusion. My own experience with diapers and my (ultimately transient) attempts to recover my continence seem to bear it out, too. So, I'm interested to hear from people with diaper-related continence issues (untraining or incidental): What are your diaper-related continence issues? How did they come about? How long have they been present? Do you think you could regain your continence? If so, do you think it would be easy or difficult from where you are now? What factors are informing your view?

Historically I've done most of my posting on tumblr. I assume people aren't using reddit. Where is AB/DL social media these days? Is there any platform where AB/DL content is in plentiful supply or have we just kind of been driven off the internet?

I'm autistic, have ADHD, and am incontinent.

I am incontinent. I see this as partly the result of a choice on my part. However, I believe that due to existing chronic continence issues I would likely have ended up pretty severely incontinent anyway. To the extent that this happened because I wanted it, and to the extent that I wanted it, I wanted to be incontinent because I didn't want to be incontinent. Put another way, continence was always extremely effortful, pretty much always painful, and often unreliable for me. Dealing with incontinence involved more routine work but I'm used to that. It took away the anxiety of trying to be continent and I can assure you I really needed to be free of that goddamn anxiety. I was born in the 1990s. I have enough anxiety already.

My continence issues have been lifelong. They were episodic until the early 2010s but are now constant. We are writing them off to a combination of: fundamentally, the physiological and psychological effects of the various developmental disorders I have; me no longer caring enough to do the small and largely pointless amount I can do to manage them.

This is normal. There are two reasons it happens: The muscles of bowel control and the muscles of bladder control are connected through the pelvic floor. This means that when you void your bowels it becomes relatively easier to also void your bladder and relatively harder not to. If you're exercising voluntary control of your bowels, you are likely pushing, which entails boosting your intra-abdominal pressure (IAP). Boosting your IAP also squashes your bladder, increasing your level of urinary urgency and the likelihood that you will pee.

I'm so tired that shit which is perfectly legal and ethical but weird and unusual can't exist on the internet anymore because it might scare someone somewhere a little bit for two minutes.

I change at work.

Depending on your definition of "in public," I've probably been out in diapers more times total than I was ever out in underwear, lol.

A slight variation on the name of the Kaliber Lounge in Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane.

I had some infrequent, random, low-volume night-time wetting accidents in my early teens. Not enough that I thought of myself as a bedwetter — because I had other continence issues at the same time and I thought of them as part of that — but enough to be stressful. They sucked. I didn't have the kind of bedwetting that I do now — heavy, constant, every night — until adulthood. When it started it was scary and nerve-wracking because I was having some troubles with daytime wetting control, but I personally had made the choice to go back into diapers and felt like that choice had made my control worse and I was responsible for it. When the bedwetting started, I felt responsible for that, too. As it got heavier and more frequent, though, it got emotionally easier to deal with, partly because it became easier to justify taking the obvious precaution of simply wearing diapers every night. It also became easier because I realised that the fact that I was wetting the bed was a sign that it wasn't all my fault, any more, that by definition it could not be my fault because I wasn't choosing to wet the bed. Bedwetting probably made it easier to deal when my bowel control started falling apart. So, all in all, I feel fine.

White. Partly nostalgia and partly because if I have a caregiver it's the easiest colour for visually interpreting how wet the diaper is.

It's difficult to say simply because the period I am regressing to went so differently for me than it did for any of my peers. Short version — throughout our lives we will be categorised into age groups. The age group you're in affects how people treat you and what is expected of you. Age grouping is age-based but also act-based. The dividing line between "child" and "adult" is 18, for instance, but a 17-year-old who works full-time and lives independently would probably be considered pretty uncontroversially an "adult". However, an unemployed 25-year-old who lives with their parents might be considered an "overgrown child"(*): their actual age is acknowledged by the word "overgrown," but the suggestion is that for all practical intents and purposes they are a child. (* This is not supposed to be a slur on unemployed 25-year-olds who live with their parents. I think they're adults. I know what the modern world is like.) I would say the age groups go from granular to coarse as you get older. I would say early childhood (up to, let's say, 7 years old inclusive) can be subdivided into 3 age groups: "Baby" includes infants and toddlers, so 0, 1, or 2 years old; "Kindergartner" includes kids too old to be babies but who haven't started school yet, so 3, 4, or 5 years old; "Kid" is kids who have started school but are still very little, so 6 or 7 years old. The window during which a child is supposed to start toilet training falls after the middle age of the "Baby" group, and partly as a consequence of that the Baby/Kindergartner transition is strongly associated with having started toilet training, to the point that a child who hasn't started toilet training by the time they reach kindergarten age might be considered a "baby" for longer, or might be in a liminal state where they're treated in a way that has aspects of both. Similarly, the window during which a child is supposed to have finished toilet training is around the middle of the "Kindergartner" group, so a child who hasn't finished toilet training by the time they're 6 might be considered a "kindergartner" for longer. I didn't manage to start toilet training until I was about 7 and didn't manage to finish it until I was about 8. Based on my understanding of how other people grew up, I was definitely stuck in a liminal category — I wasn't completely babied but until I started school, and to an extent afterward, I was still being treated a lot more like an infant or toddler than almost anybody else with whom I've discussed it seems to have been. When I regress to babyhood I'm regressing to anywhere between birth and 5. Given all that I would say I am pretty authentic to my idea of babyhood but someone else might have a different idea of what it is.

Didn't fantasise about it between toilet training and puberty. Didn't really fantasise about it after puberty, but my continence never got back to where it was immediately after toilet training, and I kind of felt like I'd be happier in diapers.

I am a medically incontinent, bedwetting, AB/DL trans woman.

Combination of the above. I actually don't mind using them myself because I don't really trust my tactile sense to tell me how wet I am, even after ten years. I also think they're useful when I have a caregiver. However, they're potentially uncomfortable if I'm pantsless around someone I don't know very well. I'm fine with being IC but I'm still oddly sensitive about people literally being able to see me wet myself in real time. It makes me feel infantilised in a way that isn't enjoyable.

Depends on everything else. I'm generally fine unless someone saw me mess myself, in which case I'm uncomfortable, but that very rarely happens.

Somewhere in the middle. I am not specifically trying to have my diaper uncovered, but generally prefer not to have too many layers on, so my average around-the-house wear is a onesie with a diaper underneath.

I don't know if my AB/DL developed out of my IC, but I was definitely IC before I was AB/DL.

Nightly, although not always to the same degree.

I've believed for a while that losing your wetting control by not using it should mean that your messing control is weakened even if you intend to keep it and are actively using it. This is for two reasons: physiological — the pelvic floor muscles that provide bladder control and the ones that provide bowel control are right next to each other and are part of the same muscle group; functional — diapers and diapering accessories are harder to get out of than underwear in such a way that a close call is disproportionately likely to become an accident. It was my experience that this held true, and a couple of people I've talked to seem to confirm it. Did anyone here have a similar experience?

It's Southern Hemisphere winter again and it's a cold winter for the first time in a while. I'd like to buy some new one-piece pyjamas (sleepers). Can anyone recommend a brand that they trust (and ideally one which they know fits well over heavier diapering)?

I might be slightly in the "lemons to lemonade" camp; I initially saw myself as choosing to go into diapers because I was AB/DL, but over time, as I've unpacked things, I've realised that while I am very much AB/DL, I likely would have ended up in diapers by this point regardless, and was at least a little aware of that at the time. I will add, however — at the risk of sounding a little Portal 2 — that in the community of people who either want to be or are either 24/7, untrained, or both, there is an extraordinary degree of refusal to acknowledge the lemons, so to speak. 24/7ers and untrainees seem to have a propensity to have a very liberal definition of what counts as "continent". It's gotten to the point where someone simply saying they want to untrain makes me actively suspicious of how much continence they do, in fact, have.

Hi folks, Hope you are well. Someone has just written me on my tumblr, asking why a specific variety of pacifiers, "German 'big nipple' pacifiers," "have cotton in the nipple". Attached is an image of the variety of pacifier they're referring to. It has a bunch of results on Google Image Search but I'm not sure if it's a single specific product line, a single brand, or what the story is. I've never owned one of these so I don't know if they have cotton in the nipple, and if so, why. Does anybody else know? Thanks so much in advance!

My own answers are: In what way(s) have you become incontinent? Severe urinary incontinence (wetting), severe faecal incontinence (messing), secondary nocturnal enuresis (bedwetting). How long did it take you? About 2 years. Bedwetting took 9 months. I realised pantswetting had started at about 12 months but it could have started anywhere between 6 and 12 months. Messing started at about 15 months and slowly escalated from there. How long have you been incontinent? If it's been a long time, would you say your memory of being continent is in any way unclear? Overall, a very long time. Continuously, it's been about 9 years since I could leave diapers. I asked this question partly because while I still have pretty clear sense memories of having voluntary messing control, wetting is a lot foggier. I'm always going to remember that I had it, but there are certain sensations which I know of but can't really summon to mind. I also can't seem to move my pelvic floor in a way that notably affects or feels like it should affect whether I wet or not; I can move it, but I feel like actual bladder control is a pretty complex motor task that I seem to have forgotten how to do. I've never heard anyone else talk about this and I'm wondering if it's specific to me, and I'm wondering whether, if so, it's because I've been incontinent for both a very long time consecutively and a very large fraction of my life. How was your continence before you decided to become incontinent? Not great! I had multiple previous prolonged episodes of severe incontinence, the last one ending about five years before I started untraining. I had perennial (although relatively infrequent) issues with pants soiling, and chose to go into diapers partly because of wetting anxiety. Did people tell you anything about it before you did it, for example by encouraging you, warning you off, dismissing it as impossible? If people told you things, to what extent do you feel those things have been borne out? Yes. I was mostly warned off, with a small helping of having it dismissed as impossible. It clearly wasn't impossible because I managed to do it, although I don't describe myself as "untrained" so much any more because it's becoming more clear to me over time that I had abnormally weak continence even while "continent," so I'm uncertain to what extent my pre-existing incontinence played a role. I was told I'd get cold feet and regret it. Around 2015–2016 I actually did unsuccessfully try to back out, but honestly I feel fine about it now and that regret was more or less externally imposed, so I don't really feel like the people who told me I'd regret it were vindicated. Have you tried to regain your continence? Were you successful, fully or partially? If partially, to what degree? Yes, partially, primarily in the second half of 2015. I was partially successful in that for some time I managed to markedly improve my bowel control. My wetting control also improved somewhat, although not significantly, and far more sluggishly. If your answer to the above question is "yes, partially," why would you say it was partially and not fully? Since you reached the point of partial recovery, have you found your control backsliding at all or has it remained stable? I ran out of time. 2015 was the last year that I really had the free time, space, and resources to take a real shot at regaining my control. Going into 2016, I was back to the grind and had to have a stable continence management regimen whether it involved being continent or not. I was also motivating myself with the thought of getting back to "normal". As I headed back to university in the second half 2016, I ultimately had to seek medical accommodations in the first half of the year, and consequently finally had clinical diagnoses entered for my bedwetting and FI, as well as upgrading the severity of my UI. I felt like I'd "lost" in a permanent way and was, for lack of a better word, demoralised by it. However, the external pressure I was under to leave diapers lifted toward mid-2016, and by the beginning of 2017 I was finding it easier to adjust to being in diapers again. I would definitely say my control has backslid. When I started trying to retrain it was weak and nonfunctional. When I had to stop retraining it was partly functional. Now it's absent. How do you feel about your incontinence? After developing it but before the present, have you ever felt very differently about it? Do you feel differently from how you expected to when you started out? I feel fine about it. It's a normal part of my life and I'm relaxed about it. I don't feel a sense of possibility or drive toward something different. I definitely think part of this is having had continence problems back when I was continent; I am much happier as someone with well-managed severe incontinence than I was as someone with light to moderate incontinence feeling compelled to manage it poorly for the sake of appearing normal. I also think part of it is my increasing clinically quantifiable knowledge of my body, particularly becoming aware that my prior continence problems were likely caused by a hereditary connective tissue disorder. The increasingly certain knowledge that my technically-continent-but-pretty-doubtful level of control was probably the best my body could do and that there's probably not a whole lot that would have helped has made it a lot easier for me to accept that I did explore all my options prior to throwing the towel in on continence together, and that I can rightly regard my current lack of continence as being achieved with a clean conscience. From 2014–2016 I felt ashamed of it and felt urgently that I should become continent again, partly because I was in a relationship with someone who wasn't extraordinarily keen about it. After that, though, as described above, I became pretty chill with it again. When I started out I expected I'd be either extremely jazzed or miserably depressed about it at all times, probably because at the time I had the emotional range of a teaspoon. As it is, I'm simply comfortable.