Kif

Hey, this was AWESOME! I loved how dark and gritty and just... how do I describe it... just how this felt. Thank you for sharing this!

Looks like you're approved now!! 🎉🎉🎉 Here's to the next platform... 🤞💗

Yay! Super excited to see a return to this series

So sorry they're doing this, will help do what I can to help on subscribestar! Speaking of... I think you need to update your signature here on DD!

I don't comment much, but I wanted to say I love your stories and I look forward to these updates every week! Or... however often it is, I've lost track 😅

AWwwwhhh!!!

I feel this! Will change before a doctor's appointment even if barely wet...for whatever reason, even though they know I need them, I still feel the need to hide it. It's like...it's one thing to wear them and another to see a reminder of what eventually happens.

And here I am in October trying kegal exercses etc to gain back some continence, and my body will literally not cooperate enough to let that happen. Do I still find the fact I literally can't get out this comforting? Somewhat, though some "no" has crept in there ironically due to CAPcon. Travel sucks when you're incontinent...the margins are small and I fear the day I experience tummy problems while between flights or am forced to seek out emergency diapers in a foreign place. But then I look in the mirror and I feel a warmth in my chest...And the comfort comes from a different direction, and I feel incredibly grateful I've not yet run across those problems.

Ohmigod can we please just return to the topic? Quit the damn brigading dude and leave us alone. Makes the entire forum feel unwelcome! Anyway, I'm not sure that it will *shrink* the bladder or not, but I can confirm after a flow test with my doc that the urgency definitely increased as I'd lose control at <100mL (and the weirdest part is it didn't feel like a small volume). Buuuuut pending some more tests to confirm how much is related to pelvic floor changes following surgery and how much is ... who knows what. Semi-related, I do wonder if the bladder can actually "shrink" or if when folks describe it that way it's just a way of describing the increased urgency of OAB and urge incontinence. At least in my case I do suspect that it's an urgency thing more-so than e.g. the bladder literally shrinking, since after trying anticholinergics my volume increased (though I stopped those because of the awful side effects). I've also been assured by my doc that pelvic floor exercises can help undo things, but when reading about folks doing that in the incon communities (e.g. not here) the results seem mixed and overall attitude a bit pessimistic.

Shoot...Okay I'm gonna try moving my phone closer and see if maybe the alarm wasn't going off at all. IF that was actually the problem (not me dismissing it in my sleep) then I may continue where I left off and report back 🤦‍♀️

Thanks! Moody brain be what it be 🤣 Okay here goes! So I followed and last I wrote, it was going really well. Here's what worked great: guaranteed to wake up and build a habit challenges what is/isn't comfortable feels methodical and focused But here's where things stopped working: waking up sucks, and you do that for months. After a while, you just need a break; getting that sleep feels like a god-send challenging yourself to wet when you expect to leak is stressful and ultimately while I got better at it, I couldn't overcome it consistently enough while it felt methodical and focused, even with the randomness the routine started to eventually feel quite bland and pushing through that was very difficult eventually you don't notice the alarm going off and dismiss it in your sleep. this became a huuuge issue and made a lot of the stuff phase 2-3 not work anymore. (though...I just recalled I might need to check how close my phone is to my watch...could be that the alarm actually wasn't going off due to bluetooth distances, as I kept my phone in the other room after one point) The one thing that I did ultimately find worked well for me was variety. Currently I get the best results in phase 2, without the alarms; e.g. I alternate between cloth diapers and cloth + disposable diapers. There's no pattern to that, I just change it up when I feel like it. If I stick with one too long, I start to wake up dry. Both are pretty comfortable, they're just slightly different in feel of cloth vs disposable. Will keep up with this and see where it goes. Do I need to as far as babykeiff was recommending? Nah. But I think that longer-term there was a nugget of truth in their stance of keeping things comfortable. And there was a nugget of truth in mine. Will keep at it and see how things go.

Had a weird rare moment this morning. Was feeling down and decided exploring my feelings would be a fun idea. And my feelings were like "let's try to potty train" and I think "okay let's change but let's keep my diaper on just in case". Do the diaper change and less than thirty minutes later decide "nah it'd be smarter to have something I can pull down quickly" so I make my way to the bedroom and take it off. Have been trying to not wet myself at this point. Guess what. I bet you woooOOOOooonnnn't. Yeah I was wet. I was 100% confident I was dry, it felt dry, I was imagining putting the same diaper back on when I eventually changed my mind later. I had this whole plan, daresay this whole vision in my head. Nope. Obvious yellow bulging patches where I'd somehow had an accident...a moderate one, not a few drops. Was so shocked I literally yelped "What the F**K?!" out-loud. Anyway yes eventually I changed my mind less than a few hours of undies later. And no, I didn't use the already-wet-very-cold diaper. Oh and I abandoned the bedwetting guide thing...just went full comfort and have been wetting at night just fine without alarms. The comfort route is the way to go...lemme know if you want me to write more on it. Otherwise cheers!

If I can help it, I would rather not let it happen around other folks generally. When I feel it coming and I'm in that situation I generally bail as quickly as I can, grab my bag (I don't always make it), and make my way to a restroom. It has happened a few times though, and fortunately I had enough measures in place that it wasn't noticeable as far as I could tell (no off comments or change in behavior from others). Even my hubby hasn't noticed in the mornings, which helps put my mind at ease. Measures being, ofc, plastic pants at minimum over my diaper. I generally like the look of just the diaper better tbh, but it's not practical for these kinds of things.

Was definitely not the case for me!

To add to this, medicines for urge incontinence don't yet have sufficient studies on their long term effects. While papers such as https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8851948/ demonstrate treatment is safe short-term (2-4 months), they also discuss and caution about the unstudied long-term effects w.r.t. dementia/cognitive decline. In one such discussion, that uncertainty is weighed against the therapeutic effects of the drugs: "Another important consideration is the use of bladder antimuscarinics in some elderly or bedridden patients with cognitive impairment. In these patients, this treatment may not provide quality of life benefits because some of these patients are unaware of urinary loss and do not perceive the social impact of urinary incontinence, thus generally not compensating for the risk of using these drugs" This is just one example, but there is a risk of being overmedicated if e.g. in a care situation that doesn't afford using diapers as a management strategy. (and of course, that could snowball into other problems)