Will Ford

I've certainly gotten more comfortable over the years in the sense that I'm not too worried if somebody works it out in public. Say I'm at the drug store buying disposable underpads and wipes and if my shirt happened to ride up slightly you might notice the bulge and put two and two together.

I'll occasionally wet without a diaper as a change of pace, more of a dedicated game as opposed to the diapers which by now are just a constant everyday thing.

I have a minor overbite and I never could get used to the Nuk 5. It felt like it wanted to move my bottom teeth out. It was OK for just fooling around but not the kind of pacifier I could commit to.

I did some experimenting and number crunching on regular store products a few weeks ago, and the main result was that Pampers (and I'm assuming other major brands) did an amazing job at absorbancy for the money.

I've had great results switching to a very low carb diet. As in mostly meat and eggs, some heavy cream, and a few grams of carbs from vegetables and almond butter.

I haven't had great luck with the hardware-store homer buckets, in that it's hit-and-miss whether you'll be able to find just the right combination of bucket and lid that gives a good seal without being a real effort to open and close.

I thought I had waterproof protection for years with one of these:

I should add that I've been away from baby diapers for a few years and I was not happy with the thin flat profile, cloth backing, or velcro tapes of the Pampers. If anyone knows about modern baby diapers (either available in drug stores or online) that are contoured, thicker, or plastic-backed, I'd love to hear about it.

Well, science marches on. Today's test is to see the ultimate capacity of Pampers Cruisers size 7, and whether they can be used efffectively in combination with other items by an adult.

Thanks. I've ordered a set.

I agree about the high capacity. A few days ago I did my best to get an M4 to its limits, and it held 2,179 ml (73.7 oz.), over half a gallon.

Christine, thanks for the inspiration. Until I read your posts last year I'd assumed that one wants a bunch of material down the center line (between the legs). It's nice to have more options.

Dude, I require numbers, stats, data. Do you own a kitchen scale? If not I suggest you get one, and then you could quantify the increased capacity of the multiple DryNites. But then if the bulk makes you happy, absent data, then congratulations. Any happy time in diapers is a good thing in my book.

Some further thoughts. I'm taking it on faith that someone out there is transfixed by this data geekery.

I rarely get to play in diapers but when I do I go at it pretty intensely for a few days. I've noticed something this time. Traditionally I've been into thick cloth diapers, multiple diapers, multiple liners and pins, plastic pants along with rubber bloomers, disposable over cloth or cloth over disposable... in short, elaborate, complex setups as if I was making up for lost time.

Second day protocol: From 8:00 am to 1:00 pm I drank 946 ml (32 oz) per hour: water, Gatorade, and some milk. Then I cut to half that pace for a few more hours, then just normal drinking. I wore each diaper until it was at max capacity. For cloth this meant any pooling in the plastic pants at the crotch, and for disposables this meant slight leaking at the legs, usually when I sat down, or any moisture in the PUL pants if I used them. I had underpads on all seats. I should add that I'm on vacation this week. I'd already read a lot about water intoxication and I figured I was within reasonable bounds: I had the Gatorade and some food, and I was watching for signs that my body was telling me to stop. OK, why? I had several goals: Goal 1. See if it was possible to drink this much and see what would happen. Would I reach a point where I was a steady-state pee machine, with output matching input? Would I instead hit a wall? Results: After a while it wasn't pleasant, but I didn't seem to suffer from it. I got to the point where I would wet every 5-10 minutes, sometimes more frequently. Even so there were some slow periods and some floods. The correct way to measure output would have been a foley catheter and a bed bag. I could have measured every five minutes. But that would have interfered with some of the other goals below, so I just weighed all used diapers. Taking just the last 1.5 hours of the heavy-drinking period when I'd really gotten going, the rate was 818 ml/hour. That was followed by a three-hour period of 619 ml/hour while I cut the drink volume in half. Input during the first period was 946 ml/hour. So I got most of the way toward output = input, and during the second period I was getting rid of 146 ml/hour more than I was taking in. Goal 2. Wear and wet a lot of diapers because it's fun. I've been out of the game for a while and I wanted a lot of wetting and changing action. Results: Including the previous day I got to try a Bianco, Attends Extended Wear, Goodnight, ABU Cushies, ABU Super Dry Kids, Depends Real Fit, a few thin cloth training pants, and 44" by 44" flat cloth diapers in a few different folds. I tried a few oddball things like wearing a Goodnites Bed Mat as a diaper. If you remember the very first disposable diapers that were just a big rectangle folded in, you'll know what I'm talking about. And I tried wetting a thin training pant (no waterproof cover) while sitting on a stack of diapers. But even though I did a few strange things I still measured everything. Goal 3. Drink a lot from a bottle because it's fun. Results: This was great. I have an adult-sized Nuk nipple and I carefully made the hole with a toothpick and razor blade. I did gallons of bottle-feeding during this run. The only thing that might have been better would be some variety. Next time I should have some formula, Ensure, juice, etc. I'm mostly a DL, not an AB, but I really like bottle feeding. Goal 4. Find the outer-limits capacity for several kinds of diapers, experiment with different cloth folds, see the patterns of wet and dry on a maxed-out diaper, and learn what each kind of diaper felt like when it was near capacity and how it failed. Results: Tons of data. Mostly I go by the ratio of initial weight vs. maxed-out weight. Subtracting one from the other you get the amount of pee, then I take the ratio of that to initial weight. So the best I saw from a normal cloth diaper was a 2.37 ratio, in this case an initial weight of 235 grams and it held 557 grams (19 oz.) of pee. The best regular cloth liner got to 2.44, and a hemp liner from Snap EZ got to 2.92, though I only tried the hemp liner once and it's possible it could do better. The regular cloth diaper and liner each got multiple tries. I should note that not all of my results on capacity are from the few hours of the "experiment". I've been pushing all of my diapers over the last two days to capacity. The things I do for science. On to disposables. Naturally the capacity winner was the Bianco with a ratio of 11.81 and a staggering 1,877 grams (63 oz.) of pee. That's basically a half gallon. The thing weighed 4.5 pounds by the end. So the Bianco is a great feat of diaper engineering, but I have to wonder what it's for. I maxed it out in three hours, but that was under extreme conditions. Normally someone my size would produce a little more than that in a whole day, and I don't think anyone would leave a diaper on for that long. Even if you take 2 liters per day and divide that up only over 16 waking hours, assuming that production slows way down while you're asleep, the Bianco would still last for 15 hours. Of course in real life you wouldn't push any diaper to capacity, so say 10 hours? Goal 5. As a psychological game, see if I could get to a submissive space where I didn't want to drink any more from the bottle, or wet my diaper, or leak onto the chair, or put on a new diaper, but I "had to". Results: Sort of. I got to a point where it was pretty annoying to keep drinking, timing, changing, weighing, filling in the spreadsheet. There was a small part of my brain that could pretend I was being forced. But I was focusing more on the task than on getting into a sub space. This is something I'd like to get better at.