Remember When?

[DLt887]

First off, hello good people of the forum, i'm brand new here although i have been a DL for pretty much as long as i can remember and have been reading here for a while. Today was a big day for me and i am hoping to share this with everyone. After much thought and deliberation i finally worked up the courage to buy my first diapers, and although i was really freaked out and nervous it was kind of a rush and well worth it. I know some of you must have been in my same situation where you know that you want to be in diapers but lack the means to be able to, and im so glad that i can finally wear them. I've always been fond of goodnites since i wore them when i was little, although back then they were plain white, so i bought myself the L-XL boys, and they feel so nice. It's like everything ive been waiting for, so soft and warm and soothing. My pull up is wet as we speak and i bet you all remember your first wetting! I also purchased a pack of maximum absorbency depends in small and i love them. Although i would much prefer, (as we all would), to have bambinos or something equivalent, for my first real diaper i love them. I havnt had a chance to give them a good soaking yet but im very excited to! So all in all, ive very pleased that i can finally experience this pleasure with everyone here and thank you all for the encouragement and support that many newcomers need to be reassured that its ok to love diapers. Thanks! Oh, and please share with us something about your first diaper experience, whether its a full fledged story, your first brand, how you felt, or anything you remember. (Also does anyone have any brand that they think i should try?) Thanks!

- T

[DiaperedCam]

Well, Welcome to Daily Diapers. I have also been in a rush to purcahse diapers. I got a pack of Pampers Cruisers Size 6 yesterday. I regret it because the barely even fit me. I do have a story when I was 5 in diapers. I rememeber they were Huggies. I was in the bathroom and I really had to pee. So I let it go. Then I pooped, so I pooped in my diapers. That was a long time ago. I don't poop in diapers anymore. Anyways, I wish I had some other kind of diapers cuz these suck. I put them to the test and full on soaked it. It didn't last and leaked soo much pee. Afterwards, the diaper still had about 1 cups worth of pee unabsorbed. As for a suggested brand, try the Abena brand. Or the Attends. Check it Out. See ya around.

-DiaperedCameron

[Dirty Diaper/Maxipad Lover]

Oh, and please share with us something about your first diaper experience, whether its a full fledged story, your first brand, how you felt, or anything you remember.

DLt887, my favorite diapers have always been GoodNites; they both fit and work perfectly for me, and are still my #1 diaper of choice. As for sharing something about my first diaper purchase, here we go: the first brand that I purchased was GoodNites. I will share more about my whole first "diaper experience" in the future, but the "full-fledged story" is rather complex, which is why it's not part of this post. I think you'll want to read it though, so keep an eye on my profile, I'll make an announcement when I post it.

I'd suggest continuing to use GoodNites both for Boys and Girls--as I've said, they're my favorite diaper because they've always fit just right on me and held one whole wetting, which is all that I needed them to do.

[subtledragon]

Hallo! I also bought diapers for the first time recently . I bought some medium size Abena Extra off ebay, and they arrived last Monday. Wasn't quite sure how to get them on (didn't come with instructions), so my first one was kinda loose. Didn't manage to get it very wet either, thanks to years of potty-training putting a mental block on it. It was a very enjoyable experience though, and now I've gotten much better at making them tight and snug. And wet of course

[Angela Bauer]

Personally I will never forget the first time I bought my own diapers. Up until then I had frequently been with my Mom when she bought a bunch of gauze diapers or Gerber vinyl pants in a store.

The summer when I graduated from high school, 1981, Mom and I concluded there was no way I could wear gauze diapers to bed in my university dorm. In answer to a letter from me, the university housing director broke the news the available coin washing machines were at the campus general store. That letter came in late July. Of course that was long before the Internet reached homes. Mom had always been anti-disposable. I asked my favorite nurse at my urologist. She said that many of the other incontinent patients wore Attends. She also said that because I had only worn gauze diapers I should start getting used to sleeping in Attends before I left home. During the transition if I had trouble sleeping I could always take off the Attends and pin on a gauze diaper.

At home I talked it over with Mom. All by myself I went to the incontinence section of our regular super market. It was a Friday afternoon. There were hardly any other customers. On the shelf there were boxes of Medium Attends, as well as Large. I figured Attends would work sort of like gauze diapers, that I could fold them over to make them snug.

What a disappointment once I got home to find it was not so easy putting on an Attends. I phoned my urologist's office and spoke to the kind nurse. Over the phone she gave me some suggestions, concluding by saying maybe I needed a smaller size. I told her the Medium were the smallest at the supermarket. The nurse suggested that I phone the toll-free Attends Customer Support phone number. Unfortunately by the time I tried the number on the box of Attends, because it was 3 hours later on the East Coast, they were closed for the weekend.

Over the weekend I tried several times and ruined all those Attends. Despite my efforts, those medium were too big.

Hoping Attends would answer their phone at 8am their time on Monday, I was up before 5am in California, watching the clock. The first two times I dialed all I got was a recording. About 5:30am a super nice lady answered. She politely asked about my size. Her conclusion was that I was between the Youth and Small sizes. She gave me the name, address and phone number of a medical supply store that stocked Youth and Small Attends. Unfortunately, she said, they did not open until 9am.

Mom did not wake up until after 6am. Since I did not drive then, I had no clue where the medical store was located. Once Mom had a cup of coffee she found that address on a map. It was about 20 minutes away. Mom phoned her boss to say she needed to be late that morning. She drove me to the medical store at 9am. They were open. The owner already had a box each of Youth and Small waiting on the counter. He explained that the Attends factory rep had phoned him at home to explain my situation. Both of those boxes were given to me as factory free samples, so I could try both until I found which fit me best.

It turned out the original Attends Youth Briefs were slightly too small on me, but the original Small would snug in to seal good enough around my thighs. While they did not actually reach my waist, they were long enough I could set the upper tape above my hips. Sure, I spoiled a couple of the Youth. By the time I started with the Small I had gained a little experience with disposables. I decided to keep wearing that Small until I needed to use it. I did phone the nice customer service lady to thank her. I also thanked the owner of the medical supply store.

Mom came home for lunch. I told her I had figured out how to put on the Attends. She said she would take my word about that, patting my bottom through my skirt and the Attends as she returned to work.

Sure enough it did take over a week before I could sleep as well in an Attends as I did in my classic Curity gauze diapers with vinyl panties.

I phoned the housing director at my university. She assured me the campus general store stocked Attends in sizes from Junior to Extra Large. That would be less than a 10 minute walks from my dorm. Over the next 4 years I bought a whole lot of Attends Small at that campus store!

[DailyDi]

Wow Angela, I can't even imagine getting that kind of service from one of the major manufacturers today!

Back when I was a teen Deprnd did send me a coupon for a free bag when I first spoke to them, but calling the store for me? Very cool.

[Angela Bauer]

Wow Angela, I can't even imagine getting that kind of service from one of the major manufacturers today!

Back when I was a teen Deprnd did send me a coupon for a free bag when I first spoke to them, but calling the store for me? Very cool.

Back in 1981 Attends was owned and operated by P&G. The customer service had a toll-free (probably 800) WATS phone line. Their listed phone had a North Carolina area code. All the communication, phone and snail-mail gave me the impression P&G let them run the business on their own. Of course back then I had absolutely no reason to communicate with Pampers. Subsequently I learned that P&G acted more "corporate" about the infant care divisions.

Personally I have never added up all the money I have spent buying Attends products through dealers from P&G, then PaperPak, which changed the corporate name to Attends Health Products. It might exactly be "A Billion here, a Billion there, soon it adds up to real money!" Still, I am sure the ggod-will investment in two boxes of Attends back in 1981 has returned handsomely to the bottom-line profits of all the owning companies.

This is a significant factor where the adult incontinence and baby disposable industries differ. Once an incontinent adult finds a disposable product that works, even if quality fluctuates slightly, there is significant brand loyalty. All the R&D for adult disposables gets the chance to pay off over many years. When a firm like Attends can gain a loyal customer under the age of 18 they can expect repeat business for over 60 years without much sales or marketing effort.

Consider that the baby disposable industry has customers with hardly any brand loyalty, who need to constantly be re-sold. We all see that the baby disposable makers introduce product change with no clear benefit to customers, as if only so they can spend a fortune advertising these new changes. P&G has never admitted the cost of engineering and building all the "Size 7" machines. It is sad that the difference from a Size 6 is about an inch (25mm) of length, with no change in width. Yet to add that little length the machine had to be built special. Word is those Size 7 machines run considerably slower than all the other P&G baby diaper machines, so it is not practical to switch over to making the better selling sizes. Wow, how would you like to explain that to corporate? Clearly they had some market research that parents needed Pampers for taller and thus slightly heavier kids. Just how well did that work out?

Who knows why there was so much negative publicity about the introduction of Pampers DryMax technology? Sure, that works just great for my use as disposable slip-in pads. Probably my skin is far more robust that the skin of a 12 month old baby. I have only limited in-person daily contact with parents of kids younger than 4. The few I know who do sometimes buy Pampers had no problem with DryMax, but also did not see a benefit.

KCWW pays close attention. Notice Huggies never introduced a size larger than the capacity of their current high-speed diaper making machines. Instead they devoted the R&D solving production problems on their Pull-Up machines. There is no doubt KCWW has developed a version of SAP very similar to DryMax. Maybe they have quietly already started using in, so they can make a disposable with slightly less SAP that performs as well.

See, largely the adult disposable industry has avoided all that marketing nonsense. Eventually the adult industry figured out how to make pull-on at a price that can be sold. Sure the AB/DL community resists all pull-on. Honestly, except for Bambino and ABU, the other makers could care less what AB/DL thinks. Retail stores find adult pull-on sell better and have longer shelf life than tape-on briefs. Pull-on work okay for the light leaks associated with temporary loss of bladder control. The retailers figure that adults with more severe incontinence are going to order disposables on-line by the case.

As one Corleone Family gangster said in The Godfather "It was never personal. It was just business."

[DailyDi]

Very good insight, as always. I agree that pull-ups are a HUGE market with adults - between women with stress/urge incontinence and men with prostate/bladder issues. Since I have some control during the day, I keep pull-ups around for something to throw on in a hurry or when a full diaper would be inconvenient.

I'm the king of mail order... but I have to admit I miss the personal service of local medical supply stores (all closed here except for oxygen and bed services) not to mention the fun of browsing the different brands and boxes of washable pants, covers and cloth diapers.

As for Dry-max. I have 2 theories:

1. New Coke Syndrome.

2. "More absorbent means I can change him/her less often, right?" Nope. Still need to practice good skin hygiene and regular changes. Knowing how much baby diapers can absorb I am always disgusted at parents whose children you see running around in a sagging diaper that clearly hasn't been tended to in hours. Then they wonder why their kids get rashes?

[drynot]

One of my earliest memories involving diapers is when I learned that my next door neighbor wet the bed and wore diapers at night. My parents were good friends with her parents and they had my sister and I spend the weekend over there quite a few times when my folks went out of town. Anyway I recall that she was quite embarrassed to be wearing diapers around me and my sister. So I told her that I would wear one too to make her feel better. I was a bedwetter as well and I really didn't mind wearing them but she was quite relieved when her mom diapered us both.

It was right after that first weekend that my folks decided to diaper me at night due to my bedwetting issues and the rest is history.