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)

What Rusty said. Went through this myself recently, and requested a separate room. After explaining it was for private sensitive/medical reasons, they had no problem giving me my own room. It helps that I work at a good company in Europe, so I didn't expect (or need) to fight it...had I not, then I might have had to put my foot down as oznl put it. I've no need for my coworkers to know about my continence problems.

I went through that phase right before everything went downhill, so if you are at all uncertain about losing your continence then do start retraining now. For me it went from overactive bladder to complete urge incontinence...and I didn't notice when the transition happened until after the fact. Like Enthusi, I'll tend to dribble if I'm standing and my urethra is not kinked in any way (and lately, dribble during changes without feeling anything at all). But, if it becomes kinked (like when sitting down) then I can experience larger uncontrolled voids. When those happen, I don't feel increasing urgency like I used to; it comes very suddenly and strongly. I'll get a sudden very strong urge to pee, then over a period of a few seconds it'll progress to this intense tickly kind of sensation, and then my bladder will empty without my consciously saying so. If I try to stop it while voiding, it feels like I can't quite make the muscles coordinate in the right way to actually stop the stream; it'll feel like I'm clenching but it'll keep coming out unhindered. I had a flow test done, and this would happen at less than half the average adult volume. So yeah...if you don't want that to happen, stop now because you may not know when you transition from having control to having none.

This feels like what a DD Big would think the Little dimension looks like... Oh Lord

I think the incontinence bit mayyyyybe came later? Dips have been around since my earliest memories. But wanting to use them came later...which makes sense because so much of this is emotional comforting and consoling for me at its deepest level. Having a *need* for them adds a layer of secureness and stability, that those things won't go away...knowing that even if I fight it as hard as I can to e.g. purge diapers out of my life, my body will sternly say "NO" and enforce that self-care.

Huh...So I think I can actually count an incident earlier this week as a specific incident that has stuck with me. A sequel of sorts to my earlier statement. Whenever I've talked about having control issues it has generally been from the perspective of being in diapers; I'd not yet fully tested it out of diapers. Earlier this week, I decided to give that a try while working from home. Just regular non-absorbent undies. And fortunately I was smart enough to put down a pad under me, because I needed it! Throughout the morning I had overall the same results I'd expected from before, e.g. managing to dash the ten feet to the restroom and rip down my pants fast enough to get it in the potty... ...but then I got stuck in a few meetings back-to-back for one-and-a-half hours. About halfway through the first meeting, I needed to dash to the bathroom and couldn't, so I had some small leaks that I at first chalked up to habituated releases...you know, the kind where you go automatically but forget you aren't in diapers. No biggie, right? But just twenty minutes later, everything just...gave way... 😖 It started as a leak, but then grew within seconds into an unstoppable flood that completely soaked my pants and the pad underneath me. And because the same folks were in the second meeting, there was no break (nor honestly time for me to cleanup) and I had to stand in it for the rest of the next meeting. It was only thirty minutes but it reaaaaalllly suuuuucked. Thankfully I was barefoot but still...yuuuck. Like...Maybe it goes without saying, but I really really did not want to leak that badly in the middle of a meeting and then shiver in my puddle through the rest of the first and the entirety of the second. I l still had an inkling of doubt in my head that it was all my imagination, but I did the best I could and in the end could only feel grateful I was visible from the chest up and the pad had spared me from ruining my floors. This has just been sitting in my head all week, and made me realize that I really really can't make it through the average workday without diapers. I'd say that maybe I could make it until the end of a meeting and then dash off but... I could not make it to an hour before having a sizeable accident...so even that is off the table at this point. Whether I'm medically officially incontinent remains to be confirmed...but diaper dependent? Without any doubt.

Yup...and will add that can be even less if you get increased urgency like I do when near a toilet, running water, etc. Lovely fun to have your body working against you even harder. Have actually lost control while getting everything off, granted that was after a point where I realized it would come out whether I wanted it to or not after less than three minutes. But I guess practically speaking...if you're at the point where seconds count then you're probably far-gone already control-wise. It's especially fun realizing you've reached that point suddenly (though tbh there are usually signs). Am not sure I can comment on losing more messing control via losing more wetting control btw. I let both go at the same time, so I'm not sure I can differentiate. But did my messing control go? Oh certainly. And far faster.

Anyway, This is working really well for me so far, compared to the more-passive approach I've advocated for before. I'm on the second phase so far and have already been waking up pretty often without the alarm, wetting, and going to sleep, and having no memory of it. I've had to adjust the definition of success from strictly having a memory of waking from the alarm, peeing, and going back to sleep, to including simply waking up wet. What has stood out to me has been two things (and by association, I think are the same things helping with my success): I'm guaranteed to wake, I'm challenging my fears of leaking directly And just to be clear, I already have taken a similar approach to keiff for quite a while. I've use self-affirmation (I've written extensively on my work on self-acceptance and changing how I view myself), bulletproof protection for side-sleepers (cloth diapering), chugging water, and environmental cues/reinforcement. I don't use baby powder, but I do use lavender scents and have crib rails installed on my side of the bed. Plus tons of stuffies, my paci, and other Little-y things all within reach and a wonderful hubby that sometimes reads me bedtime stories and littles me in other ways. But despite those things, I was still waking up in the middle of the night, managing fears of leaking, and feeling frustrated at my lack of progress. And more importantly/urgently, losing sleep. So what has been different about introducing an alarm and reward/punishment scheme to that? I'm guaranteed to wake: I've already noted that e.g. practicing wetting in bed during waking hours helps considerably with learning the mechanics of wetting while laying down. However, guaranteeing I'll be waking no-matter-what has done three things: given me more practice guaranteed extended that practice to include the half-awake mental states forced me to become more efficient at it The last point has been especially pertinent to me. I've practiced wetting in bed while awake, in different positions, while chugging water so that I get lots of practice. And that ofc is important because of the mechanics of laying down / working against gravity. But when I'd go to sleep, it'd take lots of focus to make it happen. By the time I thought I was doing it I'd already fallen back to sleep. Couple that with not consistently waking up anyway, and there's always that choice of going right back to sleep. Then if I do, I often wake up again because I still haven't peed...which makes it more daunting to go, because the need feels more urgent and therefore more likely to leak (not always true in cloth diapers, but half-awake brain ain't gonna be rational about feelings). But since I know I'll always be waking up, at some point something finally clicked in my head and I realized: I'm up, I'll lose sleep the longer I'm up, and this will keep happening...I might as well make this quick so I lose the least sleep. So suddenly, I'm getting really quick at getting it over-with. So quick and efficient, in fact, I often don't remember doing it and am getting better sleep again. The rewards in particular help make the success conditions more black/white and focused, and give me that extra boost to give it a try (gosh darnit, if I don't wet tonight I won't get to build the next step in the lego set!) I'm challenging my fears of leaking directly: Wearing cloth diapers is great for getting comfortable wetting in any position. And I've done that for a long time, even before this program. However, one thing I noticed was that slowly I started to become afraid of leaking again...waking up in the middle of night...all despite already sleeping on waterproof sheets, on top of an incon pad, in very thick cloth diapers (going thicker gives me back pain). There was zero reason to fear leaking, yet my fears had come back and began to interfere with my sleep because I'd gotten used to very high standards of protection; anything slightly off from that would sound the alarms. But now, I think I'm finally resolving that problem. Randomly jumping between cloth and just thin cloth diapers that often leak (I'd go buck naked as recommended, but I share a bed), has done three things: Forces me to confront leaking head-on, more-often Gotten me used to the sensation of leaking on my side, etc. Normalized managing the consequences of leaking By pairing the habit of wetting quickly and without hesitation with wearing something that'll leak, and now I'm forcing myself to confront the sensations of leaking much more often. It's a numbers game, and I'm getting more exposure and practice compared to the sheltered approach from before. Now that I have leaked many times, not only has this made me more grateful for cloth diapers again, but I've also learned one surprising thing: I can feel like I'm leaking and not leak. There's been many times when wearing disposables (and even cloth) I've felt wetness sensations in the wings and thought I was leaking...only to check and find that while there was moisture there it hadn't leaked onto the bed. It has taught me to ignore the sensation of leaking itself, entirely. Of course, this has led to several actual leaks. So many, in fact, that I've started to adjust my routine to make dealing with them really quickly and easily while groggy. I'm swapping to larger incon pads, for example; it's easy to swap them in the middle of the night, and it removes the need to change the sheets on a heavy mattress the next morning if I leak off the small pad. Summary and Recommended Changes: So far it has worked really well compared to my previous approach. But, I would modify one thing during the second phase: make the variability of what protection you wear pseudo-random rather than true random. The randomness is really helpful in continuing that habit of comfortably letting loose without hesitation in leak-proof diapering. As already explained, that has the benefit both of better sleep and forcing yourself to confront leaking directly. But if you suddenly switch to all none of that or just continue with only cloth diapering for a given week (as would be the case for true random) then it's going to either (1) be too much of a change too fast, making you emotionally dread it more, or (2) not challenge you at all. My change has been to still keep it random but ensure there is some variability every week. Maybe I have every other night switching up. Maybe I have the same thing a few nights in a row. Whatever the dice says, I do. But if it all comes up tails or heads, I re-roll. And ofc I've needed to modify the reward condition to include not just having no memory of waking to the alarm and then wetting, but also having no-memory of doing either but having evidence of that having happened. There's a small chance the wetting happened before the alarm or sometime after it, but I'm trying to keep the overall goal in mind here (plus, wetting without the alarm will be the goal in the next phase!). Anyway... I will have to come back to this and report how phases 3 and 4 go. Thanks for taking the time read this long post!

I don't think there has been a single moment for me so far, so much as a spectrum of increasingly telling signs. One moment that stands out earlier on is when I was eating breakfast with my hubby at a restaurant, and suddenly the urge went from 0 to 10 in the span of a few seconds. I did my best to stop it while keeping a straight face, but I couldn't stop having an accident. I reflected on it later and felt really grateful I had been diapered when that happened, but simultaneously felt a sense of dread and fear in realizing that if I hadn't been diapered then I would have had a very large and very public accident in a very very very bad place. Around/after that specific point, I felt more resolved to never come out of diapers in public. This had the consequence of confining me entirely to my home for a few months during recovery after a later surgery because I couldn't quite wear diapers and didn't trust myself to make it to a public bathroom in time. A more-recent moment that stands out is my return trip from CAP. I learned I had zero control in stopping anything while standing up. It was like the levers were only partially working half the time at best, and when they did the valves didn't close off all the way so I'd continue to wet despite feeling like everything was clenched off. But it wasn't that alone which was memorable -- it was that realization combined with being stuck in a confined space around lots of people for many hours with little-to-no backup clothes. I could only carry so much in my purse, and there was always a chance I'd be separated from my carry-on luggage (nearly was at one point...can happen when too many people violate the size requirement or they overbook the flight). That...anxiety-ridden...return trip really hammered in how much more vulnerable I was to being put into some very embarrassing and uncomfortable situations. Diapers were absolutely as mandatory as meds, and backup clothes (which I did use after leaking at one point) were a close second. It makes me reconsider travel as a whole, as being incontinent adds this entire stressful overhead of managing bulky (but mandatory) supplies in size-restricted unpredictable situations. How many diapers do you need on-hand? Once you land? How about ordering ahead? Do you plan to bring back anything with you, and do you have the room for it with your return supplies? Etc. And while you can request baggage accommodations for it, it's going to be different for each airline that may require not just a doctor's note but that you do it quite a ways ahead of time via snail mail. So yeah...maybe a few of those signs, hopefully you find that informative! Was I more diaper dependent compared to that first event? Absolutely. But was I already diaper dependent at that first event? Enough so. Back then I could struggle and sometimes fully stop it compared to now where I can only partially stop it at best. I might have fared better with travel this time around with as much "control" as I had back then, but I wouldn't have been any less dependent. So...spectrum, I still think?

Thanks! I can't take credit for the process, but it is a bedwetting progression track.

Another update of a kind, I suppose! So CAP happened, and it went really well! Did not have any messy accidents on account of struggling to stay hydrated or consume fiber. I get what y'all mean by needing to push...heck I was craving veggies and couldn't be happier to return to my regular diet and hydration levels. One thing I didn't expect though, was that despite struggling with hydration at times I'd have big unexpected floods. And the fact I was completely unable to stop them (or at best reduce to dribble for a few seconds) really hammered in how much my continence has changed. In one case, I was flagged by the TSA in the diaper area...and while the pat-down was not great, they were pretty respectful of it and I was honestly more embarrassed that I didn't realize I was wet when I went through the line. And in many many other cases, I felt really anxious standing up to stretch my legs on the plane because those floods would happen and I could only pack so many diapers and changes of clothes (which, btw, extended to much of the trip). So travel really sucks when you're incontinent. But it's okay, I managed it successfully and 99% of my life is spent with my feet on the ground anyways. Last bit I wanted to discuss was bedwetting. I'm going to try out the the program I summarized in this other thread, which I've now summarized for your convenience in table-form here: Phase 1: Reward Wet Nights Phase 2: Reward With Variability Phase 3: Remove Alarm Phase 4: Remove Reward / Raise Bar: Goal Awake wet every morning Awake wet every morning, despite random conditions Awake wet most of the time without alarm Awake without reward or alarm Reward Condition Wet before alarm, Wet after alarm Wet before alarm, Wet after alarm Wet before alarm, Wet after alarm (varies) Punishment Condition Not wetting with alarm Not wetting with alarm Not wetting Not wetting Stop Condition 1 month wet every morning 1 month wet every morning can wet without the alarm 50% of tries, and Wetting 75% of time (6 nights/week) 1 alarm per week, and 2 week streak 12 weeks effort minimum Progression (continue as-is) (continue as-is) Pick one night without the alarm Reward only when wet in sleep Every Two weeks, increase the count by one Reward when wet 2, 3, etc nights in a row Don't progress if 4 weeks pass without wetting the alarm-off night It's a bit vague to me how to treat the punishment condition in phases 3 and 4, since we're now dealing with probability in the success criteria rather than a binary yes/no being fulfilled. And I also have no idea how phase 4 is supposed to work if you are only wetting without the alarm 50% of the time going into it. Any suggestions are welcome there! Otherwise I thought quite a bit on the reward in my case...initially I was thinking just putting stars on the chart would be good...But it's a bad idea because removing the reward would also remove reporting. Food is also a bad idea in-general for many reasons, and the reward (and punishment) must be quick and simple to administer every morning. So, I came up with a good one other Littles might like: Legos! If the success condition is met, then I get to build ONE more step in the set. If the punishment condition is met, then I have to UNDO the previous step. For vague/probability conditions later (50% of alarm-off nights are wet) not being met, then I simply don't build or undo a step. I love to see things come together (and hate to see them come apart), and the reward is tactile and experiential. So, I feel excited about it and look forward to giving it a try! For tracking, I've decided to print out and physically fill out / plan each week since later steps will e.g. have me choosing random days in the week to not use the alarm etc. I can simply attach an outcome to the physical roll of dice and fill it out once at the beginning of the week, which keeps the system suuuper simple. I also have a hubby to sleep with so I can't just go to bed completely unprotected, so I vary how much diapering I wear (just disposable, disposable + cloth, all cloth), and whether I sleep on an additional incontinence pad or not (the mattress itself will *always* have a cover...the pad is for additional ease of mind); varying these alone should be enough to make me uncomfortable at night without too much risk disturbing my partner's sleep. I've attached a PDF for those that want to follow along. Anyway, that was a lot so if you've stuck around you have my thanks! Lemme know if you read/liked this, it helps me know y'all still want to see this kind of content. Otherwise, take care and good luck in your own journey! UntrainingWorksheet.pdf