MinnesotaWriter

Chapter 63: Rescued I closed my eyes as tightly as possible and curled up on my side with my head buried in my arms. Multiple voices were talking now, two, maybe three people. I caught only bits and pieces of a hushed conversation that was now happening in my bedroom. They were all talking about me, glimpses of shock in their whispers. I opened my eyes, but only slightly. Two women and a man wearing blue jackets huddled together in the middle of the bedroom. I closed my eyes again when the one woman facing me made eye contact. That was followed by footsteps that stopped right next to the crib. I opened my eyes again. A woman was standing next to the crib, peering down at me. “Everything is going to be all right. We’re going to get you out of there.” I shifted to the far corner of the crib, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her now that I could see more clearly with the flashlight not shining in my face. “Hey, my name is Amanda. What’s your name?” The word stuck in my throat for a few seconds until, at last, I could whisper it out. “Sarah.” “We’re going to get you out of here, Sarah.” Amanda stood over the crib, attempting to figure out how the sliding door worked until she flipped the right latch and pulled it open. “Why don’t you sit here on the edge for a second?” I complied with the request, even though it meant sitting on my now messy diaper. Amanda placed her hand over her nose as she leaned in toward me, feeling both of my arms and my legs with her hands. She turned to speak to the two other people in the room. “Minimal bruising. No broken bones. Doesn’t seem malnourished. Just…” She let her words trail off as she looked down at my diaper and then back at the bottles and pacifier in the crib, as if at a loss for how to describe what she was seeing. “Is that what I think it is?” the woman behind Amanda asked. “Is it what, Jody? The man asked. Jodie was pointing to something on the dresser. The baby monitor. The man walked over to the baby camera that was on top of the dresser, pointed down directly at the crib. He picked it up and shifted it in his hands for a few seconds before pressing a button that turned it off. “We need to figure out who was watching this right away,” the man said. “They’re going to know that something is off, even if they hadn’t already seen us.” “Would it be her parents?” Jodie asked. “No, it’s just the mother,” Amanda said. “Then we need to figure out where she works and contact the sheriff’s office. Can’t risk her getting on the run. Not after this.” I was still sitting on the edge of the crib, watching their discussion, their attention momentarily diverted from me. My pacifier must have been kicked out behind the crib when I had sat up, so I placed my thumb into my mouth instead. “Are we going to need an ambulance?” “I don’t think so; she seems more or less fine physically; we can get her to the hospital in one of our vehicles.” “But we can’t do it like this. Let’s help get her cleaned up first.” The man turned back to look at me briefly. “How are we going to manage that?” “Probably best to get her cleaned up in the shower. We passed one on the way to the bedroom. I’ll go and get it started.” “Yes, you two can help the girl with getting cleaned up. I’m going to get in touch with the sheriff’s office and the hospital. They need to find her mother ASAP.” Amanda walked back over to me and then crouched so that her eyes were level with my own. “We’re going to take you to the hospital, but you need to get cleaned up first. Can I help you up?” I nodded, and Amanda slid her hands under my armpits and helped me to my feet. Amanda held my hand as I toddled alongside her to the bathroom. Jodie was in the middle of adjusting the shower temperature. I hadn’t stepped into a shower since that day when I had failed potty training when Mom had rinsed me clean from my accident with frigid cold water. Since then, Mom had given me baths, sometimes with Emilia’s help, but it was hard to ascertain how frequently I had been cleaned up like that. “Should be all set now,” Jodie said. I held my hand out tentatively, stretched out nearly enough to touch the water, but not quite there yet. “It’s OK, you can go ahead and touch it. It’s all nice and warm.” Amanda pulled up her sleeve and held her hand in the water, keeping it under the shower stream. I put my hand in next to hers. The water was just right. Warm, but only gently so, not anywhere near so hot as to scald me. “Here’s what we are going to do,” Amanda said. “We’re going to get this off of you, wipe you up some, and then we’ll finish cleaning you up in the shower.” She looked down at me as if she was expecting a response. “Can we do that?” I didn’t understand why she needed my permission to change my messy diaper or why she seemed so hesitant to call it what it was, but I nodded up and down, anyway. Her fingers fumbled around on the diaper tapes for a few seconds, unsure exactly what to do. Then she ripped them off one by one, keeping a grip on the diaper so it didn’t immediately drop down to the floor once all the tapes were off. Then the diaper was off, and with it, any remaining barrier preventing the smell of what I had done in it from escaping. The odor wasn’t pleasant in any way, but I was much more used to it than the two women who were helping me get cleaned up, both of whom appeared to be stifling the need to gag. One woman held the diaper beneath me while the other ran cold, wet wipes along my bottom, depositing them into the diaper. After a dozen wipes, she rolled up the diaper and tossed it in the trash. “There has to be an air freshener somewhere,” Jodie said as she turned on the bathroom fan and opened several cupboards. She found the can she was looking for and made a few broad, sweeping sprays across the bathroom. “Just one more thing to do now: we need to get you in the shower.” Amanda placed a supporting arm around me as I stepped into the shower. The warm, pounding water caressed my skin as I stood with my back to the shower. Each woman grabbed a washcloth and began to wipe me down, both around my waist and then my arms and legs, everything except my hair, which they had done up in a bun to avoid it getting wet. Had they said they would take me to the hospital after this? But why? I wasn’t sick. Even Amanda had admitted that I appeared healthy? Everything in my mind still felt a bit fuzzy. I was struggling to make sense of what was going on. I shivered as the water was turned off abruptly, and then a large towel was draped around me as Amanda helped me out of the bathtub. “Sarah, can you tell us where your mom might be?” “Work.” “And where does your mother work?” I shrugged beneath the towel. “I dunno.” “And your little sister? What about Emilia?” “School.” The brief interrogation ended as they finished drying me off and led me back to the bedroom. I laid on the bed out of habit, even though they hadn’t placed a changing pad onto the sheets. There was a raised voice coming from somewhere else in the house. But just one person. It sounded like the man was yelling at someone over the phone. The women looked at each other. “I’m sure there have to be clothes for her somewhere,” Jodie said. They went over to my dresser and pulled open nearly every drawer before selecting an outfit for me to wear. I held my arms up as the women slid a t-shirt and hoodie over me. But seeing the next item of clothing they wanted to put on me caused me to cross my legs and shake my head from side to side. Amanda was holding a pair of underwear that she must have found in the dresser. “You can do it,” she said, holding the underwear out in front of me. “No one is going to make you wear diapers anymore. You can put it on yourself if you want to.” What was she talking about? Being made to wear diapers? That wasn’t true. I wanted to wear them. I wanted to wear them because I wasn’t capable of being potty trained. “But I wanna wear diapies.” Jodie sighed softly and sat down on the bed next to me. She placed an arm around my shoulder. She waved her other hand around the room. At the crib. At the stacks of diapers in the closet. At the diaper changing supplies sitting atop the dresser. “None of this is right. You’re a teenager. And it wasn’t right for your mom to treat you like this for so long. It’s OK for you to want to wear underwear again.” I looked back and forth between the two women. They didn’t get it. Maybe Mom could explain it properly to them in a way I couldn’t, not with baby words. I tried to think of some big girl words that might do the trick, but they all seemed to elude me. But if there was one thing that Mom had fully ingrained in me, it was being obedient to authority figures, so I let the women dress me how they wanted to. After I uncrossed my legs, the women continued dressing me, getting the underwear on and then pulling on a pair of leggings and socks. I still felt naked as I got off of the bed. Walking felt unnatural with the absence of a diaper and the way the padding between my legs would impact my gait. I waddled a little as if there was an imaginary diaper still between my legs. At least the yelling off on the other side of the house had stopped. “Jodie, can you go find a jacket for Sarah? It’s getting pretty cold out right now?” Jodie hurried off ahead while Amanda walked slowly beside me, holding my hand. I didn’t really want to go to the hospital. But I didn’t want to not comply with these nice ladies, either. “Where’s mommy?” “We don’t know where mommy is right now. But I think it’s best to have a break from seeing her.” I paused a few feet from the bedroom door. My voice quivered slightly. “But…” Amanda took hold of my hand. “We’ll get a nice warm jacket on you before we get out to the car. And then, we can stop and get something to eat on the way to the hospital. Does that sound good?” I was hungry. It had to be close to when Mom would come home with Emilia. I let Amanda lead me out of the bedroom. I took three steps into the hallway, and then everything was warm and wet in my pants. Only I didn’t have a diaper on, so the wetness spread out, running down the legs of my jeans and dripping into an ever-growing puddle between my feet on the floor. There is a reason that only big girls are allowed to wear underwear.

You're welcome. All of the story versions should be consistent as of last weekend when I finished with editing. The only difference is for Wattpad, for example, I will split up a chapter into 2-3 parts sometimes when they are longer. As for the uncle. I think it is clear from the other instances where we see him interact with Lisa that he is respectful of her issues. For that classroom scene in chapter 3, I'd chalk it up to more of an attempt to treat her like any other student, knowing that an accident would be covered because she had protection on. Not the right way of handling it, but he wasn't intended to be anywhere similar to what Sarah's mom was. I went and did a word search for summer, I think all the references are to the previous summer break that would have happened before the start of the story.

Someone/something definitely had to have tipped them off. They aren't going to come in like that of their own accord. We will have to see if the authorities decide that is for the best. Might be hard for Sarah to have that reminder of what she's been through. Yeah, so the story takes place over one school semester, starting in September and going through the end of Christmas break. I played a little fast and loose with the amount of time that passed between key holidays like Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas, there were definitely some extra days thrown in there to line up certain events with certain holidays. And then of course there is the to be revealed amount of time that Sarah is being homeschooled/babied by her mother.

Thanks for all the comments. Lots of intriguing theories for how CPS got involved. We'll have an answer by the end of the story. That's an interesting theory for how Lisa could have discovered things. We'll get a sense for the time span soon enough. I left it pretty open-ended intentionally, trying to give a sense of how Sarah has gotten lost in the role of being a baby rather than having her counting out the days like someone who is trapped in a prison cell. Lots of good questions, and the answers will be coming soon. You're welcome. And that's another good theory. Kids that age aren't exactly known for their ability to keep secrets. I think that's a given. Going to stay mum for now about what happens to both of the sisters, but there isn't any scenario where the mom gets them back. Yes, it was a long time coming, but that doesn't mean that Sarah is necessarily going to have an easy time the next few chapters. We will get a doctor's visit, and some information about what is causing Sarah's bedwetting/incontinence and what can or can't be done about it. Thanks! What happens between Sarah/Emilia was a difficult decision to arrive at. How to say how much exactly she'll even be able to consciously remember from that age, even if she is still impacted subconsciously by what she went through. I think that the initial scene where the mom humiliates/spanks Sarah for the bad grade is a good intro into how messed up the relationship is between Sarah and her mother. It's clearly wrong and unfair, even compared to real-life examples of a teenager being disciplined for poor grades. It's really meant to show that Sarah accepts this type of abusive behavior as normal and goes along with it unquestioningly. It sets the stage for how Sarah complies with punishments that are progressively worse, until she is being babied full-time during Christmas break. I wouldn't say that Sarah views the babying as proof that her mom loves her, though she does believe that her mom loves her. Sarah isn't wanting to be a baby because of any of the affection she is getting from her mother. She wants to be a baby because she believes she is a baby, because she has been unable to successfully get past any of the mother's tests/rules that would prove she is a big girl. Her initial reaction to the babying was very much in the "I deserve this punishment" mindset, which, with that last failure of potty training changed to "I want to wear diapers because I'm incapable of controlling my bladder."

It's been a long time coming for this chapter. I mean that quite literally. I've gone through and re-edited the whole story over the past couple of weeks and added up the word count in the process. It's 194,000 words through 62 chapters. And, with "Diapers Never Lie," there are another 32,000 words. Between the two combined, this will likely be at 250,000 words when I'm finished. I really do appreciate everyone who's gotten this far through the story. According to Wattpad (which does tend to overestimate in my opinion), the reading time is about 14 hours long right now. We'll see how things break down in terms of the number of chapters and word count when I'm finished, but it will be about four to six chapters left to get things wrapped up. Endings are hard, because there is a balance between not saying enough and stretching them out for too long. I think I've got a good mix of that. There is some good news, though. I've been working concurrently on a sequel set about six years in the future, which should be finished as this story wraps up. We've got a lot more to cover in Sarah's journey. I wouldn't interpret the lack of information about how the mother setup the homeschool to imply that she didn't follow whatever processes, whatever they might be in this circumstance, but yes, there is a lot to be explained in the next few chapters. I know. I think as a writer it is a lot easier for me to put Sarah through some of the things she went through, because I was aware of where things were going to end. It was getting hard not to say anything anytime someone brought up the need for CPS to be involved. I know. Toward the end, I was worrying that I was dragging it out a little too much, but there were specific scenes I wanted to write, and I wanted Sarah to get to the point she was at before being rescued. There are a lot of stories about people being forced back into diapers/babyhood, and I feel like there are a lot of times, especially when it's parents/kids like this story, where the protagonist accepts it too easily without it being portrayed as the traumatizing experience that it would be. I wanted to delve into how it was impacting her mindset, but also with how it affects her having been suddenly brought out of it. Welcome! That's pretty cool that this is what got you to make an account. In the final chapters, we'll definitely get into how she comes to better understand her incontinence, as well as how this experience has shaped things with her friends. Like I mentioned above, I'm also in the process of writing a sequel that will fast forward about six years. It's focused on the lingering effects of what Sarah had endured, and how it impacts her life and relationships. I have some thoughts on the causes of her incontinence. I promise we'll a good in-story explanation, same with the amount of time that has passed. It really is. I remember that episode. Was actually homeschooled for a couple of years myself. It was done well, in my case, but even done well is rarely as good as in a public school, and I'm aware (from interaction with other homeschoolers) that there are plenty of cases where the educational quality is very subpar. And, of course, it makes it way too easy to hide abuse. I can see there being a case to be made for homeschooling being acceptable under certain rare circumstances (health issues, bullying, learning disabilities that require specific care, or other unique circumstances, like being a child actor or athlete) but not because you are anti-science and want to indoctrinate your kids into believing the world is flat. I know a thing or two about homeschooling. Let's just say I know the name of that acronym without needing to look it up.

Chapter 62: Three Letters I was awake before Mom had come to get me out of the crib and change me. If not for the fact that yesterday had been New Year’s Day, I wouldn’t have a good sense of what day it was. Christmas break had been a blur, but I as laid in the crib, I was reasonably certain that today was the first day back in school. Mom had not addressed the topic of school, not since two days ago, when I had proven once and for all that I wasn’t capable of being a big girl. The preschool Emilia was graduating into this January when she turned four didn’t take kids that weren’t potty trained. Why should the standards for a high school be any different? And did I even want to go to school? The thought of having to face Samantha and Desi again, and Lisa, after what I’d said and done to alienate them, terrified me. The only justification for my behavior that I could give was the one thing I could never allow them to find out about me. After being put back in diapers following my failed foray into wearing underwear, I had paid no attention whatsoever to my bladder or bowel functions. If I needed to go, I went. And I often went without realizing that I needed to go. There was no longer any question that the diapers were sorely needed. The pacifier Mom had placed in my mouth after tucking me in had fallen out to the side of the crib. I picked it up and put it back into my mouth, focusing on the soothing sensation of my lips and tongue on the rubber nipple. My diaper was soaked, but at least Mom had put pajama pants over it the other night, which both kept my legs warmer and prevented the diaper from getting too saggy. The sun inched higher in the sky, a few rays peeking into the bedroom from the gaps in the blinds. Across the room, Emilia was still sound asleep in what had used to be my bed. It was still far too big for her. She was practically swallowed up by all the blankets and sheets. Creaky footsteps in the hallway. I closed my eyes, pretending that I was still asleep. The door inched open. Mom always got Emilia up first, making sure to remind her to use the potty before sending her along to the kitchen where a bowl of her favorite cereal had already been poured for her along with a glass of milk. Before two days ago, it would have greatly irritated me if Emilia had been around during the morning diaper change, and I would have been grateful to see her leave the room before Mom moved on to getting me up for the day. Now, I wouldn’t have cared if she had stuck around. Our roles were fully reversed. She was the big girl; I was the baby. Mom sometimes changed my diaper before breakfast, but other times she would wait until I had finished eating. I was already picturing how nice a fresh diaper would feel against my body when I felt her hands on my shoulder, gently stirring me awake. “It’s time for a baby to have her breakfast.” That’s fine. I could wait until after breakfast for the diaper change. Mom opened the sliding door to the crib and helped me out. I got down on my hands and knees without needing to be asked. Babies crawl to where they need to go. That was the other reason I was glad to have pajama pants on, as that helped cushion my knees as I trailed behind Mom to the kitchen. Once in the kitchen, I stood up, but only briefly, as I got myself into the old wooden highchair. Emilia was too busy trying to trace a maze on the back of the cereal box to give me any attention. Some dirty plates next to the sink told me that Mom had already gotten her breakfast before getting us out of bed. I opened my mouth complacently as she spooned in cereal. She hadn’t bothered to put on a bib, as I would be changing out of my pajama shirt, anyway. There were dribbles of milk all over the front of it. It was only baby talk for me so far. Lots of trains and airplanes and bumblebees all making their way into my mouth as Mom lifted the spoon to my face. Nothing yet about what was going to happen for school after breakfast. I belatedly realized that I hadn’t done any of the assigned readings for the break. That meant I’d have to suffer through some pop quizzes and hope that I could make the right multiple-choice guesses. I opened my mouth wide for the last bite of cereal as Mom made train noises while sliding the spoon into my mouth. My diaper was likely at its breaking point now, judging from how much warmer it felt compared to when I had first sat down in the highchair. There was another journey along the hallway floor as I went back to the bedroom. Mom had everything prepared for the diaper change on Emilia’s bed by the time I arrived. That answered one question. I would be wearing a diaper today. But it left many more, and I would need to wait until Mom provided an explanation. Something was off about the diaper as I stood up, ready to lie down on top of it. In the middle of the diaper, on top of its padding, was another long strip that looked to be made of the same absorbent material inside the diaper. A booster pad? That was all I could think it would be. These diapers were already incredibly absorbent. With a booster pad, I could probably stay in one diaper the entire school day without changing. That answered another one of the questions swirling in my mind. At least I wasn’t going to have to worry about rushing to get the hall passes. But I shuddered involuntarily at the thought of what my diapered bottom might look like by the time I was in my final class of the day. At least it was extremely rare for me to poop during school. I’d somehow mentally trained my body to not need to do that when I was away from home. As I settled in on the diaper, it took a second to adjust to how it was going to feel to have the extra padding between my legs. I wasn’t going to be running around a lot, either. Mom applied the baby cream, and then a thorough sprinkling of baby powder as well. She had only used both before at night, another sign that I should expect to be in this diaper for a long time. I felt Mom’s fingers press firmly against my waist as she ensured the plastic tapes were snug. What was she going to put on me? Had to be a dress. Anything else either wouldn’t fit over the diaper or would obviously expose it to my classmates. My pajama shirt with the milk splatters on it came off, tossed successfully into the hamper. But it was replaced, not with a dress, but with a short-sleeved t-shirt, and Mom helped me off the bed without putting anything else on me. She had held me out of school before, but only for a day at a time, when I had been wearing diapers for a day as a punishment for having too many accidents in my pull-ups. Is that what was happening now? I looked up at Mom quizzically. But to ask the question I wanted to ask, I’d need to use big girl words, and, as far as I knew, those were still off limits. The crib door was still open. The blankets had been straightened out and pulled to the side, ready for me to lie down. “It’s time for a baby to lie down for a nap.” Mom held my hand and led me to the entrance to the crib. I wouldn’t have to go to school. I wouldn’t have to do any homework. I wouldn’t have to face Samantha, Desi, and Lisa. I crawled into the crib without some difficulty, as it was hard to do so with the thicker diaper. But then I was on my back. Mom pulled the blanket over me. But I was missing something. It took me a second to realize what it was. My mouth felt empty. “Mommy. Paci.” My high-pitched whine echoed in the bedroom. A moment later, a pacifier was in my mouth. “Mommy is going off to work now.” She was standing next to the crib, having shut the door. “I’ll be back during lunch break. I’ve told the school you are being homeschooled for this semester. That will end when you decide you want to be a big girl again.” The pacifier spared me from making any response, even if there was little that could be expressed with baby talk. I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to be a big girl again. I needed my diapers. I couldn’t imagine being able to live without them. “This,” Mom said, as she set something on the dresser, “is so you don’t get into any trouble until I am back home.” I looked closely at what Mom had placed on the dresser. It was a nanny cam. The one she had used to monitor Emilia when she was a baby. It connected via the internet to Mom’s phone, so she could watch it from anywhere. I felt a twinge of annoyance. Not because Mom was monitoring me, but that she somehow still didn’t trust me. Didn’t she understand that I knew now that I was a baby? That I knew that I wanted to wear diapers? Mom left the bedroom without saying anything else. I wondered if that was going to be it before she came back for lunch. Instead, she returned with two baby bottles, both filled with apple juice. She set them inside the crib. That would be more than enough to make sure I didn’t go thirsty until lunch time. And, with the extra padding in the diaper, there would be no issues with any leaks until I was changed again. But I wasn’t thirsty quite yet. Not with all the milk I’d had with my cereal for breakfast. I kept the pacifier in my mouth and closed my eyes, not even opening them as Emilia darted into the bedroom and Mom got her dressed for preschool. I shouldn’t have been tired, but something about laying back down in the crib with the pacifier in my mouth was making me sleepy. My diaper was wet by the time I drifted off to sleep. --- Wake up. Breakfast. Diaper Change. Nap. Diaper change. Lunch. Play time. Diaper change. Nap. Diaper change. Dinner. Playtime. Diaper change. Bath. Bedtime. Repeat. Repeat. And repeat some more. What day was it, anyway? The weekends helped. Sort of. Though the routine for them often ended up following a similar pattern, anyway. How many weekends had even passed since Mom had pulled me out of school with the excuse of homeschooling me? Was it even January still? I didn’t know. Mom still asked me occasionally about whether I was a big girl or a baby. The answer was always the same. I was a baby. The evidence of that grew day by day. But none of those questions really mattered. Those were things a big girl worried about. I was a baby who still wet and messed her diaper, and I needn’t concern myself with any of those things. I hadn’t realized how much stress I had been under the past several months until I had finally experienced what it was like to not being dealing with any of it. All the anxiety from what I had to do to manage my bladder. Being depressed about my failures to re-potty train myself. My jealousy both at Lisa’s successes and Samantha’s ease at accepting her own strange need for diapers. Everything that had combined to make that first semester of school a complete hell for me. There was no stress for me now. Not as I lay in my crib in a wet diaper with a pacifier in my mouth. Babies don’t feel stress. Babies don’t make decisions. Babies don’t have any rules to follow or punishments for being disobedient. Babies don’t need to do anything for themselves. Babies simply exist. Did I even miss anything from my former life? Did I miss school? I couldn’t say that I was feeling any strong urges to do math homework or sit through boring classes. And I was sure my former friends were getting along just fine without me. I’d done enough to alienate them. I doubted any new messages were arriving on my phone, which probably hadn’t been powered up in who knew how long. No, this situation was better, especially for a girl who wasn’t potty trained. How would I even go about wearing a diaper at school in the first place? Or explaining how I had made a stinky mess in it during the middle of math class. I couldn’t clean that up by myself. I don’t think the nurse was paid enough to do that for me. There was a rumbling sound in my stomach, a tightening sensation in my abdomen. Then it was gone, followed a few seconds later by a hint of a pungent odor emanating from the diaper. I was no longer bothered by messing myself. That’s just what babies did. My body told me that I needed to poop and so I did, right then and there. That wasn’t to say that the sensation of a messy diaper wasn’t uncomfortable. But once I had come to accept that everything was now outside of my control, a messy diaper wasn’t anything to worry about. There was a routine to follow. I would be changed when I got changed. I think it was now in the middle of the afternoon. Probably. There was one empty bottle in my crib and another one that I had barely begun to drink. I held the tip of the bottle to my mouth and suckled softly on it. I wasn’t all that thirsty. I was drinking more out of habit for something to do before I closed my eyes to continue the nap. I wasn’t even paying any attention to my bladder as the diaper gradually expanded, this time from a warm stream of urine. The booster pads Mom placed in the diaper while I she was off at work had proven to be extremely useful, especially with how much she often left for me to drink. I was halfway through the second bottle when I heard the front door slam open. I wasn’t able to see the clock from the crib, but even though the curtains and blinds were down, there seemed to be more light coming in than there should be by the time I was expecting Mom to be home with Emilia. There was a voice, or maybe voices, coming from elsewhere in the house. Maybe Mom was home early. Or perhaps it was the weekend after all. I didn’t let the noise distract me any further. I put the bottle back into my mouth. I would be the perfect image of a baby when Mom stepped in to check on me. The bedroom door swung open. A woman stepped through, scanning the room with a flashlight in her hand. I was able to make out three letters on her jacket before I averted my eyes from the light. CPS.

The story won't end before there's a chance to delve further into how all of this has impacted Sarah. Hard to feel the need to tell someone else when you're convinced that you are fully deserving of what is happening to you. Before Christmas break, Lisa was pressing Sarah pretty hard about if there was anything going on. And of course there was Sarah's blowup at Lisa at the mall later on. This last chapter took place on New Year's Eve. We'll find out about what happens regarding school in the next chapter. That should be out around Monday/Tuesday. Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying it. There are some more developments in store for Sarah still. Appreciate the thorough predictions. My lips are sealed for now.

I think the story has been a bit dark for a while now. I'm counting five to six more chapters, albeit all fairly long ones. I'm a habitual offender for underestimating the amount of chapters remaining in my outline, so we'll see. I see it as more as the mom being completely incapable of understanding why Sarah isn't succeeding, and lashing out at her. I'm sticking with narcissism for my diagnosis, but I'm not a psychologist, so I'm sure her behavior might fall under some other categories. We'll have to see how those theories hold up in coming chapters.

There was something I noticed on the second read-through. There's nothing noted yet about whether Rei is wearing a pull-up at all. I get the sense, especially from the section where she describes how her classmates are in diapers or pull-ups, that perhaps Rei isn't in pull-ups yet since nothing is mentioned about there. But I'm curious about that.

I didn't like The Handmaid's Tale when I first read it back in high school. The main issue I had with it at the time was that the way society had so quickly shifted against women in the U.S. in that story was unbelievable. My view on that definitely has evolved over the years. Especially with learning about what happened to women's rights in Iran and with events in the U.S. since 2016. The Handmaid's Tale is still an extreme dystopia, but not so far outside the realm of possibility that I once viewed it as. As for a diapered version of it, I'm looking forward to more worldbuilding.

Chapter 61: The Kool-Aid I missed my potty-training watch. That this thought had passed unbidden through my head was borderline heretical. Back when Mom had been making me wear that stupid watch, pink with the picture of a kid’s toilet seat for the watch face, I had been both humiliated by the sight of it every time I glanced at my wrist and greatly annoyed at the sing-song tune it would play to remind me to go to the toilet every thirty minutes. I kept glancing at my bare arm, as if between looks, it might magically appear on my wrist. As much of a nuisance as the watch had been, I had benefited from both the predictability and frequency of the toilet breaks it had directed me to take. It was basically impossible to wet my pants when I was sitting on the toilet two times an hour. To be fair, as I had later learned from Lisa, going to the toilet that frequently, while useful for avoiding accidents in the short term, could cause issues with being able to hold one’s bladder for longer periods of time. But I wasn’t concerned with long-term consequences at the moment. I just needed to get through this later toilet training challenge. I could work out how to deal with whatever came next when it was time to deal with it. I was sitting on the couch. I had tried to sit on the floor in front of the coffee table, but my bottom, absent the thick padding of the diaper, wasn’t comfortable in the least, even though the room was carpeted. The couch was a slight improvement from sitting on the floor. Yes, my bottom was appropriately cushioned by the leather couch beneath me. But with only a skirt on over my regular cotton underwear, there was not much to protect me from the too cold feel of the leather. I couldn’t take my eyes off of my sister. With the new potty-training rules that Mom had in place, she was the key to everything. How often did my three-year-old-soon-to-be-four-year-old sister need to use the toilet? One would think that after being stuck at home with her for two weeks during Christmas break that I would have managed to make at least some observations about her toileting habits that I could recall, but I was clueless. I knew that there would still be times where she would get up from whatever she was doing and rush off to the toilet. And on other occasions, mom would need to give her reminders so that she would make it to the bathroom in time. That wasn’t a good sign for me. If Emilia was constantly waiting until the last moment to use the toilet, that only meant that I would be needing to wait longer to go as well. But if I had to guess, I didn’t think that there would be many times when Emilia would go longer than an hour without using the toilet. If that proved to be the case, I felt reasonably confidence in my chances of success. Emilia was watching classic cartoons this morning. They really didn’t make them like they used to. Tom was running around trying to catch Jerry. It was hard to pull my eyes away from that entertaining chaos, but I had to. I couldn’t allow my mind to wander today. I couldn’t allow myself to get caught up in any distractions that might cause me to ignore a signal from my bladder. Even if Mom had allowed me to no longer be grounded from using my phone and my computer, I would have still ignored those devices today. I felt that the greatest danger to failing to complete this potty training challenge was not from being unable to hold my bladder in while I was aware that I needed to go. No, the biggest problem for me was what happened more rarely: the completely unexpected accident. The times where I would wet my pants completely out of the blue without any forewarning from my bladder. Looking back, I found that the common denominator for those situations was that it was most likely to occur when I was either intensely preoccupied by another task or in a situation where I was under a lot of stress. I would allow no distractions today, so I focused my eyes on Emilia, watching for any hint that she was perhaps ready to get up and go to the toilet, while at the same time listening for any of the subtle clues that might be coming from my own body. How long had it been anyway since she had last used the toilet? It hadn’t been an hour yet, but it must be getting close. I glanced at the clock on the wall. It told me that about forty minutes had passed since Emilia had last gone potty. A flicker of motion in the corner of my eye brought my gaze back to Emilia. Had I imagined it, or had she begun to squirm ever so slightly? But there was also a tension beginning to form in my own bladder. Which wasn’t good, but at the same time, I was faint enough that perhaps if I hadn’t been paying super close attention, I would have missed it. How much longer did I have? Back when I had been tracking my toileting training stats with Lisa, one of the things I had considered most important was seeing how much longer I could hold my bladder after I first noticed that I needed to pee. The numbers weren’t all that encouraging. The results varied. Sometimes, I could only make it another five minutes. At the upper end, thirty minutes was the result I had achieved on two occasions. But the average was more like fifteen minutes. Mom had provided an addendum to my instructions once I had finished with starting my laundry. I was not permitted to tell Emilia or otherwise encourage her to use the toilet. In Mom’s view, that was tantamount to cheating. And anyway, with Mom reading a book in her chair, I wasn’t going to have any opportunity to prompt Emilia to take a potty break. As a precautionary measure, I crossed my legs and held my knees tightly together. I didn’t even dare look over at my sister. I couldn’t be concerned about the state of her bladder when my attention now needed to be solely focused on mine. The Tom and Jerry theme music blared in the background as one episode finished, and another began. I allowed myself only the occasional glimpse upward as the tension in my bladder gradually increased. It was one of those episodes where Jerry had a baby mouse to care for. Of all the things that had to be on TV right now. It was one of those old timey cartoons. The design on the baby mouse was a cloth diaper fastened with a diaper pin. I tore my eyes away from the cat and mouse hijinks, rudely reminded of the modern diapers that would be in store for me if I couldn’t last until it was time to use the toilet. Another few minutes passed by. I had successfully avoided any further glances at the TV, but the clock on the wall was a different matter. I think on occasion I had glanced up at it three times before the second hand had completed its three-hundred-and-sixty degree loop. This was stupid. Emilia was right there. She might have squirmed a couple of times or perhaps I was just mis-attributed any of her movements to the potential need to pee. But either way, she had shown no difficulty making it this far without peeing herself, I should at least be able to match her. It wasn’t as if I’d had significantly more than her to drink this morning. In fact, now that she was in the habit of drinking the milk out of her cereal bowl, I’d be willing to be quite a lot that my little sister was, in fact, more hydrated than I was. The second hand finished another loop around the clock. The situation was growing more desperate. I peaked under my skirt. Completely unnecessary, but it was a leftover habit from the urge to check my pull-ups. Of course, my underwear was still dry. There wouldn’t be any way I could escape noticing if I were to wet myself now. Emilia was beginning to squirm enough that I was certain that I was not imagining things. A sudden thought crossed my head. What if Emilia peed herself? Mom seemed confident that this wasn’t going to happen. As far as I knew, she had tossed all of my younger sisters’ pull-ups and diapers out. At the same time, Mom wasn’t so confident that she wouldn’t give Emilia reminders when it appeared like the three-year-old girl was on the verge of having an accident. It frustrated me that my sister was afforded a level of grace in regard to her own toileting that Mom had failed to provide for me. In my case, the rules were black and white, etched in stone, and the consequences for failure were dire. I slipped one hand and then another between my legs. I didn’t dare glance over at Mom. I couldn’t bear the idea that she might, even now, be watching my struggle. But there was the major question she was going to have to answer. The longer Emilia held off on going to the toilet, the more likely it was that I would have an accident. But failing to remind Emilia might result in my sister peeing herself. Emilia seemed absolutely enamored by the cartoon she was watching. It wasn’t out of the question that she might be so distracted as to have an accident. My body was now in a constant state of motion, shifting back and forth, ever so slightly, praying desperately that Emilia would get up an rush to the bathroom. Surely, she had to be ready to go at any moment now. The clock said that I’d been waiting for twenty minutes since I’d first felt the urge to pee, meaning a whole hour had passed since my last trip to the toilet. “Emilia, time to for a potty break.” Emilia looked back at Mom. It almost seemed like she would begin to protest. But even at three, my sister knew better. She might be able to get away with a few more things than me, but there wasn’t any circumstance where she would get away with talking back to Mom like that. Emilia immediately trotted off to go to the restroom. I stood up, careful to maintain my tenuous control over my bladder. “Not yet,” mom said. “But you said I can go once she is done.” “I did, and once she comes back, you can head over to the bathroom.” So not fair. That added maybe another minute to how long I was going to need to wait to go to the toilet. That might not have been much, but it could be the difference between success and failure. I was now doing a full on potty dance. I turned around, so I didn’t have to face mom. Please Emilia, please hurry up. I was counting the seconds in my head for how long she had been gone. Thirty seconds. Forty seconds. Sixty seconds. Ninety seconds. Oh god, I hope she didn’t have to wait and do number two as well. That would be the end of me. A pitter patter of bare feet running down the hallway when my count has just passed one hundred was the sign that relief was in sight. I raced down the hallway to the toilet, not bothering to wait for an OK from mom. I made it with no additional time to spare. Thank goodness I had been smart enough to put on my shortest skirt. The joy of success was diminished by the realization this potty training challenge was going to be far more difficult than I had anticipated. --- Holding my bladder and going potty successfully on the toilet for the first time in two weeks should have made me happier. Instead, I was back to sulking on the couch. Mom had turned off the TV. Finally, in my opinion, as Emilia was allowed to watch it far more than I had been allowed to do so at her age. My little sister was playing with the new doll house Mom had gotten her for Christmas, which only served to remind me of the pathetic gifts I had received. At least she hadn’t asked me to play with her. As far as I knew, the rules requiring me to obey my little sister were still in place. I had grown sick of that stupid doll house the past few days. I was fifteen years old. Emilia was three. I knew for a fact that there was no physical way that our bladders could be the same size. Mine had to be capable of holding so much more than hers. So why was I struggling so much more than her to wait for the toilet? Mom’s taunt kept coming back to me. “Prove that you don’t want to be a baby.” Was there something wrong with me on the subconscious level? Was I somehow unknowingly sabotaging myself in the back of my mind? Was it something along the lines of what Samantha had meant when she explained in that heartfelt outburst during the sleepover about how she had this uncontrollable desire to wear diapers and be a baby? I would be a nightmare of a client for a psychologist, not that I would ever dare express those thoughts out loud to anyone under any circumstances. I was almost bored enough that I considered sitting down next to Emilia to play with the dollhouse. Almost. I checked the clock. Lunch wouldn’t even be for another hour. And that still left the rest of the day. I probably had close to another dozen trips to the toilet ahead of me before it was time to get a diaper on for bed. A dozen chances to fail, and I couldn’t afford to slip up even once. The sound of the washing machine finishing its load in the basement at last gave me something to kill the time. I leaped off of the couch the second I heard the noise. Best to try to stay on Mom’s good side today. She greatly preferred that I do my chores without needing to be prompted. I trudged all the way down the stairs to the basement. It had been what, ten minutes now since the last time I had used the toilet? I leaned over the washing machine, pulling the damp clothes out one-by-one and tossing them into the dryer. I didn’t hurry through the task like I normally would have. After sitting on the couch for most of the morning, this typically boring chore was a welcome reprieve. I turned on the dryer after tossing in a sheet. At least I’d have something to look forward to doing in about an hour. Mom wasn’t in the kitchen or the living room when I made it upstairs. I wasn’t sure what she was up to, but it was nice to not feel like I had her eyes watching me all of the time. As I sat back down on the couch, careful to make sure I was remaining attuned to my bladder, Emilia a “Play with me!” Not even polite enough to phrase it as a question. “I’m the mommy.” Emilia picked up two tiny plastic dolls, handing me the smaller of the two, a miniature baby complete with a diaper on her bottom. “And you’re a baby, so you have the baby.” “That’s silly. I’m not a baby.” “Yes, you are.” I rolled my eyes, and pulled back my skirt a few inches, enough to make clear to Emilia that I was no longer wearing a diaper. My younger sister was less than impressed by my recent change of undergarments. “Nuh, uh, you’re a baby. Big girls don’t wear diapers at night.” I sighed. I knew where she got that phrase from. Arguing with her was pointless, especially when Mom had made it clear that I need to do what my sister said. That didn’t mean that Emilia might not be immune to some prompting. I wasn’t going to risk reminding her to go to the toilet. I wasn’t sure she would even obey me at this point. I and couldn’t have it getting back to Mom that I had attempted to circumnavigate her rules like that. I think I had a way around that problem, though. If I could make sure that Emilia was staying extra hydrated today, that would increase how often she was going potty. I peeked down the hallway, making sure Mom was still out of sight. “Hey, Emilia, would you like apple juice or Cool-Aid to drink?” I knew how to best phrase questions to preschoolers. If you gave them two options, rather than giving them a yes or no question, they were more likely to accept whatever it was you were attempting to prompt them into doing. In this case, I was pretty sure I knew which of the two drinks Emilia preferred, but having Kool-Aid compared to the lesser option of apple juice was only going to make that option more appealing to my sister. “Kool-Aid!” Emilia shouted at once. I wanted to hush her, but I couldn’t. I needed to get her started on her drink before Mom wised up to what I was doing. I tip toed down the hallway to the kitchen. Still no sign of Mom. I retrieved a half-full plastic jug of blueish liquid from the refrigerator. Emilia still used sippy cups, which was good because Mom allowed those to be in the living room. I grabbed the largest sippy cup I could find from the top shelf in the cupboard and filled it to the brim. This would have Emilia going potty again in no time at all. Emilia smiled as I handed her the sippy cup. I even got a brief “thank-you” out of her this time. She hadn’t entirely forgotten her manners. She sipped away at it, downing a few ounces quicker than I expected. I didn’t think she was old enough to process the connection between drinking liquids and the later need to pee. I dutifully played my role as the baby in Emilia's silly makeshift game of house. Every few minutes I would give Emilia a slight hint that she should be drinking more from her sippy cup. I could pull this off a few more times today. There wasn’t any reason to believe that my underwear wouldn’t still be dry come tonight. “What do you have there?” Mom’s voice cut into the playtime, bringing it to a temporary halt. I turned to look at her, but the question had been directed at Emilia instead. “Kool-Aid!” Emilia answered. “You aren’t supposed to get that from the kitchen yourself.” “I didn’t. Sarah got it.” If there was one thing I could always count on Emilia to do, it was to tattle on me to Mom. Not that Emilia would have realized that I had possibly done something wrong. Mom took a close look at the now nearly half-empty sippy cup. “That isn’t going to do, Sarah.” My heart sank, wondering what punishment would be in store for me if Mom thought I had been attempting to cheat. “If you are going to be showing that you are as potty trained as your sister. You need to be drinking the same amount as her as well.” That wasn’t where I had been expecting Mom to take things, but it wasn’t good, either. Mom went off to the kitchen, and it was obvious what she was going to be returning with. When Mom came back from the kitchen, she handed me an identical sippy cup, filled completely with Kool-Aid. “I expect you to be finished with this by the time Emilia is finished with hers.” “Yes, Mom.” I answered dutifully, taking an obedient, but small sip of the cold, blue-raspberry flavored liquid. It wouldn’t do me any good to hold off on drinking the Kool-Aid. If I saved it all until the very end, I’d almost certainly be dooming myself to having an accident. The only way forward was to try to pace myself as evenly as I could and hope that Emilia wasn’t as thirsty as she seemed. I had vastly underestimated how much a thirsty preschooler could drink. Ten minutes later, Emilia was already three-quarters of the way through her sippy cup, and beginning to squirm almost uncontrollably. Meanwhile, I was about a third of the way through mine, but it had only been about thirty minutes, and I really wasn’t feeling the need to pee all that much yet. I didn’t think that would take too long to change. “I need to pee,” Emilia announced out of the blue as she leapt to her feet and ran down the hallway to the bathroom. My plan was backfiring. I didn’t really need to pee at all right now, but I certainly was going to need to go urgently in a half-hour or so. The timing of Emilia's potty trip couldn’t have been worse. Emilia returned to the living room fast enough that I questioned whether she had taken any time to wash her hands. At looked over at Mom. She nodded at me, giving silent permission to go and use the toilet. I didn’t dash off to the bathroom this time. I walked at an even pace. I strained for several minutes, but all that came out were a few brief tinkles. This was bad. Really, really bad. I thought through how much I had just drunk. The only thing going for me was that Emilia was still also quite hydrated. I just had to hope her next bathroom trip arrived soon enough. Emilia had lost interest in her dollhouse by the time I was back in the living room. She had her coloring book out and was drawing with crayons on the coffee table. Her sippy cup thankfully didn’t show any signs that she had made much more progress drinking it. I took my place once again on the couch. At a glance from Mom, I took another small sip of my own cup. With Emilia’s thirst now apparently sated, I would have time to slowly finish the remaining half of the Kool-Aid to not overwhelm my bladder any more than it already was. Five minutes. No need to pee yet. But Emilia had taken another sip from her cup, forcing me to do the same or risk Mom’s wrath. Ten minutes. Maybe I was imagining things again. It was hard to tell. I was trying so hard to catch any signals from my bladder that perhaps my mind was filling in the blanks when there wasn’t anything there. Could I actually be feeling the need to urinate again after having just sat on the toilet ten minutes ago? Emilia didn’t seem to be experiencing any issues yet. My younger sister wasn’t showing the faintest traces of any unease from her bladder. Fifteen minutes. Nope, I had not been imagining things. The urge to pee was there, and it was real. I hadn’t realized how poor my bladder control was until I had been forced to compare it to my sister. Emilia was still contentedly playing with her blocks. She stood up. Was it time to a quick run to the toilet? No, she was just going to grab her sippy cup from the other end of the coffee table. Which she downed the rest of in a dozen large gulps. Not fair. I briefly met Mom’s eyes, and I knew what she was expecting me to do. I still had a third of the sippy cup left. It took me almost a minute to drink the rest of the Cool Aid. The entire time the sweet liquid was going down my throat, all I could think of was how much liquid was in my bladder at the moment. I crossed my legs again in a feeble attempt to fight off the urge to start squirming. Twenty minutes. Emilia now appeared to be affected somewhat by the amount of Cool-Aid she had drunk, but if there was anything I had learned about my sister today, it was that she was going to wait until the last possible moment before she raced off to the toilet. At least Mom wasn’t watching me squirm this time. She was off preparing lunch in the kitchen. The confidence I had when I first handed Emilia the sippy cup was now completely gone. It was tempting to blame Mom for making me drink the Cool-Aid as well, but that wasn’t really fair. It wasn’t as though she was making things any harder for me than they were for Emilia, and my sister, despite the slight fidgeting that was beginning, was doing quite fine. Twenty-five minutes. As the tension in my bladder turned to a blaring pain, I didn’t want to face the truth that I might not be as capable of using the toilet as my little sister. “Lunch time.” Mom called. “Go use the potty and get washed up before you eat.” Saved by the bell. --- I held the fork loosely in my hand, almost as if I had forgotten how to use it. It was the first meal I’d eaten with any silverware since my punishment began. I had been forced to either sit patiently as Mom or Emilia spooned food into my mouth, or, just as bad, eat sometimes incredibly messy meals with my bare hands. The only thing I had going for me was that this leftover casserole wasn’t as difficult as something like spaghetti. Since I was seated at the kitchen table, I had even been given a regular sized cup. I handled it cautiously, not just because I was leery of what the additional liquids would do to my bladder, but I couldn’t afford to clumsily knock it over. I suspected that I was going to need to do more than just use the toilet to get Mom to believe that I really wanted to be a big girl. I somehow managed to finish the meal without spilling any food on my shirt, which was a good thing, as I hadn’t been supplied with a big, either. The consequences from the Cool-Aid I drank before lunch were still reverberating in my bladder as I returned to the living room after cleaning up my plate and depositing it in the sink. I could only hope that Emilia was feeling the same way. If I thought having to load the washing machine was bad for my bladder, being forced to immerse my hands in warm soapy water to scrub dishes would be an even more difficult challenge for my bladder. But dishes were a chore that was typically assigned after dinner, so I had another six hours or so before that became something I needed to worry about. The previous two attempts to hold my bladder in had been close calls, but what I was feeling now was somehow even worse. My insides hurt so bad I wanted to lie down on the floor and curl up into a ball. It almost felt as though it would be worth it to just pee all over the couch, if only to be done with that intensive discomfort. Please Emilia. Please just get up and go use the potty. But I could no longer spare any attention to my sister. Every thought was bent toward one goal, making sure not a single drop of pee escaped my bladder. Emilia didn’t verbally announce her need to go to the toilet this time. But the sound of her footsteps racing away was the only confirmation that I needed. I stood up from the couch, not too swiftly. Any sudden movements at this point would be risky. I took one step toward the hallway. I needed to be in position to make a go for the toilet as soon as Emilia returned. “Sit!” I dropped back down onto the couch at the sound of Mom’s stern yell. “You can go to the toilet when your sister returns.” I strained my ears for the sound of the toilet flushing in the distance. Nothing but silence. The floodgates opened. And I experienced the full devastation of a bladder accident without there being anything to contain it, even partially. The puddle of urine spread out beneath me on the couch, soaking through my underwear and then my skirt, spreading downward into the gaps between the couch cushions. Warm liquid streamed down the front of the couch onto my legs and socks. Was the couch ruined? If not, it was going to take a lot of work to get both it and the carpet cleaned up. “You didn’t just fucking do that.” Mom’s recliner creaked as she stood up from it. My hands were wet as well. I had shoved them between my legs as a last-ditch attempt to stop from wetting myself. Mom leaned down over me. I couldn’t meet her eyes. “Really, Sarah? That’s just so disgusting. I can’t believe it.” Unfortunately, I was more than capable of believing it. Mom sat down on a dry spot on the couch next to me. What was she doing? Wasn’t I going to be hauled off to the bedroom to be put in a diaper? Then she grabbed me by the shoulders and hauled me across her lap. Oh, that’s what she was doing. My face rested on the side of the couch that was dry, but my bare legs were laying directly in the puddle I had left behind. The side of the couch with my face didn’t remain dry for long, as teared streamed out, dampening the leather surface. How could I have been so delusional to think that I could actually have succeeded? Mom pulled my skirt up but didn’t remove my wet underwear. I would have preferred that, even if it would have meant receiving a bare-bottom spanking. The first smack of her hand landed directly on my wet underwear. While that damped the blow, it only added to my awareness of how I had peed myself. The next few smacks stung, but I gradually grew numb to the pain. I hoped Emilia hadn’t come back yet to witness this. I blinked rapidly every few seconds in a pointless attempt to clear my eyes, but the tears wouldn’t stop. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. And I somehow thought I deserved to ever wear big girl underwear again. I waited for another smack of Mom’s hand on my bottom. But it didn’t come. I took a deep breath. My first thought was to wonder how long it would be until I got another opportunity to work on potty training. My next thought was to wonder whether I even wanted to make another attempt. Mom shoved me off of her lap and I stumbled onto my feet in front of the couch. Without saying another word, mom grabbed me by the wrist and marched me down the hallway and into the bathroom. “There,” Mom said. She pointed to a spot for me to stand on the bare tile next to the bathtub. Mom gripped the waistband of my skirt and underwear. She tugged them a few inches below my waist and let them fall to the floor by my feet. Next was my shirt, the only item I had on which hadn’t gotten a single trace of urine on it. She then had me lift my legs, removing the socks that had gotten pee drizzled on them, tossing all the clothes out of the way into the corner. “Get in the shower.” I hesitated. The water wasn’t even on yet. “I said get in the shower. Now.” I stepped over the edge of the tub. I nearly tripped and fell when Mom turned the water on. It was like jumping into a lake late in the spring before the water had warmed up. The water gradually made it to a lukewarm temperature, but I was shivering crazily before then. Mom detached the shower head and sprayed me all over, not bothering to use any soap. At last it was done, and I stood shivering and soaking wet as Mom patted me down with a towel, before leaving to go to my bedroom and motioning for me to follow. I attempted to dry myself a little further as I wrapped the towel around my chest and followed after mom. What happened next was no surprise. I stood and watched as Mom set up the changing pad on my sister’s bed once again, along with everything else she would need for diapering me. I was already in motion to lie down on the bed before she had a chance to tell me to do so. There had to be a big sister and a little sister. That was the proper equilibrium. There wasn’t room for equals. With Emilia haven proven herself yet again to be fully toilet trained, I knew where that left me after this most recent failure. I couldn’t lodge any complaint about how Mom had treated me. None of the rules had been any different from what my little sister had gone through. And I knew that if Emilia had broken the rules as I had, she would have faced the same consequences. “This,” Mom said, as she placed the last tape in place on the diaper, “is what you get since you keep choosing to piss your pants.” I couldn’t blame the rules Mom had put in place for me today. I have failed each and every variation of potty-training rules she had installed for me over the past few months. I’d had to cheat and lie just to trick Mom into thinking that I had succeeded. Mom’s rules had defined nearly every aspect of my life since I was old enough to be able to follow them. But while it could sometimes feel as though I was trapped in the web of all my mother’s rules, what the rules had done today hadn’t trapped me so much as revealed a truth I had not yet been willing to admit. I looked back down at the diaper. The four tapes that secured it to my waist. The wetness indicator running down the middle. The crinkle as I shifted my weight. The mass of absorbent padding preventing me from closing my legs. I deserved the diaper. No, that wasn’t right. That carried the implication that it was something being forced on me against my will, that I wouldn’t accept willingly. That was no longer true. I needed the diaper. Now, that statement was closer to the truth. My inability to control my bladder was undeniable. But there still was more to it than that. I wanted the diaper. My desire for it wasn’t the same as what Samantha wanted. There wasn’t any compulsion or urge to actually be a baby, but I knew now exactly what it was that I wanted. No more puddles of pee on the floor. No more mad sprints to the toilet. No more potty watches. No more underwear. No more pull-ups. No more counting how many accidents I’d had. No more needing to keep careful track of all the liquids that I drank. No more hiding who and what I was. I was a teenage girl who couldn’t help but keep pissing herself. And I wanted to wear diapers.

Thanks! Unfortunately, there's not going to be any grand surprise about that father. That character's absence is more of an oversight from this being the first story I started writing. That said, I will include a brief explanation later on when it makes sense to in the story. But I can safely say that he won't be showing up.

We'll find out the result of that on Tuesday. That analysis makes sense, if Sarah were to fail the challenge, especially when it's been presented to her as something that should be so easy a three-year-old could do it, that would mess with her mindset. Especially because she's been drifting more toward feeling as though she deserves how she is being treated over the past several chapters. Narcissists view themselves as the center of the world. Everything, in some way, is actually about them. To the mother, Sarah's accidents can't be something that is a result of an unfortunate medical issues, no, it's her daughter actively defying her, choosing to be wet herself and be a baby. Interesting analysis, I have lots of thoughts about ABDL tropes and what I'm trying to convey in this story. But that will need to wait until this is all over to share. That would certainly make things easier. We'll have to see how liquids are handled under these new potty-training rules. Biting my tongue right now to avoid some spoilers. I think it is fair to say that, at least for the daytime accidents, the mother is in denial of Sarah having a medical issue. She's been so focused on rules, discipline, and punishment throughout Sarah's upbringing, that her mind immediately goes to the idea that Sarah is in fact actively defying her. The mother definitely believes that what she is doing is right, which makes the situation more messed up, not less. One thing to consider, since the story is set in the U.S., is that views on spanking (and what it is defined as) vary widely. For some people, spanking is a few wacks on the bottom with a bare hand. For others, it's a paddle, or something worse, like a switch (a smallish branch), and to the extreme, something that can extend beyond just hitting the bottom. I'm definitely of the mindset that spanking, in any form, is not a productive means of disciplining a child, something that is well-backed by scientific studies.

Really enjoying the start to this story. Am looking forward to seeing what direction you take this in. Definitely getting some Handmaid's Tale vibes.

Chapter 60: Big Girl Duties It took a moment before the reality of Mom’s new rules sunk in. My mind arrived at the worst possible conclusions when she mentioned that I would have to follow different toilet training rules. But this, this was something I thought I could manage. All I would have to do would be able to do would be to hold my bladder as long as Emelia did. Piece of cake, right? But something was nagging at me in the back of my mind. It wasn’t the new rules that Mom had pronounced, but the way she had said it that was bothering me. “I’ll believe you actually want to be a big girl again.” To her, it wasn’t a question of whether I could make it to the toilet on time. She fully believed I could do so, and the only thing holding me back was some desire to be a baby. It was ridiculous. Couldn’t she see how stressed out I had been over my accidents the past few months? But there wasn’t anything I could do to change her mind. Well, almost nothing. The only option was to prove myself worthy through this next challenge. “I can do that!” I said, trying to muster up as much enthusiasm as possible. I couldn’t have Mom thinking I wasn’t fully committed to getting out of diapers. “We’re going to start right now,” Mom said. “Wait here. Let me get your sister and have her use the toilet.” I laid still on the bed, naked from the waist down, as Mom left to get Emilia. I could hear her calling faintly to my sister, and the growing crescendo of pattering footsteps as Emilia immediately obeyed Mom’s call. The bathroom door slammed shut. That was followed a minute or so later by the sound of the toilet flushing and water running in the sink. Then it was my turn. “Emilia just went potty,” Mom said. “You need to go sit on the toilet now.” Mom hadn’t offered me anything yet to cover my bottom. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t passing up the first chance to sit on the toilet in over two weeks. The sensation of setting my bottom down on the plastic toilet seat felt foreign to me after having not done so for so long. I wasn’t even sure that I needed to pee. I couldn’t even recall the last time that I had done so. Had it been before, after, or even during the time that I had messed my diaper a short while ago? My body felt confused as I attempted mentally strained to get something, anything to come out of my bladder. One minute passed. Then two. I had to do something. The last thing I needed to happen was to find myself desperately needing to pee in another twenty minutes. I had to assume that I would need to hold my bladder in for at least another forty-five to fifty minutes. Emilia had begun to be able to go a bit longer without using the toilet than the initial thirty-minute timer she had been on while potty training. As I shifted, I seemed to be finally working the correct muscles in my body. A short, warm stream of urine dripped steadily into the toilet. Finally, success. Still, I waited another minute to be sure that was the last of it. Cleaning myself with toilet paper also felt odd. I missed the baby wipes, despite how annoyingly cold they sometimes felt. I had one foot out into the hallway before remembering I was supposed to wash my hands. Another toilet-related habit that had fallen by the wayside over the past couple of weeks. I counted to twenty as I scrubbed my hands and fingers under the warm water. Mom was waiting for me back in the bedroom, and it wouldn’t be unlike her to make note if she thought I had rushed through washing my hands without taking the time to make sure they had gotten properly cleaned. I expected Mom to be waiting for me in the bedroom with a pull-up and some baby powder. I wouldn’t have complained about it in the slightest. That would have been a massive step up from the diapers I had worn constantly over the past couple of weeks. Instead, as I stepped into the bedroom, Mom was holding a pair of underwear in her hand. “This is what big girls wear, right?” she asked. “Wes Mommy.” “If you are going to wear big girl underwear, you need to talk like a big girl, not a baby.” I bit my lip. This might be just as difficult as the potty training was going to be. I had grown so accustomed to using baby talk that speaking in that nonsensical gibberish was almost second nature. Mom tilted her head at me. Right. She still wanted the correct response. I had to stop and think a second before I responded. “Yes, Mom.” “Much better. Now come here and put these on.” Mom handed over the underwear to me. She wasn’t going to put them on herself. I was allowed to dress myself for the first time since this latest punishment had begun. The underwear felt so light in my hand. In the months leading up to Christmas, I only wore underwear when I had no other choice, such as the brief time between getting out of the shower and when Mom would put a diaper on me before bed. As I felt the soft material in my fingers, I realized I had forgotten how much I missed how it felt. There was a downside to this as well. The potty-training stakes had just gotten higher. An accident wouldn’t just mean going back to diapers; my inability to control my bladder would be on a full, humiliating display. I slid my feet through the holes and pulled the underwear up to my waist. What was more noticeable than what the underwear felt like was what it didn’t feel like. The material was loose around my body, not hugging it almost suffocatingly. There wasn’t any bulky material forcing my legs apart. And as I walked, there was silence, not a single plastic crinkle. I wanted to stay in underwear so badly. Surely, I could do it, right? Emilia was only three. No matter what may have happened to my bladder, it still must be able to hold more urine than hers. But what if I succeeded? I felt reasonably sure I could avoid accidents at home if I put my full effort into it. But school started again in two days. It wasn’t like I could ask Mom to go out and buy pull-ups for me. I shook my head. I wouldn’t worry about that right now. I would figure out how to handle that problem like I always did. “You’re still grounded.” I looked back at Mom. I had gotten so lost in the thoughts about underwear and toilet training that I almost forgot she was here. “That means,” Mom continued. “No electronics. None of your regular TV shows. And Emilia is still in charge, so if she wants you to play with her or help her with anything, you need to do it. Is that understood?” “Yes, Mom.” That was a bummer about being grounded. I supposed it was too much to ask for to get everything back to normal all at once. Still, I had done a good job not reverting to baby talk like before. “But other than that, you are to behave like a big girl today. That means you need to dress yourself. And you need to do your laundry.” I nodded, showing Mom that I understood her request. But seriously, it was just my luck to get back all the responsibilities of being a big girl without getting any of the fun parts. Mom left the room, leaving me to gather up my laundry by myself. Since she had already finished doing her laundry, I’d have the washer and dryer to myself this morning. I looked down at my waist, confirming once again that this wasn’t some strange dream, that, yes, I was actually wearing underwear. Then I looked down at my bare legs. I wouldn’t be running around the house in only my undies. Yes, that was what Emilia often had done during her previous potty-training phases. However, I still felt the desire to somehow differentiate myself from her. While it certainly was warm enough to be in this state of undress, I wanted to at least look the part for the big girl role that I was now being allowed to reclaim. Jeans would have been my choice under normal circumstances during this time of year. But the success of potty training today could come down to the last second. I didn’t want to get caught frantically attempting to undo the buttons on my jeans while squirming in front of the toilet seat. I couldn’t be taking any chances with my outfit for today. I grabbed a skirt, the same one I had worn when going to the mall on Black Friday. I couldn’t recall the last time I had worn a skirt by itself while I had underwear on. I felt almost naked, but that just meant that I would be able to access the toilet as quickly as possible when the time came. Still, the less material in my way when using the toilet, the better. This was the best balance between maintaining some dignity and making potty training as easy as possible. Most of my clothes were already in the hamper, save for the few Mom had tossed in that direction that had been off-mark and had landed on the floor. It was heavy. Mom had neglected to do my laundry for a while. No wonder she had been so eager to hand that chore off to me. I had a sneaking suspicion that this wouldn’t be the last chore she would assign me today. Should just change my name to Cinderella. I wondered what those chores might be. Dishes, probably. Maybe some cleaning or vacuuming, or perhaps even some help with beginning to put Christmas things away, a task that would last well into January. I checked my bedroom and closet carefully to ensure I had collected every item that needed to go into the wash. It wouldn’t do me any good if Mom were to get on my case for missing anything. I couldn’t even lift up the laundry hamper, which was practically overflowing. Instead, I dragged it down the hallway and through the kitchen. It went thunk, thunk, thunk down the stairs, and I made my way to the laundry room. I turned the washing machine on, set the water temperature to cold, and poured a cup of detergent. I unfolded all my clothes as I tossed them into the washing machine. I hadn’t paid much heed to the sound of water streaming into it until I noticed I had subconsciously begun squirming. I dumped the rest of the clothing from the hamper into the washing machine without bothering to make sure nothing was inside out, closed the lid to the machine, and raced back upstairs to where the noise of the rushing water couldn’t reach my ears. The squirming ceased. Everything was back to normal, and I wasn’t feeling any need to pee. I lifted up my skirt to examine my underwear once I was safely back in the confines of my room. All dry. It was probably good that Mom wasn’t allowing me access to electronics today. I realized now that I had to avoid any possible distraction, any potential trigger that might cause me to forget about my bladder or temporarily lose control of it. I couldn’t let the urge to pee slip unnoticed to the back of my mind. With my underwear confirmed to be dry, I returned to the living room. My knees ached, but at least they might be feeling better by the end of today. And who knows, maybe I’d even get my big girl bed back again. Either way, I needed to be more careful the rest of today. That had been a close call. Too close.

All the stories I've written so far have been exclusively first person. I've tried a few times to write in third person, but it never felt as natural. I like being able to dig deep into the protagonist's thoughts and perspectives. The challenge with that, of course, is making sure that the protagonists from different stories have distinct voices. That's been tricky to manage and would be the only reason I'd consider switching to a third-person perspective, if I could find a way of writing it that I liked. As a reader, though, I don't have any preferences. Most stories I read end up being third person, simply because I often go for Fantasy/Sci-Fi stories that have a vast number of characters. Though several of my favorites are told from a first-person POV. I'm curious about what everyone else's preferences are, either as a reader or a writer.

The mother certainly has an understanding that what she is doing is wrong, or at least wouldn't be accepted by the rest of society. So that does make school an interesting situation. I would look at how the mom phrased the new potty-training rules. It's pretty telling for how she views the situation. There is no question that Sarah is going through a lot right now. We will get a good look at how it continues to impact her. She should, but without access to a phone or other methods of communication, that would be difficult even if she decided she wanted to.

Chapter 59: New Rules The pyramid block went into the triangle hole. The cylinder block went into the circle hole. The cube went into the square hole. Each plastic block landed with a clank in the plastic tin I was depositing them into. With all the blocks having been put through their proper holes, I flipped open the latch on the box and let them all tumble softly onto the carpet. The repetitive task was mind-numbingly dull, but I would do anything to distract myself from the obnoxious characters in the TV show my little sister was watching. Life lessons thinly disguised behind a bunch of incessant blabbering. And those theme songs. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to get them out of my head after this. What I would give to have a pair of headphones on right now. But headphones were off-limits. Same with my phone, computer, and any item that wouldn’t be age appropriate for a baby. Today was New Year’s Eve, and I was still grounded. In this case, that meant literally, as I was no longer allowed to walk anywhere in the house. I had thrown a bit of a tantrum the day after Christmas. I’d broken character and used my big girl words, asking Mom to let the punishment end. That had been a mistake. I knew better. Asking Mom to relent was only likely to make the punishment last longer. After a spanking with a paddle on my bare bottom, I was given an additional rule to follow in being a baby. I would now need to crawl around the house. I had considered myself fortunate that mom hadn’t implemented that as part of my punishment earlier in the week. With a wood floor in the majority of the home, my knees were constantly aching. I had tried to scoot around on my well-padded bottom on one occasion, but Mom had immediately put a stop to that. Something about how I was violating the spirit of her rules. So this morning, like the past five mornings since Christmas, I had slid to the floor after mom after mom had finished changing my diaper and dressing me in leggings and a t-shirt, only to have to crawl all along the floor in a painful and painfully slow journey to the living room. With all of my big girl items off limits, that left me to play with all the baby toys Mom had given me for Christmas. She’d repackaged a bunch of things that Emilia had outgrown. It wasn’t enjoyable, but it beat watching my sister’s shows or staring blankly off at the wall. I still didn’t know if any regular presents awaited me when this punishment was over. I hoped so, but, if that were the case, Mom hadn’t given any indication of that being her plan. I was stuck in the living room. Mom didn’t let me go anywhere where I would be out of sight of either her or Emilia. The only item I was allowed right now was my pacifier. But by allowed, that meant that Mom wouldn’t allow me to take the pacifier out until she had given me permission to do so. That, sadly, was a rule Emilia was also aware of. I had suffered the consequences of her tattling on me for taking the pacifier out on one occasion, so if there was any time when I would take it out of my mouth for a short break, I had to be sure that she was focused enough on her TV show that she wouldn’t turn around and catch me. I’d lost track of how many times I’d fit the blocks back into their box. I’d been mindlessly repeating the task since Emilia had sat down to watch TV after breakfast. I wasn’t sure if we were on the third or fourth episode. I could do this in my sleep with my eyes closed. Considering that, it was surprising that these blocks hadn’t appeared in my dreams over the past week. My dreams had lately become stranger than usual, which was a high bar to cross, considering some of the things my brain could come up with while I was fast asleep. Most of them centered around me wearing diapers. In one, I watched in horror as Mom took a pair of scissors to all of my panties, chopping them up before tossing them in the trash bin. In another, I had been sitting in class at school, but only, instead of wearing jeans or even a dress as I had taken to lately, all I had on other than my hoodie was a diaper. I was forced to come to the front of the classroom to answer a question, but I had to do so with baby talk as my classmates sat in their seats and laughed. Playing with the toys had left me with no time to do anything but think. New Year’s Day fell on a Monday. School was supposed to promptly resume on Tuesday. I hadn’t had a chance to finish any of the readings I was supposed to have done over Christmas break. I would have to hope I could wing it on any pop quizzes I might receive if Mom didn’t give me time for homework. But that would mean access to my computer, which I wouldn’t get until Mom determined I wasn’t grounded anymore. It was New Year’s Eve. That reminded me. I was supposed to hang out at Lisa’s house this evening with Desi and Samantha for another sleepover. We had planned to stay up and watch the ball drop. For us, that meant 10 p.m. to watch the scene in Times Square. Yes, we would stay up to midnight and do our own countdown then, but the TV channels never did anything quite as exciting for our time zone. We talked about staying up till 1 a.m. to see what happened on the West Coast, but that would have to wait another year. I highly doubted that Mom would let me stay up so late tonight. What would my friends be doing? Were they talking about me? Did they care? Had they moved on? What would happen on Tuesday morning when I stepped onto the bus with Samantha and Desi already in their seats? The lights on the Christmas tree still flashed in the corner of my eye. The Christmas tree wasn’t coming down until the sixth of January, once the twelve days of Christmas were all over. What day was it anyway, today? Was it seven swans or six geese-a-laying? And who gave stupid presents like that, anyway? That would be even worse than receiving a bunch of second-hand baby toys. I squirmed slightly in my cross-legged position on the floor. I had been needing to go number two for the past hour. I had held off the initial urge to poop, managing to suppress it for a while. With Mom down in the basement, it would not be easy to get her attention immediately to let her know I needed to be changed. Asking Emilia to do that for me was a possible solution. Still, I couldn’t bear the thought of hearing her shrill voice from all the way in the basement, yelling at Mom to tell her that I had made a poopie in my diapie. I would at least need to get to the top of the stairs to get Mom’s attention. I didn’t care for how it felt to crawl with a bunch of shit stuck to my bottom. I pressed a hand against the front of my diaper, feeling how squishy it had become. Even without messing myself, the diaper was getting close to needing to be changed. I shifted enviously in my position on the floor, trying to find a way to sit down that would allow me to hold off on messing myself for a while longer. The pounding sound of shoes on wooden stairs told me that Mom was coming up from the basement, where she had been doing a morning load of laundry. I’d like to think that I could have waited another twenty minutes or so before the need to shit myself became too unbearable to resist. But with a diaper change in sight, I shifted my feet so that I was sitting on my knees. In that position, I was able to lift my butt up slightly. With the urgent need to go, I filled my diaper effortlessly. There was a slight delay before the smell reached my nostrils, which I attempted to wrinkle shut. There was a slightly more significant delay before the smell made it six feet across the room to where Emilia was seated closer to the TV. My three-year-old sister turned around to look at me. “Diapie check!” She got up from her empty bowl of cereal and walked over to me. I didn’t do anything to hide what had happened in my diaper. Mom had been extremely clear as to the fact that I should obey Emilia as long as my little sister’s requests weren’t contravening any of Mom’s rules. I remained in the same position I had been in when I had messed the diaper. Nothing was worse than having to sit down in a messy diaper, so the longer I could keep my bottom off the ground, the better. Emilia knew from her own experience what a diaper change entailed. She walked behind me and pulled the rear waistband of my diaper back. “Yucky!” That was as appropriate a description as any for the current contents of my diaper. Emilia ran down the hallway, presumably to Mom’s bedroom, where she was likely folding laundry on her bed. If there was one upside to being forced to behave like a baby the past two weeks, Mom hadn’t required me to do any of my typical chores. I hadn’t had to do a single load of my own laundry. That also meant no dishes to wash or bedroom to tidy up. At this point, any of those tasks, which I usually hated doing, seemed highly appealing. What I would give to be folding my own laundry rather than playing with these stupid blocks. Mom arrived in the living room less than a minute after Emilia had run to fetch her. My little sister settled down in front of the TV without another glance in my direction. She had sometimes helped Mom with diaper changes, but never the messy ones. “Uh oh.” Mom reverted to the sing-song voice she used when talking to me. “Did someone make a messy in her diapie?” A silly question to ask. As if she couldn’t smell the contents of my diaper from where she was standing a few feet away. Nevertheless, Mom went through the whole song and dance of checking my diaper. First, by patting my bottom. Too firmly, in my opinion, as it caused the mess in my diaper to spread further against my skin. But that wasn’t enough. She pulled back the rear waistband of my diaper, just like Emilia had done. “Yep, let’s get your stinky bottom all cleaned up.” When it was just a wet diaper, Mom was willing to change me in the living room, laying the diaper mat on the floor to get me cleaned up. That wasn’t the case with messy diapers. I suspected she wanted to avoid dealing with having that lingering odor in the room. Had I been a real baby, I, of course, would have been carried off to the bedroom to get changed. Mom had attempted to lift me up on one occasion but hadn’t been able to. That meant I was forced to crawl back to my bedroom. I had hoped to be given a short reprieve from my rules and be allowed to walk. Mom sometimes allowed for that, but I wasn’t granted that option today. I was only allowed to stand when I got up from the floor and onto my bed. I still considered it my bed, even though Emilia had been sleeping in it for the past two weeks while I had been relegated to her old crib. The changing pad was already on the bed when I crawled onto it. Wipes, baby powder, and bay lotion were set up to the side, along with a can of FeBreeze, to remove the smell from what was about to happen. Mom didn’t seem to have gotten a fresh diaper for me yet. Mom pulled down the front of the diaper after untaping it. “Oh yes, someone really did make a big stinky, didn’t she?” I tried to shut off my brain during diaper changes. Mom always gave detailed commentary about the condition of my diaper and how I was such a baby for going potty in it. My face burned in contrast to the cold wipes Mom was running along my bottom. I tried to steady my breathing. I had burst into tears on more than one occasion when Mom changed one of my messy diapers. That only resulted in more babying from Mom, as she mock comforted me. I held the tears back this time, if only just barely. With my bottom thoroughly cleaned, Mom rolled up the dirty diaper and disposed of it in the bin. I waited expectantly on the bed, ready for Mom to slide a clean diaper under my bottom. “Does someone want to be a big girl again?” My mouth dropped open, and the pacifier fell out. Mom didn’t reprimand me for that. Clearly, she expected an answer, but the question was so out of the blue that I was too shocked to respond. “Well, do you want to go potty in the big girl potty rather than your pants?” This time, I was ready to provide an enthusiastic response. “Wes!” I couldn’t believe that it was finally happening. Before Christmas break, the thought of opening and wearing pull-ups around Mom had been highly humiliating. Now, it came as a welcome relief. I was perfectly OK with wearing pull-ups, even with all the things that came along with that, the constant checks, the potty alarm, not being able to cover up the pull-up so that Mom could always ascertain whether it was wet or dry. Even the other rules that came with potty training seemed milder now. Two accidents in one day would mean a return to diapers for the next day, but even the threat of diapers for a day was nothing compared to what I had just gone through. “The rules are going to be different this time.” That was a bucket of ice-cold water dumped over my delight. What could that possibly mean? “You get to go to the toilet every time Emilia chooses to go. If you can show that you are as potty trained as your little sister, I’ll believe you want to be a big girl again.”

We'll have to see what happens with the video. I think it is one of those frogs in a slowly boiling pot of water situation for Sarah. Her mom has slowly taken more and more control as Sarah's bladder situation and attempts to hide it have gotten worse. If this treatment by mom had happened immediately after the first accident mom caught Sarah having, her reaction might have been different. We'll have to see what comes of the video. I'm still very happy with how this story ends. And very eager to get it published. The next chapter should be out on Thursday. The long-term implications of this for Sarah are something that we will get into before this is all finished. Thanks! I'm glad you are enjoying it. We're building up slowly but surely to the conclusion.

Chapter 58: Nightmare on Christmas I always had trouble sleeping the night before Christmas. In previous years, the anticipation of what might be waiting for me underneath the tree kept me up all night. I'd lay in bed for hours, unable to sleep until after midnight. Then I'd wake up a few hours later, looking eagerly at the alarm clock to find out it was only four in the morning. In the days leading up to Christmas, when Mom wasn't looking, I would grab each of the presents she had labeled for me, weighing them carefully in my hands while gently shaking them to guess what might be inside. The theories about what those present might be had me eagerly expecting the arrival of morning. Even if new video games or electronics were waiting for me under the tree this morning, I'd be grounded from playing with them. They would be confiscated and hidden away in Mom's bedroom as soon as I'd finished taking all the wrapping paper off. If I was lucky, after about a half-hour of tossing and turning in bed, I'd be able to get back to sleep, hopefully until just before it was time to get up and open presents. Mom had a strict rule on Christmas mornings. We weren't to wake her up until 8 a.m., and we couldn't go to where the presents were waiting under the living room tree until she was ready to do so. As I lay in the crib this Christmas Eve, with the alarm clock finally showing that it was past midnight, I wasn't close to falling asleep. It wasn't for any of the usual reasons. Mom had not let my punishment relent in the three days between the shopping trip to the mall and Christmas Eve. I had never received this severe punishment from Mom before. Sure, I hadn't ever lied to her over such a long period, but even then, couldn't she see she had more than made her point? No matter how poorly my toilet training went after this punishment was over, I had no desire whatsoever to be not entirely truthful with Mom about my progress or lack thereof. In the meantime, my efforts to work on potty training had fallen entirely by the wayside. I was no longer even attempting to hold my bladder in as long as I could. When the need to pee arrived, I simply went right then and there in my diaper. Not that I didn't still want to be at least partially toilet trained, but working on it before I was back in pull-ups was simply pointless. Every day, Mom continued to insinuate that I must either somehow like being a baby or that my problem was that I was simply too lazy to go to the toilet. It took all of my self-control not to argue back and not to demand that punishment end and that I be given a chance to prove her wrong. But even if that opportunity came, what chance did I have of succeeding? I rolled over in the crib until my head was in the one corner where I could just barely make out the alarm clock. Twenty-four minutes after midnight. Still, nearly eight hours to go. After more than a week of sleeping in the crib every night, I'd finally found a position that didn't leave me feeling completely aching the following day when Mom finally let me out. Tonight, I wasn't stuck with only a t-shirt that would barely cover my diaper. The same as every year, Mom had given me a new set of pajamas on Christmas Eve. Christmas was Mom's day. As soon as it was over, she spent the next 364 days preparing for the next one. That meant certain traditions simply had to be followed. The first was pajamas. That was the one and only present I was allowed to open on Christmas Eve. Mom always had a matching set of pajamas for her and me. And, when Emilia came along, she also joined that tradition. Last night was no different. Before getting ready for bed, Mom had my sister and I join her in the living room. She handed each of us a box covered in candy cane wrapping paper and took a nearly identical box for herself. I didn't have to guess to know what was inside. This year, it was a light blue pajama set with pants and a shirt with snowman designs scattered across them. The pants must have been ordered before my punishment had begun. They would have been mostly fine had I been wearing regular underwear, even if they were a bit low-rise. Not only did the diaper prevent the pajama pants from going up as high on my waist, but they stuck on well about the waistband of the pants. The shirt that came with the pajama set had a similar issue. It didn't quite reach my pants, leaving a large gap where the diaper was obviously showing. Other than that, the pajamas were incredibly comfortable and soft to the touch, so they had that going for them, at least. I clenched my mouth shut to stifle a yawn. Didn't want to wake Emilia up. Even with my body finally beginning to physically express that it was time for me to shut my eyes and attempt to sleep, I resisted the urge to do so. I wasn't looking forward to Christmas morning. Barring some sort of Christmas miracle, it appeared that my babying would continue at least through tomorrow. Knowing Mom, it probably was going through the end of Christmas break. But did I want school to start up again? I'd spent the last three days replaying those brief moments with Lisa at the mall over and over again. Each time, I tried to think of what I could have done differently. Each time, I came away with the conclusion that I had done what was necessary. I couldn't bear the idea of my friends finding out how deep my incontinence issues went and the punishment I was receiving for covering it up from Mom. I couldn't have Mom knowing about Lisa's incontinence either. I'm sure Mom would view her as a bad influence, someone I wouldn't be allowed to hang out with anymore, especially if she viewed Samantha and Desi as being co-conspirators in the effort to keep my incontinence hidden. And that was the worst of it. I'd ended up isolated anyway, and Mom had nothing directly to do with it. I hadn't yet figured out how I would explain everything to my friends when school started back up in a little over a week. I had nothing but time, considering how boring it was to sit around in a diaper and be a baby all day long. And I very much had been bored out of my mind the past few days. It had actually been a relief when Emilia had finally acted on the big sister authority Mom had given her for my punishment and had demanded that I play house with her. I hadn't even minded pretending to eat the toy food or doing the silly chores she assigned to me. I was just glad to be doing something, anything different from the routine I'd gotten stuck in. My mouth opened with a wide but quiet yawn. This time, the reality of sleep felt more tangible, and I drifted off to sleep. I woke up twice in the middle of the night. Once because I needed to pee and a second time because I'd dreamed that all of my presents had been nothing more than packages of additional diapers. The next time I woke up, it was nearly time for Christmas morning. --- Emilia was still sound asleep when I woke up a few minutes before 8 a.m. She was young enough that Christmas was still an abstract concept. Give it another year or two, and she'd be experiencing the same sleepless nights that I had. The sound of water running in the sink told me that Mom was already up and getting ready for the morning. Some specific rules had to be followed when it came time to open presents, aside from needing to wait for Mom to be ready. The first was that the stockings came before any of the presents. Emilia and I both had one with our name on it. Once we had gone through our stockings and perhaps snacked on some of the candy in them, we were to take turns opening our presents. That would be followed by breakfast, which was always cinnamon rolls. Then, after the presents, there was a marathon of Christmas movies to watch. In other years, I would slip off to play video games on my computer. That wasn't an option with how I was grounded. I think Mom was more likely to make an exception to my rules to force me to watch a bunch of Hallmark movies with her than allow me to play video games. The second rule was that we had to take turns opening presents. Emilia would go first, then me, and then Mom, though her pile was much smaller than ours. I realized belatedly that I had gotten no gifts for Mom or my sister this year. To be fair to myself, there was a lot I had been dealing with the past two months. I had been planning on getting gifts the week leading up to Christmas, plans which had been completely derailed by being forced to live as a baby. I shielded my eyes with my forearm as Mom opened the bedroom door and flipped on the light. What was a rude awakening for me was entirely ignored by Emilia, who remained sound asleep, buried beneath her covers. Mom went to get my sister out of bed first. "Time to go to the potty," Mom said to the still bleary-eyed three-year-old girl. "But stay in the hallway. You can't go to the Christmas tree till we're all ready." I could feel how soaked my diaper already was as I lay on my back in the crib. My eyes had gradually adjusted to the light, and I no longer needed to cover them with my arm. My diaper squished beneath me as I rolled onto my back. Why did the idea of being put into a clean, dry diaper have to sound so good? But a diaper change wasn't in Mom's plans for the first stage of Christmas morning. I knew better than to say that I needed one. Babies didn't get to choose when their diapers were changed. Instead, the only thing I got from Mom was a pacifier that she placed firmly in my mouth, along with a look that told me she expected the pacifier to remain in until she said otherwise. Mom opened the gate to the crib, and I followed her out into the hallway. Emilia was squirming in the corner of the hallway. She was technically obeying Mom's instructions not to go around the corner into the living room. Still, she pushed that limit as much as possible. With how squirming she was, I would have thought she was doing a potty dance if not for the fact that Mom had sent her off to use the toilet only a few minutes ago. Emilia ran ahead eagerly into the living room. Had it been a typical Christmas, I might also have found it hard to show any restraint. Instead, I trailed a few steps behind Mom. As we entered the living room, A video camera was sitting on a stand in the far corner, pointing directly at the Christmas tree. I made eye contact directly with it, nearly spitting the pacifier out of my mouth. --- The video camera was one Christmas tradition I had completely forgotten about. I turned away from the camera, but the damage was already done. For the rest of my life, every time Mom replayed this Christmas tape, there would be stark evidence of this period in my life. Mom loved to replay her Christmas tapes. She'd get them out at random times of the year to watch in the evening. I didn't understand what she got out of it, but every present I'd ever opened was preserved on camera for posterity. For my fifteenth Christmas, every video of me opening a present would show off the unmistakable waistband of my diaper. As if seeing those few inches of plastic wouldn't be enough, the pajamas fit tightly against the diaper, exposing the bulky outline around my crotch and bottom, an outline that was even more obvious because of how soaked the diaper was. I also doubted that Mom would let me remove the pacifier, though that was a much lesser indignity than what I had on beneath my pants. Emilia and I had a stocking with our name sewn on the top. Mine had a snowman on it, while hers had a bunch of reindeer. Emilia grabbed her stocking and held it upside down, shaking out the contents into a scattered pile on the carpet in front of her. On a typical Christmas, a stocking would include lots of candy, snacks, socks, lipstick, or other assorted odds and ends. I gasped in dismay when I saw what had spilled out of my stocking and onto the floor. A couple of pacifiers, two baby bottles, a sippy cup. Some tins of Playdough, a beanie baby. Large crayons. Some small glass jars of baby food. Rubber safety spoons and forks. "This year, you are getting presents that are more appropriate for how you have been behaving," Mom said. My heart sank at that announcement. I glanced over at the presents under the tree that bore my name on them, tears beginning to form in my eyes. What else did Mom have in store for me? What made that worse was that I would have to open those presents with the camera rolling. Even my little sister's stocking contents were more mature than mine. I looked over to where Emilia was seated to my right. She unwrapped a chocolate kiss and popped it into her mouth for a pre-Christmas snack. She did it right in front of Mom and didn't even get even a gentle rebuke for it. Completely unfair. Mom never let me eat any candy before breakfast, even if it was Christmas morning. My diaper suddenly no longer felt cold. The sudden warmth seemed to invalidate all the complaints running through my mind about how I was being treated this morning. I was a baby who couldn't help peeing herself. "Let's try out one of your new pacifiers." Mom grabbed a bumble bee pacifier from the pile in front of my empty stocking, pulling it out of its plastic cover. She popped my current pacifier out of my mouth. "Buzz. Buzz." I held my mouth open as she inserted the bumblebee one. I kept thinking that there wasn't any way that this morning could get worse, but I had a nagging feeling in the back of my head that I would not enjoy what was inside my presents. --- I had hoped Mom would change my diaper before putting me in the highchair for breakfast, but I should have known better. It was common for her to change me after the first feeding of the morning. My cinnamon roll had been cut into a bunch of tiny pieces. They were set in a pile on my kiddie plate with white frosting drizzled across. To the side were some banana slices. Mom had taken one of the sippy cups from my stocking and filled it with iced coffee. I had to admit that it was a much better breakfast than I had gotten this Christmas break. Not an open jar of baby food in sight. But I was still outfitted with a bib around my neck, and with no utensils, I was forced to eat a messy meal with my fingers again. Despite my attempts to clean my fingers off on the bib, my hands were incredibly sticky by the time that breakfast was over. Mom wiped my hands with a wet cloth before allowing me to exit the highchair and follow her to the bedroom. It was about time. Even with how my new pajama pants had a tight fit, my diaper was sagging badly as I walked beside Mom in the hallway. Mom had sent Emilia on ahead to use the bathroom. I suspected Mom would be extra careful with reminding my younger sister to go to the toilet today, given how many more descriptions there would be for her on Christmas Day. It would have been quicker if I could have taken my pajama pants off myself before lying down on the bed for the diaper change. But I wasn't allowed to have any part in dressing myself. Rules were rules, and Mom followed the ones she had set for me, even if it meant inconveniencing herself. It was a rare pacifier-free moment. Mom hadn't given me another one after taking away the bumblebee pacifier before breakfast. Outside of that one outing to the mall, I hadn't been allowed a single non-baby moment for over a week. Everything Mom said to me was baby talk or a pointed reminder of my babified condition. Mom struggled for a minute to tug off my pajama pants. They really were a size too small. They didn't fit on a dry diaper, which was even worse with a soaked one. "These didn't fit you that well anyway," Mom said. She rolled the pajama pants up and tossed them toward my laundry bin. The under thrown pants landed on a heap in front of the basket. That was fine with me. Could do with an outfit that at least covered my diaper most of the time. I wouldn't be upset if Mom put me in a skirt or a dress. The cold morning air felt good on my bottom as Mom removed my wet diaper. I didn't shiver as the wet wipes made contact with my bottom. Another aspect of being a baby that I was getting accustomed to. I tried not to think about what the rest of the morning would be like. I dreaded going back into the living room to open presents in front of the camera. But did it really matter that much? It wasn't as if Mom didn't already have video of me sucking on a pacifier with the top of the diaper sticking out of my pants. Another few minutes of me being on camera wouldn't change anything. "Upsie!" Mom said as soon as she had finished taping the clean diaper around my waist. She took hold of my hands and pulled me forward off the bed and onto my feet. Mom typically dressed me while I was lying down. Sometimes, she would put clothes on me while I was standing. But she had retrieved nothing from my dresser or closet and was headed toward the hallway instead. I guessed what she had in mind. "But Mom!" The complaint left my lips before I realized I still couldn't talk like a big girl at home. No sooner had I raised my voice at her than Mom had slapped her hand across my face. The stinging pain on my face shocked me into silence. Mom firmly grabbed hold of my left hand and tugged me out of the bedroom and into the hallway. I followed behind her. One hand held firmly in Mom's grip, the other held in front of my diaper in a feeble attempt to cover it up. Emilia was already sitting eagerly in front of her pile of presents when we entered the living room. I sat on the floor in front of a pile with my name labeled. In line with tradition, Emilia went first. She started with the biggest of her presents, a box that was nearly as large as she was. I squirmed as Emilia tore off the wrapping paper. No. Not now. I could feel a churning beginning in my bowels. Mom had made it clear from the start that the toilet being one hundred percent off limit meant it was one hundred percent off limit, so I had messed myself nearly once a day since the punishment started. But if I could just hold off on doing so until we finished opening presents. Emilia finished opening her first gift. It was a massive playhouse for her miniature plastic dolls. I reluctantly picked up one of the presents in front of me and sat it on my lap. "Not yet," Mom said. She leaped up from the couch and went to stand behind the video camera. She readjusted it so that the camera was pointing directly at me. My hands shook as I slowly undid the wrapping paper on the box. I could have ripped it open much faster, but I wanted to avoid learning what would be inside. I tried to hold the box out in front of me in a way that shielded my diaper from view from the camera, but it was hard to know if that was working. At last, I had enough of the wrapping paper off to see what was underneath. It was one of the plastic boxes with holes cut for different pieces. A circle, square, triangle, rectangle. Mom hadn't even purchased any new baby toys for me. I recognized this from when Emilia was playing with it to learn her shapes a couple of years ago. Then I felt another lurch in my bowels. I wasn't able to prevent myself from squirming. "Tell mommy what you got." "A puzzle." "That's right. Mom opened a present that supposedly was from my sister, though I knew it was just something Mom had picked out for herself. It was a box of new Christmas-themed cookie cutters. Emilia was back up. And continuing with the theme from earlier, she picked the biggest of her remaining presents. I tried to focus on watching her open her gift. Still, the discomfort was becoming too great as the squirming continued to increase. I saw the look on Mom's face from the corner of my eye. She knew. She knew exactly what I was trying to prevent myself from doing. It was all that iced coffee I had with breakfast. I knew how that was likely to cause me to need to poop in the morning. It wasn't as if the urge to defecate was that immediate. Under any normal circumstances, there wouldn't have been any question whether I could have made it to the toilet in time. If one aspect of Mom's punishment was the most humiliating, it was this. I could accept peeing in a diaper because, deep down, I knew I wasn't toilet trained anymore. Even being treated as a baby, with the pacifiers, bibs, bottles, and diaper changes, was a punishment I understood. It was no different from what Emilia had received, and the punishment's scope matched how long I had been deceiving Mom. But despite all my issues over the past four months, I had never once messed my pants on accident. I'd only done so in a diaper because I'd been given no alternative. A bit of gas escaped as a loud fart. Emilia giggled and then placed both hands over her nose. "Eww!" Far from relieving the pressure in my bowels, the fart appeared to have cleared the way for everything else to come out. The countdown before I would uncontrollably mess myself could likely now be measured in seconds rather than minutes. I was sitting on my knees. At the last moment, I lifted my butt off of the ground and groaned as I felt shit smear across my bottom as the mess filled my diaper. "Mommy, Sarah made a poopie!" I forced myself to look up at Mom. Pleading with my eyes for her to please take me back to the bedroom for a diaper change before resuming with the present opening. "Your turn to open up a present." Mom reached into my pile and handed me a soft package wrapped in green and red striped wrapping paper. "Let's do this one next." I wrinkled my nose as Mom returned to the video camera and readjusted it to be pointed directly at me again. I spread my feet apart so that my bottom wasn't touching anything when I sat back down. I still had four more presents to open, including the one currently in my hands. I unwrapped this next present much faster than my first one, now that I was feeling a sense of urgency to get my diaper changed. It was another example of re-gifting by Mom. A pair of strap-on butterfly wings, leftover from a fair phase Emilia had been when she was two years old. "Now you can play dress-up with your sister," Mom said. I sighed and forced a smile on my face as I held my gift up for the camera. At least it wasn't as bad as the puzzle blocks. I wondered if there were some age-appropriate presents Mom had purchased that I would get later. "Let's try those on to see if they fit." I obliged and slid my arms through the bands that held the glittery pink wings in place on my back. "So cute," Mom said. "Stand up and give me a twirl." I froze in place. I didn't need to look in a mirror to imagine what the backside of my diaper must look like right now. Mom asked again, in the same cheery voice. But from behind the camera, she was glowering, and I knew right away that if I didn't obey, if I were to mess up her Christmas, the consequences would be severe. I stood up, looking in the general direction of the camera, but I couldn't bring myself to look directly at it or Mom. "Do a twirl. Let's see how it looks on you." I obeyed, spinning in a circle as fast as I could. Knowing full well the camera had captured a clear image of my messy diaper. Worst Christmas ever.

That's a theory. She certainly has experience being in that situation herself. That's always a conflicting point in ABDL stories. Is success accepting diapers or overcoming the need for them? Like others have pointed out, Sarah is panicking at the potential for any interaction between her mother and Lisa. I think I made it clear that she is saying what she is saying to drive Lisa off before her mom returns, not out of genuinely believing it. Part fear of her mom, part embarrassment of her incontinence situation and punishment being revealed to Lisa, and partly just generally not being in the right mindset because of how she's been treated the past week. Sarah's been on a downward spiral for a little while now, so I wouldn't judge her decision-making too harshly. That's another good way of looking at the situation. Could always do a series of alternative episodes a la the Marvel "What If" series. Next chapter takes place on Christmas Day. We'll have the answer for that then. I think I've read quite a few stories that follow that pattern. I can't say what else the mom has planned in store. Obviously, nothing good for Sarah, but there could still be some depths she could realistically sink to.

Chapter 57: Chance Encounter I extracted every last drop of liquid that I could from the baby bottle, sucking on it as hard as I could, not because I was still thirsty, but because Mom wasn't going to remove the rubber tip from my lips until the bottle was completely empty. Mom had switched to having me drink baby formula instead of warmed-up milk. It was sweet and creamy. I had to admit that it did taste better than the milk, at least when it was either warm or cold, but not when it was at room temperature—another incentive for drinking it quickly. "All done, such a good job," Mom said, as she used a small cloth towel to wipe my face dry of some formula that hadn't quite made its way into my mouth. This was the morning routine Mom had settled in for me the past week. At least, I think it had been a week. It was getting hard to keep track of which day it was now. Mornings would begin with a diaper change in bed, followed by being fed in the highchair, which Emilia often assisted with. After that, Mom would have me come with her to the couch, where I would lie in her lap and attempt to drink a bottle of warm baby formula as fast as possible. Each time I had attempted to hold my bladder in until the feeding was finished. I had only succeeded in that once so far. Mom never changed me out of my pajamas until after breakfast was finished, which today meant that I was only wearing a short nightgown to go with the diaper. But even outside of bottle feedings, it was getting harder and harder to find the motivation to even try to hold in my bladder. It didn't help that the diaper was so much more absorbent than a pull-up that if I did have any small accidents, I was completely unaware that they had happened. "Looks like someone went pee pee in her diaper," Mom said. She gave my exposed diaper a completely unnecessary squeeze with her hand. Even with how I was lying down, I could clearly see that the diaper was wet. "Shall we go get your diapie changed?" Mom asked. I was spared the indignity of needing to respond. The question was clearly rhetorical as Mom had just replaced the bottle with a pacifier. There were few circumstances where it was more difficult for me to try to hold in my bladder. Something about sucking the warm liquid out of the bottle made it more difficult for me to focus on holding my bladder in. My goal had been for my diaper to still be dry by the time the feeding was over, but as was obvious to Mom, that had not been the case. Mom had as much time off from work for Christmas as I did from school, so there hadn't been any question of what would happen to my babying should she need to go into the office. Emilia was also on break from going to her preschool classes. There were times when she had delighted in taking on the role of older sister in Mom's seemingly endless punishment of me, but Emilia was still a few months from turning four, and her attention span was short enough that she was easily distracted from that task. Endless was the right description for how long Mom was keeping me in this punishment. I knew it would have been foolish to expect it to have gone on for only a day, like the previous times Mom had disciplined me for having multiple accidents in a day, but I had expected something like three or four days at the most. It was now only three days before Christmas and Mom had shown no sign of relenting. One of the most important things not to do in the middle of one of Mom's punishments was to ask her how much longer it was going to continue. I couldn't recall a single instance where that question had ever been answered to my satisfaction. Any sign of impatience was only going to result in Mom deciding that I needed more time to learn whatever lesson she was attempting to impart. The rare occasions where I had been successful in getting Mom to change her mind had always been ones where I had definitive proof that I was in the right, and even then, the topic had to be approached delicately. I didn't have a single leg to stand on to argue that this punishment wasn't deserved. Even if I hadn't been stupid enough to give Mom a full confession during the stressful minutes after my secret had been outed, the evidence for my disobedience well exceeded the threshold of reasonable doubt. Besides, one had to believe in an argument for it to be successful. --- Every bit of clothing Mom had dressed me in this week had been intended to serve one purpose, to make it obvious to me that I was wearing a diaper. Anything that left the diaper covered with its outline completely obscured, such as a knee-length dress or high-rise baggy sweatpants, was completely out of the picture. Mom didn't usually have the heat running heavily in the winter. She preferred to bundle up to deal with the cold. But she had made an exception for a few days this week, meaning that it was possible to have me spend the day wearing only a diaper and a t-shirt without going around shivering. I waddled along behind Mom as we walked to the bedroom. "Can I help with diapie change?" Emilia asked as we passed her in the hallway. Of all the things that my younger sister had to be most excited to help with, it had to be diaper changes. "Not now," Mom said. "You need to go use the potty. We're going to get in the car once I've got your sister changed and dressed." Emilia ran off to the bathroom. I followed behind Mom. Glad she couldn't see the horrified look on my face. Where exactly were we going, and how long was I going to be out in public? "Mommy. Where we going?" I'd only forgotten to use baby talk on one occasion the past week, for which I had been punished with a spanking on my bare bottom. Mom had at least proven to be receptive to small outbursts so long as they came in the correct format. "You'll just have to wait and see," Mom said. I shivered as Mom ran a cold wet wipe along my bare skin. It had been one thing to go on a walk to the park. It was another to go somewhere where I would be surrounded by a bunch of people. Christmas was only a few days away. There wasn't anywhere we could be going that wouldn't be completely packed. I remained on the bed after Mom had finished taping on a clean diaper. The amount of powder she had applied was more than usual. Not a good sign for how long Mom expected me to be going without a diaper change. Also not a good sign for anyone I might walk past in the hallway, though they could easily attribute that smell to Emilia. I couldn't count on Mom to avoid doing anything that might embarrass me, but I could count on doing anything that she felt might embarrass herself. That left me hopeful that whatever outfit she selected would be one that wouldn't make it obvious that I was wearing a diaper. I was barely able to stifle a laugh as Mom retrieved a pair of jeans from my dresser. I already knew that they weren't going to fit over the diaper, but that wasn't something Mom was aware of, so I had to try to stand still as Mom struggled and failed to get the jeans over the diaper. Skinny-fit jeans and a thick diaper simply aren't a good combination. Mom finally gave up and tugged the jeans off in frustration. That was fine with me. Mom may not have been super attentive to how I had taken to wearing dresses to school the couple of weeks before Christmas break. But the dresses I had gotten from Lisa were still hanging in my closet. Mom would have to be blind to miss them. That would have been my preferred choice if we were to be going out in public. But instead of heading over to the closet, Mom continued to sift through my dresser, until at last she pulled out a pair of leggings that had been tucked away in the very back of a drawer. "That's what I was looking for," Mom said, as she walked back over to me with the dark gray leggings. "Need something stretchy to get over your bottom." I bit my lip before I could begin to argue. Best to wait until I could see how the whole outfit would turn out. Perhaps the leggings would be paired with a skirt, dress, or a shirt long enough to cover my bottom. If not, pointing out how obvious the diaper was beneath the leggings might be enough to get Mom to adjust the outfit without having to throw a fit over it. I laid down again on the bed and held my legs out so Mom could pull the leggings onto my feet. I had intentionally avoided this pair of leggings when I had been looking for something to wear to the mall on Black Friday. I had figured they would be too snug, which would make the diaper more noticeable. I caught a glance of my bottom in the mirror before following Mom out of the bedroom. It felt off, not because the outline of the diaper was visible, but because I knew my bottom wasn't that big. The snugness of the leggings had worked somewhat in my favor, compressing the diaper around my body in a way that made my butt look bigger but didn't make it look as those there was something other than underwear under the leggings. Any of my friends, and especially Lisa, would notice right away that I was in a diaper, but to a random stranger, it wouldn't be noticeable, at least when dry. I hoped whatever errand Mom was bringing me along to run wasn't going to take so long that I would be soaked by the time we got back. The long-sleeved shirt didn't go down quite as much as I would have preferred, but I felt confident it would do when combined with my jacket, as long as I didn't bend over or raise my arms all the way up into the air. My young sister was waiting for us by the doorway once I had gotten dressed. Emilia and I had matching outfits, well, matching on the outside at least. I glanced around for Mom, but she hadn't followed behind me. It took her a few more minutes to be ready to go. She had exchanged her normal purse for a shoulder bag that I could make an educated guess as to what it contained. What on earth did Mom have planned for today? I walked out to the car, looking down at my waist to reassure myself that the diaper wasn't noticeable as I moved around. With each turn Mom made as we began the drive, I grew more and more suspicious of what our destination was going to be. The direction we were going in was clear. The only question was whether we were going to stop somewhere else along the route we were taking. There was still some hope, slight hope at least, that we weren't going where I feared we were. Those hopes were dashed as Mom exited the highway on the ramp that led directly to the shopping mall. --- I exited the car cautiously after Mom finally found a parking spot in the two-story garage, giving my jack a slight tug down to make sure it was covering as much of my leggings as possible. The crinkling sound I made while walking was noticeable while in the parking lot, but once we entered the mall, it was drowned out by all the surrounding noise of shoppers rushing to get their last-minute gifts. It was less busy than it had been a month ago on Black Friday, but only barely so. I remembered what had happened to Samantha when she had drunk so much and held in her bladder for so long that her diaper wasn't able to contain everything when she finally wet it. I wasn't likely to have that problem. The bottle of formula I had for breakfast was nowhere the size of a large coffee, and either way, I couldn't hold my bladder long enough to the point where a single accident would cause a diaper to overflow. I suppose that would be a sign of potty training progress if I were to ever manage that. Today wasn't the day to try to find that out. Emilia and I stood next to Mom as she scanned the mall directory. I wasn't sure what it was exactly that we were shopping for. There had been a ton of Amazon packages arriving over the past week, many of which I had been instructed not to touch. With how Mom wasn't leaving me on my own, I assumed that the majority of the shopping for this Christmas was being done online. I felt my diaper warm up as I waited impatiently for Mom to find the location on the map for the store she found in the directory. Not now. At least it felt like it had only been a small accident. I hoped that was the case, given how there were now people waiting behind us to look at the directory. With each day of being in a diaper, my determination to work on holding in my bladder waned. It all felt rather pointless. Besides, I'd have Mom providing me with a ready supply of pull-ups once school started again, so it wasn't even as if there was some rush to have all my problems solved when school started again in less than two weeks. Mom's shopping list took us through several children's stores. First, we had to spend nearly an hour in a shoe store getting new sneakers for Emilia. She complained that every pair of shoes Mom put on her made her feet her, at least until she tried on a pair of shoes with her favorite Disney princess on them. My diaper continued to get wetter as the shopping trip progressed. I made use of every possible opportunity to keep my bottom out of view, whether that was leaning up against a wall or sitting down at a bench while Mom had Emilia try on some new winter jackets. After several more tiny accidents, I was able to discreetly check my bottom in the mirror at a store. It wasn't as bad as I feared, but if I went longer without a diaper change, I couldn't help but imagine how my leggings would begin to sag. I finally couldn't hold in my question for Mom any longer. "How much longer are we going to be shopping?" "We still have some more things to get," Mom said. "Your sister has had quite the growth spurt lately." The question did cause Mom to look at her phone. "We have one more store to go to, then we can get lunch before finishing the shopping." The next store was at least the quickest one. The first few pairs of leggings that Mom picked out for Emilia fit her without any issues. We stopped at a family restroom before heading to the food court. The three of us entered the family restroom together. That wasn't as embarrassing as I had feared a diaper change at the mall would be. Anyone watching would be assuming that we were going in to assist Emilia rather than me. Mom did have Emilia sit on the toilet as she pulled down my jeans to change my diaper. I turned around to give her some privacy. I was glad Mom was having me change in a standing position. Aside from not wanting to have to lie down to be changed on such a hard surface, the floor wasn't exactly looking immaculately clean. Mom ordered a cheeseburger meal for herself and a kid's meal with chicken nuggets for my sister. She turned to me, and I realized it was my turn to order. This restaurant wouldn't have been my first choice, but at least I wasn't stuck with a kid's meal. I hadn't put any thought into what I wanted to eat. I quickly chose a hamburger meal for myself, not paying much attention even to the toppings that came on it with that particular combo meal. I devoured the hamburger. Each bite was incredibly delicious. It was so good to have something to eat that wasn't baby food. I slowed myself down when I got to the fries, eating them one by one with ketchup. I knew it was going to make me hate whatever baby meal Mom had planned tonight even more, but it was wonderful to eat real food for the first time in a week. The last thing Mom needed to purchase for my sister was several pairs of jeans. She still was too young to figure out how to do buttons on her own, so they were all ones with stretchy waistbands. Like the leggings, it was easy to find ones with a good fit, and there weren't any with princess designs on them for Emilia to get distracted by. Personally, I was just glad to be finally on the way home. As nice as it was to go out and get regular food for once, I simply wanted to be able to not be in a constant state of worrying about the condition of my bottom and who might be looking at it. We made a restroom stop on the way to the car. Emilia might be potty trained, but Mom still wasn't taking any chances with her. There wasn't a family restroom near the mall entrance, just regular ones with normal stalls, so I was left to stand outside in the hallway while waiting for Emilia to finish her business. "Sarah, is that you? What are you doing here?" I turned around in shock. Lisa was standing a few feet in front of me, holding a couple of shopping bags. I looked around but didn't see her aunt or uncle. "I'm shopping. What else am I supposed to be doing at a mall? Where are your aunt and uncle?" "My aunt dropped me off so I could get in a bit of Christmas shopping. But that really doesn't matter. Are you OK? None of my texts have been getting through, and I didn't even see you online on Fortnite. You need to tell me if something is wrong. I can help." "I don't have my phone. I'm grounded. No video games either. Which sucks for Christmas break." "What for?" "Doesn't matter. I don't want to talk right now." Under no circumstances could I have Mom realize I had spoken with Lisa, let alone allow them to have any interaction with each other. "It's not like I don't know when things don't look right," Lisa said. I just needed her to go away. The amount of trouble that she could cause if this argument expanded to Mom was more than I wanted to think about. "Look, just fuck off. I don't want anything to do with you." I felt sick to my stomach as the words left my mouth. Lisa looked as though she was about to start crying. But she wasn't leaving. Mom had to be ready to come out at any minute. It couldn't take Emilia that much longer to use the toilet. I hated myself for what I was about to do. But I didn't see any other choice. "Just go, OK. And stay the fuck away from me. We're not friends anymore." Lisa gasped. I saw a couple of tears run down her face before she turned and ran down the hallway. She was out of sight by the time Mom and Emilia rejoined me a minute later. --- I usually found it hard to avoid crying when I was upset. But I hurt so much that I didn't even seem capable of crying. Three months of knowing Lisa. Gone. Just like that. I'd burned that bridge to the ground with napalm. But I had to move on. Mom was already motioning for me to hurry up and follow her and Emilia to the exit and to our car. And I already needed to pee again, so good luck with even being able to stay dry until we got home. But as we continued to walk toward the exit, the need to pee began to become the least of my problems. I wasn't sure what it was about my lunch, but it seemed as though it had caused my bowels to speed up. Everything inside me was beginning to speed up uncomfortably. There were a few minutes while we were walking to the exit of the mall that I thought there would be a chance of at least making it home until I shit myself, but as we stepped into the parking garage, I realized that I was now going to be lucky if I made it until we got into the car. Even if I were to ask Mom to let me go back and use the toilet just this once, with the restrooms even further away, I wouldn't get there in time either. I slowed down my pace until both Mom and Emilia were a few feet ahead of me, and then I came to a stop. I didn't have any say in the matter as I simultaneously messed and wet myself while standing in the parking lot. I kept my distance from Mom and Emilia as I followed them to the car. Emilia was the first to notice what I had done. "Mommy, Sarah has a poopy diaper." "She what?" Mom turned and sniffed, only to wrinkle her nose in disgust. "Really Sarah, you couldn't wait until we got home?" "I had to go really badly. I couldn't hold it any longer." "Then you should have said something. Could have taken off your diaper to have you go in the family restroom." Like Mom actually would have believed I needed to go that urgently. I didn't understand why Mom was so angry with me. What the fuck did she expect with bringing me in public? I'd messed my diaper nearly every day at home since this punishment first began. "Seriously," Mom said. "It's almost as if you like going potty in your diapers rather than in the toilet." "That's not true." "Who spent the last few months being too lazy to go to the toilet?" I didn't say anything. I wasn't going to give Mom the satisfaction of admitting to anything further. But was she right? Was my bladder just not as strong as my friends? Were the accidents my fault for not going to the toilet as frequently as my body required? "I'm not taking you back inside the mall to get changed. You'd be stinking up every hallway on the way to the restroom. And I'm not having you sit in the car all the way home in a messy diaper." I was grateful not to be headed back inside the mall. I couldn't run into Lisa again, not like this. Not to mention all the strangers who would be made uncomfortably aware of my accident. But I wasn't sure what Mom could be planning to do instead. I found out why Mom's bag was so full as she removed a changing pad from it and placed it in the back seat. "Not here. Please." "You should have thought of that before you decided to poop in your diaper." There wasn't anyone else around, but the longer I argued, the more I risked other people witnessing this scene. I laid down on the changing mat, unable to prevent myself from pressing down on the diaper, causing shit to spread further across my bottom. Emilia's car seat was right behind the passenger seat. Which left just enough room for me to lie down, though my lower legs and feet would be sticking out. We were at the far end of the parking garage, with the open door facing a wall. Unless a passerby got too inquisitive for their own good, there wouldn't be any issues with doing a diaper change. Mom pulled my jeans down to my knees, grimacing as she cleaned me up in record time. I pulled my pants up myself while she wrapped up the diaper and put the changing pad back into her bag. "Here," Mom said. She handed me the rolled-up diaper. "What am I supposed to do with this?" "Go toss it in the garbage. I'm not having it stink up the car." "Mom, I can't carry a diaper around. People are going to see." "Then you better hurry." I looked both ways as I exited the car. I could see some shoppers off to my left as I speed-walked to the mall entrance, where there were a couple of large trash bins. I shifted the diaper to my right hand, trying to keep it out of their view. I tried to focus solely on my destination, trying to pretend as though I didn't have a single care whether someone saw what I was doing. I tossed the diaper in a trash bin and hurried back around to the car. I didn't think Mom had thought through this situation all that well. There was still a lingering, unpleasant odor from the diaper change as we spent the next twenty minutes driving home. And it was far too cold out to crack the windows open to let in some fresh air. At least everything would have remained inside the diaper had Mom waited until we got home. I tried to breathe through my nose as little as possible. What was even the point of trying to get toilet trained? All the evidence of the past few months suggested that I wasn't even capable of that anymore. Sure, it would be nice to be back in pull-ups during the day. But the mission of getting back into big girl underwear had never seemed so difficult before than now.

<spoiler> This is what I was trying </spoiler> And thanks, that was a very easy solution, lol.

To clarify the timeline. Sarah had been dry at night for a few years leading up to the story. Her daytime accidents and the return of her bedwetting happened at about the same time. Thanks! I'm counting eight chapters left at this point (that number is subject to change as they get written). A lot can happen in that amount of time. Hard to say that Emilia will be getting into trouble anytime soon. Narcissists tend to have a favorite "golden child" and a least favorite "the scapegoat." With how much the mom is focused on Sarah, it seems like Emilia is going to be safe for the time being. Thanks, the next chapter will be up next week after Christmas. Sadly, I couldn't time things perfectly to have the Christmas chapter on Christmas day, but it will be close enough. Chapter 58 is the Christmas one.57 takes place before then. I would be more than a little concerned if someone thought the mom's behavior was defensible at this point in the story. Not planning on going more into the mother's past, but yes, abuse is something that does tend to be cyclical through generations. It would be fair to speculate that the mom didn't have a great upbringing herself. It's been mentioned a few times in story, but the mom does the absolute bare minimum for interacting with doctors. Only recent time Sarah went was a required checkup so she could be eligible for the cheerleading team. That's part of it, she's also expressed views that suggest she views Sarah's accidents as more of a personal failing rather than a medical issue. I.e. she views Sarah as being too lazy or distracted or careless or even accusing her of wanting to be a baby, rather than considering the problem to be something that Sarah doesn't have any control over.

Not seeing a way to add spoiler tags to text in a post. Wondering if that's a feature that can be added.