Kaliborio

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.

A few quick questions: In what way(s) have you become incontinent? How long did it take you? 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? How was your continence before you decided to become incontinent? 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? Have you tried to regain your continence? Were you successful, fully or partially? If partially, to what degree? 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? 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? Thanks so much to anyone who answers!

Thanks for this! I've heard good things about them

Hey everyone. I use a mixed diapering solution which heavily involves disposable diapers. I like my current disposable brand but haven't changed it in years and would like to shop around and see what's out there. I'm 24/7 and have severe urinary incontinence (including bedwetting) and messing. I'm looking for some medical diapers that fit that need profile and are also suitable for someone who moves around a fair amount (so, i.e., have strong tapes, retain their fit well). I've tried Tena Slip, because the classic plastic-backed Slips were my standby a long time back, but I'm not impressed with the current variety. Thanks so much in advance.

As a transgender woman I will admit to a degree of grim amusement that you've basically had to reinvent trans community etiquette from scratch but for diapers

I've been 24/7 since sometime between mid-2012 and the start of 2013, but the only decision I made at that time was to wear diapers 24/7. To a lesser extent, I decided — not very consciously and without much consideration — to let my daytime wetting control slip, inasmuch as I realised it was slipping a few months in but put it in the "too hard" basket and decided it couldn't be that bad and I would fix it later. This was untrue. Despite retraining efforts that met with temporary but considerable success in their area, including by improving my daytime wetting control, I have not since then ever had enough daytime wetting control that I could have left diapers. I started wetting the bed in early 2013 and did nothing about it, but that was less of a decision because it was based on a misapprehension — namely, I assumed it would be fine and I would be able to reverse it. That was completely untrue and based on a misapprehension of how sleep wetting worked, and while my sleep wetting control continued to change, it has never done so by increasing. I started having issues with bowel control in late 2013 and that was effectively not a decision. By that point I had realised that it could get worse and I might not be able to fix it later, but my control in general was so degraded that there was no prospect of my being able to leave diapers, which was a significant problem because my use of diapers was part of the circuit eroding my bowel control. Despite a moderately successful retraining attempt, I was forced by circumstances to abandon my efforts to retrain at the start of 2016 and ultimately over the first half of that year had to come to terms with my control issues. Over the next year to 18 months I unpacked and dealt with my residual guilt and regret. Since early-to-mid-2017 I have been more or less sanguine.

I took a very long time to get out of diapers as a kid — I started to get out of them around my 7th birthday, and still ended up having to return to them around 11–12yo (before managing to get out of them again, albeit with somewhat worsened control).

Predominantly a comfort thing. I spent a long time as a kid dealing with being unable to reliably hold my bowels. After I went back into diapers, I stayed in them partly because of a long-term, pre-returning-to-diapers feeling that my control was slowly getting worse and more stressful to maintain. Simply being safely able to not bother to hold and fill my diapers is comforting.

If you successfully intentionally lost your wetting control, but did not try to — or tried not to — lose your messing control, how is your messing control doing now? My reason for asking is noticing that basically nobody I know who completely lost only their wetting control seems to have retained complete messing control over the long term. This includes me but also several others I know. The timescale seems to vary; I am at the very early end, having started having messing accidents only a little more than a year after I went into diapers, but by a couple of years in pretty much everyone seems to have copped it to some degree. A small fraction decided not to try to resist losing more bowel control. A smaller fraction, including me, did try but got nowhere (I'm fine with it now but it was unexpected and unplanned for at the time). However, even among the relatively large cohort of people who did resist it and did have success in doing so, basically everyone seems to have experience of unintentional messing and some sort of informal "messy diaper contingency plan". The median frequency of unplanned messy diapers seems to be a couple of times per year, which is not an overwhelming and devastating amount if you're in diapers, but is pretty significant given I would imagine the median annual frequency of unplanned messing in the undiapered, continent, non-AB/DL adult population must be on the order of ≤ 0.1. If this has one or more common causes in everyone then I have some hypotheses about what they might be — primarily: I suspect that bladder untraining weakens the pelvic floor and causes basically fairly severe stress incontinence. The pelvic floor muscles are also implicated in bowel control. Weakening the pelvic floor muscles would therefore presumably weaken bowel control. I suspect that adequate protection for severe to total urinary incontinence takes significantly more effort and time to remove than underwear, increasing the probability that under conditions of urgency and with weakened intrinsic control you will not be able to successfully make it to the toilet. If any of you folks have noticed similar problems then that would help me assess the validity of my hypotheses. If you haven't, that would also help me assess the validity of my hypotheses. Looking forward to your input.