Strange days indeed - a 24 x 7 experiment

[BedWetMark]

On 4/29/2021 at 5:10 AM, oznl said:

 

“The bin didn’t get emptied properly by the truck this morning and, I don’t know what it is, but whatever is still in it really STINKS!”

If you permanently wear disposable adult nappies, weekly rubbish collections are VERY important to you and this isn’t intelligence you want to receive a few hours after one.  I suspect she DID have a fair idea what was in it though.  The glare accompanying her advice was so cold it could have snap-frozen a charging rhino.

 

Our wheelie bins get emptied every 2 weeks. Garden, glass and general recycling bins 1 week, black bin (general waste) the other.

We get a bin cleaning company, but as I've mentioned before, this stuff is incredible; https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bin-Buddy-Fresh-Berry-Blast/dp/B015DWIOLG/ref=sr_1_6?dchild=1&keywords=bin+fresh&qid=1619905682&sr=8-6 (If you can get it over there - it is the ONLY bin product I've bought that works!)

Downside to having a fortnightly collection is that come the final couple of days involves me getting a step ladder out, opening the bin and jumping into it to squash it all down. Then heaving at whatever putrid smells hit me, I'm someone who is prone to smells, hence the bin buddy stuff. 

[oznl]

A week the end of the bin-space-crisis after a successful rubbish collection (Huzzah!) also  featuring a day featuring a nappy leak that wasn’t and a wasn’t-leak that was…

The Labour Day public holiday in Queensland on Monday meant the closure of most stores.  The cessation of retail availability for almost any amount of time triggers something akin to panic buying the day before in Queenslanders.  Ironic then that my betrothed and I should choose this day-before to head off for a shopping mall some distance from where we live and usually shop for things that strictly speaking, could have been procured at a time that wasn’t retail Armageddon.

We set out not long after breakfast on a 45 minute drive.  Cool weather, I was “properly” dressed for a change: long pants and even socks and shoes (instead of thongs).  Under my jeans however, I was in a compression panty over plastic pants over an Abena L4 nappy/booster pad that I’d changed into before breakfast.

We’d not been there that long, perhaps 45 minutes or so.  I was standing on an escalator, experiencing that strange kind of escalator-paralysis whereby humans stand still on stairs where the effort is being done for us.  I realised that I was peeing.  This isn’t unusual.  These days urination is sometimes semi-automatic but I could have prevented it from starting if I’d thought to.

As you’d expect after a couple of years permanently in nappies, I’m not in any way bothered by wetting in public.  Disturbingly however, the sensations presently coming from “down there” seemed markedly wetter than usual.  For readers unfamiliar with the physical experience of wetting a nappy, the dominant sensation is one of spreading warmth rather than spreading wetness.  

Not today.  Instead it felt like I was getting a bit of a private golden shower.  I could feel dripping, trickling and fluid generally moving around inside my nappy.   After a couple of years permanently diapered, I can no longer stop myself peeing once I’ve started so I was kind of stuck with the scenario and compounding my angst, this pee seemed to go on for quite some time.  Some surreptitious exploratory dabbing around in the region of my plastic panty leg elastics (there are limits to such explorations whilst standing on an escalator in a crowded shopping mall) suggested that despite the sloshing sensations, my jeans were dry. We had my car back in the car-park, containing my “crash kit” which could manage the disaster of a catastrophic in-field nappy fail but nothing would manage the disaster of an embarrassed and enraged spouse.

I worried wetly whilst we ascended to the next floor.

I was a bit confused because on the basis of time alone, I should NOT have been very wet.  I’d changed out of my well-used night nappies less than three hours earlier.

Under normal circumstances, the threat of an imminently-or-already-leaking nappy would be just cause to cease using it but I doubted that this was an option available to me.  The mere thought of trying to hold on for possibly two hours caused another warm spurt.  Also I worried that a serious attempt to hold things would inevitably fail in an hour or so and possibly precipitate a flooding event instead of a slow leak.  I decided it best to stay comfortable, leave “the tap open”, carry on and hope for the best.

I spent the rest of the morning at the mall it seemed weeing a little every four minutes.  Each time felt like a car wash in my pants but there was still no sign of leakage

Eventually, I got home.  My jeans were still dry so I shrugged my shoulders and carried on.  If I leaked at home there would be no drama so long as it was ME who discovered the leak and not my partner.  Eventually, early that evening, I showered and changed.  I was, as you would expect by that stage having been in the same nappy for 11 hours, pretty wet but far from catastrophically so.  There’d been some very minor leakage down between my legs that my plastic pants had handled diplomatically for me.  There was no evidence of leaks in my outerwear.

This was a leak that wasn’t.  Why did the day feel like I’d spent it wearing a water park?  I’m wondering if a slightly-more-exuberant-than-usual application of sudocreme may have been the issue.  I was attempting to head off a threat of nappy rash that I felt was emerging down there after I’d allowed a messy nappy to occur a day earlier (out of a combination of convenience, timing and laziness).  I wonder if excess cream had transferred over to my nappy inside surface, altering its absorption characteristics so that pee had to flow around a little to find somewhere to penetrate.   I proceeded with my shower and changed into my night nappy.

The next morning, it was the Labour Day holiday and therefore the entire household was having something of a lie-in (let’s be honest, most days are “lie-in” days for me now).  Once again, I luxuriated in the simple morning decadence that is waking up, relaxed and empty-bladdered in a securely-fitted, warm wet nappy after an uninterrupted night’s sleep.  I was comfortable and dry in bed but I could feel the soft, humid embrace of cloth padding around my midriff and the faint “warm pee” smell emanating from under the covers that told of a warm, wet thick cloth night nappy under plastic pants.

Except I was supposedly wearing a disposable… 

Yes, my BetterDry had failed catastrophically during the night.  This almost NEVER happens.  One of the tapes had split the plastic backing it was stuck too disgorging pee-soaked fluff followed by pee in extravagant abundance.  Fortunately, my “insurance policy” (Babykins dual-layer terry towel-lined vinyl waterproof pants) had stepped in and taken one for the team.  Not only were they soaked but at change time, I found soggy chunks of pee-soaked BetterDry polymer core rolling around inside them like some kind of occult tapioca.  I was indeed sleeping in a very wet cloth nappy. This was a “wasn’t leak” that “was”.

Still, without those Babykins, I would have instead woken up in a thoroughly wet bed beside a thoroughly enraged spouse.

[Little Sherri]

On 5/7/2021 at 1:49 AM, oznl said:

Still, without those Babykins, I would have instead woken up in a thoroughly wet bed beside a thoroughly enraged spouse.

I've been lucky with this - I haven't violated the marital chamber in ages, despite sleeping in diapers for probably 3+ years at this point. I'm generally not a side-sleeper, which I think is where the greatest peril exists, but also, my nocturnal output has notably declined, so that, these days, when I retire for the evening, I am dramatically overequipped for the journey, wearing some Megamax or Rearz Elite, the equivalent, essentially, to taking a Land Cruiser to the local soccer field, because you might have to park on the grass. 

I was, however, semiconsciously considering an antisocial act the other day, that, thankfully, my conscience (or consciousness) overruled. Uncharacteristically, and probably related to hot wings I had consumed the day before, I awoke about an hour before my alarm generally goes off, with abdominal pressure... the other of nature's callings was coopting the agenda, which pretty much never happens overnight. The drifting, dream-dazed side of me whispered "To hell with it, you're wearing a diaper, let's just go back to sleep...", which seemed to make a lot of sense, in the moment. But then a colder, rational voice emerged... and reminded me that I was sleeping next to my wife. Were I to have let events take their course, I might have netted another 30 minutes of sleep, but, at what cost? Even assuming I didn't leave an indelible olfactory mark on the bedding, the bathroom would have borne silent witness. There is no graceful way to tidy up after a seismic event.  

[oznl]

“Don’t be embarrassed but I need to talk to you about something.”

There’s a line from my beloved that will invariably “carpe diem” with respect to my attention.

It was early evening and she‘d just returned from her day at the office.  Something I used to do myself until somebody ate a bat and my world imploded.  In comparison, I’d spent the day hanging around the house, reluctant to leave it, burning diesel to spend money that I can ill afford.  Instead, I’d been marinating in my nappy spending too much time net-surfing spiced with a desultory amount of increasingly-reluctant domestic maintenance.   I could have just slept all day to be honest.  After three months “active” job seeking without so much as a call-back, depression is stalking me from behind like a bear in the woods.

I briefly ran through a mental checklist of my potential crimes against her for the day:  although I’d not exactly set the world on fire, a number of minor routine household maintenance tasks had been completed and dinner was sorted.  I’d even endured the dubious pleasure of my final 1:1 session with an “outplacement consultant”: an official failure after 90 days, the latter ones spiced with veiled references to “career changes” (stacking supermarket shelves) and “transition to retirement” (stacking supermarket shelves).  I thought this might buy me some sympathy from her but apparently not.

“Your pants stink” she announced flatly.

So there you go, she still loves me a bit.  It’s not as bad as it sounds.  I’d actually begun to doubt that she’d meant what she said two years ago when she said she’d let me know of any smell issues because “somebody has to”.  I’d had sufficient cattiness and passive aggression to make me suspect that those words may not count for much and she might prefer the schadenfreude of remaining silent, allowing me to figure it out on my own.

She still can’t manage the “n” word however.  I’m pretty sure my pants smell fine.  It will be my nappy that stinks.

“I can smell them when you’re close to me and now you’re in the bedroom with me, I can smell them in our bedroom.  They only stink on Wednesdays and Thursdays though…”

“Yeah, I know, it’s some of the cloth ones, I’ll think of something…”

Wednesdays and Thursdays are my cloth nappy days.  I think she’s worked this out so calling the days was kind of a hint (not that I needed it really).  I took some refuge in the implication that on my non-cloth-nappy days, I do NOT stink. 

Once again, my cloth nappies are demonically possessed.

After hot-washing and being line dried in the harsh Australian sun, white and fluffy, they smell of crisp freshness and ultra-violet-scorched grass, like a New Zealand sheep field but with less dung.

But they are not what they seem.  They lie to us.

When those first drops of warm pee hit them after pinning, they transform, Jekyll-to-Hyde-like into foul smelling alien monsters emergent from deep ocean of liquid ammonia.  They smell far, far worse than any pee I may happen to have applied to them.

Despite close-fitting plastic pants and jeans, air exchange happens.  By the end of the day though (spent mercifully alone, I am wary of their olfactory foibles of late), when they are thoroughly wet and change time approaches, I can no longer disguise evidence of their state than I could a 9 day old cow carcass in our linen press.

I’ve wrestled these diaper demons before: everything I have tried has had effects that range between marginal and ephemeral.  Vinegar, Bi-Carb of soda, both (huh? That doesn’t even make chemical sense), “Funk Rock”,  even boiling the nappies, a transiently-effective process of medieval hideousness requiring  extended home-alone time to avoid detection and risking subsequent shooting for Krimes-against-the-Kitchen. 

My newer cloth nappies smell fine.  It MUST be some kind of insoluble residue.

I like cloth, I like the economy, I like the comfort, I like being utterly leak-proof in bed, I like the sustainability but my god at times they sh1t me to tears…  It isn’t easy being green.  Kermit the Frog once sung that to me when I was small.

This week’s cloth cohort is currently malodorously sloshing around our washing machine that has everything resembling an “eco” function temporarily disabled, the longest, hottest, most environmentally ruinous wash mode it affords and instead of containing washing detergent, it contains a mysteriously powerful Walt-Disney-coloured dishwasher tablet.  This will be followed by 2 – 3 rinse cycles before they can work on their melanomas on the clothesline.

This technique MUST work.  I found it on Google.  Worst case is that or I’ll be shopping for a new washing machine before her royal highness returns from the office with a convincing cover story about what happened to the old one and why it smells like clean dishes and is shiny.

[Stroller]

7 hours ago, oznl said:

Once again, my cloth nappies are demonically possessed.

No idea why this is happening to your nappies, oznl: I don't seem to have the same problem.  Maybe it's your climate.  Of course, since my sense of smell seems to have been permanently affected by Covid, & my wife's by her medication, then maybe I have got the same problem...

...but I don't think so.  You could try cutting out coffee from your diet.  And asparagus, which is generally a bit easier to do without for most people.  But that probably wouldn't fix it.  Sounds like you're doomed, but just doomed mid-week.

In the words of Huddie Ledbetter, which he probably got from someone else anyway: 'Take a whiff, take a whiff, take a whiff on me...'

Mind you, that was about cocaine, which is probably not at the root of your problem.

[Little Sherri]

30 minutes ago, Stroller said:

No idea why this is happening to your nappies, oznl: I don't seem to have the same problem.  Maybe it's your climate. 

I don't think it's the climate, @Stroller - I'm at the opposite side of the world from oznl, and the opposite end of the climate spectrum, and I have largely given up on my cloth diapers, because they start to smell within a few hours and they make me terribly self-conscious. I have a shaky truce with my wife over my wanting to dress like a toddler under my clothes all the time, and I think having a stench follow me around might topple my situation. 

My condolences, @oznl, although I suppose it could have gone a lot worse. You had me at the edge of my (damp) seat with your opening statement. 

Dishwasher detergent is generally much more alkaline than laundry detergent, but the elastomers used in the machines are chosen more for their temperature profile than their chemical resistance, and both the dishwasher, and a washing machine on "sanitize", are getting up to around the same temperatures, so, my theory is that the dishwasher tab shouldn't hurt the machine. Both also contain a defoamer, and foam is the principal enemy when putting foreign detergents into either machine - great clouds of foam will vex pumps and level sensors. 

I'm curious as to how it worked out for you, in terms of results. Alkalinity is an excellent remover of proteins and fats. There isn't any fat in urine (mores the pity), but there are trace amounts of some proteins, although I'm not sure if they would be responsible for the just-add-water instant stench. Alkalinity also causes the fibers in the material to open up, however, which allows the surfactants to do their job better. However, dishwasher tabs don't contain as many surfactants as laundry detergent - you might want to consider using both on a long, hot cycle. A long time ago in another life, I used to teach commercial laundry chemistry, back when LTC homes and hospitals still used cloth diapers, which, at least here, is way back in the past now, because of the water, chemical and labour costs associated, and, the possibility that an incorrectly-cleaned nappy could transmit disease. As a side note, anyone who thinks that cloth diapers are more environmentally friendly than disposables hasn't been in a commercial laundry - vast quantities of harsh chemicals, hot water, and natural gas are employed in the rehabilitation of stacks of white fluffy nappies. The impact of domestic cloth diaper usage is probably a bit lower, mostly because household users are not beholden to the same sanitation standards as hospitals. 

In any case, back when the laundering of tons of diapers was fodder for LTC management training, I used to preach hitting them with a good rinse up front, followed by a belt of alkaline booster, mixed with a surfactant blend, high temperatures, and then judicious use of bleach in a step at the proper PH (trending alkaline). Bleach does amazing things and is as cheap as air, almost, but it damages linens, so a good program does not lean too heavily on gas of broken salt. High temperatures are also key, and then rinse, rinse, rinse. So, your use of a dishwasher tab is on the right track, and I don't know why I didn't think of it!

There is one final step in commercial laundry that most householders can't employ - the sour step, where acid is added to a rinse, to bring the PH of the linens down. It also serves to dissolve salts from hardness that might be building up in the diapers. I do wonder if maybe ammonium carbonate might build up in cloth nappies - it has a very strong smell (it's used in smelling salts). You probably shouldn't try putting acid in your washer - that might damage something, and also, acid plus bleach produces a chemical weapon. However, you could try experimenting with getting an acid-based cleaner (CLR is an example, a rust stain and hard water film remover we can buy here, that contains citric acid and some others) and soaking a diaper in a bucket of hot solution for a good bit. Wear gloves and safety goggles. After that, run it on a rinse cycle with NO bleach, and then you can wash it as normal, or with a dishwasher tab, depending on how many variables you want to play with at the same time.

Let me know how it goes. I may try this experiment myself, if the kids ever go back to physically attending school - right now, my cloth diapers are way too bulky and obvious for daily wear, and putting one on just for the overnight shift would be a lot of work for the opportunity to use a diaper to maybe 20% of its capacity. 

 

[goggius]

Hi guys

I've been using prefold cloth from Babykins or Rearz for at least 25 years and I found that the only thing that would eliminate the foul odour was two tablespoons of bleach in the bleach compartment of the washing machine.  I also limit the number of diapers in a wash to about 6.  I use a prewash and extra rinse cycle.  I manage to get three to four years out of one diaper that Babykins says is the average lifetime.  Oh yes, the diapers are removed in the shower and rinsed out before going into the pail for a day or so before washing. No offensive odours.   

[oznl]

9 hours ago, Stroller said:

You could try cutting out coffee from your diet.  And asparagus, which is generally a bit easier to do without for most people.  But that probably wouldn't fix it.  Sounds like you're doomed, but just doomed mid-week.

In the words of Huddie Ledbetter, which he probably got from someone else anyway: 'Take a whiff, take a whiff, take a whiff on me...'

Mind you, that was about cocaine, which is probably not at the root of your problem.

Using decades of IT troubleshooting experience, I observe that the "fault" will "follow" the nappy, not the nappy user

I have good and bad cloth nappies (well really, "bad" and "worse").  I don't think its the direct smell of pee but rather the reactivation of something that remains behind in the cloth fibers.  Asparagus isn't much in my diet and since the 2020 lockdown, I largely don't drink coffee at all during the week.  I do drink prodigious quantities of sugar-free cola.

I'll probably pass on the cocaine.  ONE problem is enough ?

8 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Let me know how it goes. I may try this experiment myself, if the kids ever go back to physically attending school - right now, my cloth diapers are way too bulky and obvious for daily wear, and putting one on just for the overnight shift would be a lot of work for the opportunity to use a diaper to maybe 20% of its capacity.

Loads of good information in here thanks.  Chemistry is NOT a subject I ever studied past mid high school.  I need to process this.  I'm definitely thinking some kind of crystalized ammonia compound but bacteria is also a contender.

I suspect ONE of my problems is that I am severely temperature-limited in washing.  Here in Nanny-stralia, the all-wise Government decided that hot water systems would not be "safe" if they were hot.  A legally-mandated tempering valve limits temperature to 55C allowing mothers to lower toddlers into baths filled with undiluted hot water and have them survive (a shocking defeat for Darwinian selection).  Hilariously, this has made Legionnaires disease a thing in downstream hot water infrastructure but that's Government for you.

Furthermore, front-loading machines with heaters are rare here and not favoured by my beloved (who hated the front loader we had when we lived in the UK for a while - she couldn't cope with not being able to open the door to throw in the socks she "forgot" after it started and lacked the patience for the wash cycle time).

The crude top-loader we have on "hot" I suspect simply uses neat hot water to fill (a cold bowl) and would have massive thermal losses.  I haven't measured it but I'd be surprised if the wash temperature hit 45C  Since I know that boiling the nappies can "reset" this, whatever is at play can be broken down by high temperatures.  Since I can't easily and routinely achieve high temperatures, I'm wondering if something else can be used with leads me to:

4 hours ago, goggius said:

Hi guys

I've been using prefold cloth from Babykins or Rearz for at least 25 years and I found that the only thing that would eliminate the foul odour was two tablespoons of bleach in the bleach compartment of the washing machine. 

This...  Would this help me circumvent my temperature woes?  I wonder if adding liquid bleach might do something (apart from prematurely destroy my nappies).  There isn't a "bleach compartment" that I can identify in our machine and I've no idea on quantity either but I do have bleach.  Answers on a postcard please...

Maybe I should just put a nappy through the dishwasher...

 

And I thought I was joking...

[Little Sherri]

Jesus, Legionnaires is a thing? We've had the rare outbreak, but it's very uncommon. There was one in a nursing home 20 years ago. For probably the exact same reason you describe. 

I have a modern front-loading machine that can heat water as it wishes, and, it has reasonably hot domestic hot water coming into it. We have mixing valves, but they can be defeated with Philips screwdriver technology, although in this case I did not have to do that - I live in a 100-year-old house (heavily renovated). It has no mixing valve. If I wanted to, I could make tea with the water that comes out of the tap. 

Bleach to a wearer of cloth diapers is like the sea to a sailor - a friend and an enemy. It is best deployed in hot, slightly alkaline conditions - it "flashes" or acts too quickly under acidic conditions, and in cold water, it's far less effective. Overused, it can drastically shorten the life of whatever is exposed to it. It's definitely a weapon in the arsenal. However, I have bleached my cloth diapers many times, and it doesn't seem to exorcise the poltergeists of wettings past. I have also washed them on the "sanitize" setting on my washer, which allegedly reaches 180 F (~83 C), and that hasn't fully solved the issue either, although it seems to have helped. I think that there's something more going on here, and I'm curious as to if a low PH bath might help. However I don't foresee an opportunity to wear cloth diapers anytime soon for me, so, I am interested in your results. Sadly, back when I helped people solve their commercial nappy problems, I, myself, did not wear nappies, so, I never adapted my training to domestic equipment. 

[Stroller]

46 minutes ago, Little Sherri said:

I have also washed them on the "sanitize" setting on my washer, which allegedly reaches 180 F (~83 C), and that hasn't fully solved the issue either, although it seems to have helped.

I'd forgotten about oznl's washing machine temperature issue.  I've always washed my nappies on a 60C cotton cycle.  The problem is bound to be bacterial imho, and 60C is recommended for killing bacteria, fungal infections etc.  See here for instance.

Once bacteria build up they are a lot more difficult to eradicate, which is why washing at 60C every time (and on a full cotton cycle) works best.

Another thing is that smelly bacteria thrive on damp hair - check out the lumpy bits on your armpit hair if you don't believe me.  Many years ago I got fed up with my armpits smelling like an old goat, which spread to my clothes.  This is despite twice daily showering & washing.  So I tried shaving my armpits, and the problem went away.  Then when I started wearing nappies more regularly I noticed I was becoming a bit more whiffy in my nether regions, so I tried the same solution. And hey presto it worked again.  Now I shave armpits and nappy regions twice a week.

So, if I'm right then to solve this requires his and hers washing machines, and a baby-smooth bottom.  Fixed!  Perhaps.

[oznl]

1 hour ago, Little Sherri said:

Bleach to a wearer of cloth diapers is like the sea to a sailor - a friend and an enemy. It is best deployed in hot, slightly alkaline conditions - it "flashes" or acts too quickly under acidic conditions, and in cold water, it's far less effective. Overused, it can drastically shorten the life of whatever is exposed to it. It's definitely a weapon in the arsenal. However, I have bleached my cloth diapers many times, and it doesn't seem to exorcise the poltergeists of wettings past. I have also washed them on the "sanitize" setting on my washer, which allegedly reaches 180 F (~83 C), and that hasn't fully solved the issue either, although it seems to have helped. I think that there's something more going on here, and I'm curious as to if a low PH bath might help.

Any idea what kind of bleach quantity you used?  It's an 8.5kg washer.  I get to choose our TVs but not our washers.

https://www.appliancesonline.com.au/product/fisher-paykel-fabricsmart-85kg-top-load-washing-machine-wa8560p1

I've RTFM'd the washing machine.  By default, it has "eco mode" enabled which, in the words of the manufacturer "recirculates water and detergent through clothes so less hot water is used to remove stains, dirt and bacteria"...

Hmmm...  I found out how to turn it off for the last load.  I might road-test those nappies next week and see how they perform after their environmentally ruinous wash.

I'm assuming a low PH bath means pouring vinegar into a rinse bucket.  Tried that...   Not sure on a target PH but I do actually possess a PH probe that once in a blue moon I will even calibrate.

 

51 minutes ago, Stroller said:

I'd forgotten about oznl's washing machine temperature issue.  I've always washed my nappies on a 60C cotton cycle.  The problem is bound to be bacterial imho, and 60C is recommended for killing bacteria, fungal infections etc.  See here for instance.

Once bacteria build up they are a lot more difficult to eradicate, which is why washing at 60C every time (and on a full cotton cycle) works best.

Another thing is that smelly bacteria thrive on damp hair - check out the lumpy bits on your armpit hair if you don't believe me.  Many years ago I got fed up with my armpits smelling like an old goat, which spread to my clothes.  This is despite twice daily showering & washing.  So I tried shaving my armpits, and the problem went away.  Then when I started wearing nappies more regularly I noticed I was becoming a bit more whiffy in my nether regions, so I tried the same solution. And hey presto it worked again.  Now I shave armpits and nappy regions twice a week.

 

Yep, all good advice but the day-bound allegation from my beloved does tend to confirm my contention that it is selected nappies that smell, not me.  I'm also bald as a badger down there and have been that way since going 24/7 as a part of the risk mitigation.  It's something in cloth nappies that can be muted somewhat by boiling.  As you say, could well be bacteria.

In the interests of science, I once shaved my armpit hair as well (I was curious, and held the trimmer in my hand).  It didn't work so well for me in my climate.  My armpit seemed wet all the time afterwards.  I guess my nappy zone seems wet all the time too but that doesn't bother me in the same way.

 

[dribblez]

Reading the last few posts here has cheered me up immensely. I've got this image of @Little Sherriclad in a Barnyard, rubber gloves and goggles conducting chemical warfare experiments in his utility room stuck in my head, with Mrs @oznl about to appear at any minute in the guise of a UN inspector searching for WMD.

If ever I feel tempted to go into cloth, I have made a mental note to reread these posts first.

[oznl]

1 hour ago, dribblez said:

Reading the last few posts here has cheered me up immensely. I've got this image of @Little Sherriclad in a Barnyard, rubber gloves and goggles conducting chemical warfare experiments in his utility room stuck in my head, with Mrs @oznl about to appear at any minute in the guise of a UN inspector searching for WMD.

If ever I feel tempted to go into cloth, I have made a mental note to reread these posts first.

We aim to please ?

[Stroller]

1 hour ago, dribblez said:

Reading the last few posts here has cheered me up immensely. I've got this image of @Little Sherriclad in a Barnyard, rubber gloves and goggles conducting chemical warfare experiments in his utility room stuck in my head, with Mrs @oznl about to appear at any minute in the guise of a UN inspector searching for WMD.

If ever I feel tempted to go into cloth, I have made a mental note to reread these posts first.

Yup, I think you're pretty much right.  That must be exactly what happens.

[Little Sherri]

On 5/15/2021 at 3:42 AM, oznl said:

Any idea what kind of bleach quantity you used?  It's an 8.5kg washer.  I get to choose our TVs but not our washers.

So I had a look at the machine specifications, @oznl, and while they note that it uses 96 litres of water per cycle, they don't specify the volume of the wash step, as opposed to how much is employed in rinsing. However, an average number within the industry is 5 L per KG, and yours is an 8.5 KG machine, and top-loading machines for the most part don't adjust their water levels by load contents like front-loaders do, so, if I assume you have about 42.5 litres of water in there for the wash cycle, then the addition of 180 ml of 5% bleach (typical domestic bleach concentration) would produce an aggressive "sanitizing" concentration of 200 PPM of bleach. 45 ml would produce a 50 PPM concentration, which is closer to a typical "whitening" concentration. You could aim for 1000 PPM and "disinfection", however that will eat those fibers up pretty quickly. You'll find 1/10th of your diapers in the dryer lint trap. 

PH is harder to sort out. But sodium hypochlorite is alkaline, and adding that much of it to your load would probably make the solution sufficiently alkaline in itself. You could toss in half a cup of baking powder if you want to. Basically, the idea is this - if you choose your longest wash cycle, and the solution is at the right PH (trending alkaline, maybe 8 - 9), the bleach will release slowly and provide optimal de-staining and antimicrobial activity. Whereas if the solution is acidic, the bleach releases fast, which tends to damage fibers, reduce contact time and efficiency, and, make a strong chlorine smell. 

Where the acid comes in is in a separate step, in commercial laundry, but domestically, you probably have to engineer a step yourself, possibly in a bucket. If we think that ammonium carbonate, or another mineral ammonia variation, is haunting your nappies, then making a low PH solution would probably dissolve some of those salts. However, vinegar is not that strong - you'd have to soak the diapers in vinegar alone to get a low enough PH - about 2.5. If you can find a citric or lactic acid solution, you'll be able to use a heck of a lot less of it to get to that same range. I know you have a pool, so you might also want to try using muriatic acid, which is hydrochloric acid - however you want to be really careful with THAT stuff or you'll turn your nappies into smoke. Wear gloves, goggles, and - I can't stress this enough, I know you don't need this caveat, @oznl, but for anyone else reading - NEVER NEVER mix acid with bleach. 

The exact dose depends on the concentration of the products you can get your hands on. Having a PH meter allows you to dial it in pretty closely. 

You then want to wash the linens so that they're thoroughly rinsed and their PH has come back to more or less neutral, to the benefit of your skin. We used to shoot for a final PH in commercial linen of about 6 or 6.5 - slightly acidic, like skin, but, domestically, you are at the mercy of the PH of your water supply, because it's hard to get acidity into the rinse step in a household washer. You could put vinegar into the fabric softener dispenser, but you'll get clothes that smell like a chip shop. 

[oznl]

A brief update on the double-rinsed-cloth-nappy-washed-with-dishwasher-tablet performance: possibly a bit better, but not great.

The day before yesterday, with my wife and others out of olfactory offense range, I took out my strangely-washed Babykins cotton-pull on nappy layered with another Babykins dual-layer terry pull on nappy (similarly malodorous) and clad myself within them.

On a whim, I put on a pair of Gary “Euroflex”  (urethane) plastic pants over them that I rarely wear because it sound like I’m wearing a packet of potato chips (crisps) when I do.

Thusly, I scrunched through the day, becoming progressively soggier.

Early optimism was crushed by about 3pm when, by then somewhat-soggy, I was catching distinctly ammonia whiffs from time to time from the general area of my pants.

Peeling them off in the shower, the evidence was unmistakable: ammonia.

There were BETTER though, the previous week those nappies had reeked from pretty much instant they got damp.  This week, they took a few hours to cook up.

The delayed reaction has me thinking long and hard about @Stroller's theory of bacterial build-up.  Ammonia crystal reactivation would be near instant – this week the chemistry spooled up slowly, like bacteria metabolising stuff. 

This would make it a sanitisation problem, not a chemistry problem.

Next up I’m going to try @Little Sherri's baking-soda-infused wash load with a 180ml tactical bleach addition.  I know bleach isn’t great for cotton nappies but I have little to lose.  These are rapidly approaching unwearable.  Not sure about the acid bath.  As it is, I *do* have a reasonable quantity of pool acid (HCI) which, given Australia's "nanny state" mentality, I'm quite surprised I'm still allowed to buy.  It's strikingly strong stuff and people do dumb things with it all the time ("do like you ought'a, add the acid to the water...")

Outside of my cloth-based forays, as a result of a drive to clear out some of my “nappy closet” space to accommodate the next case of BetterDry, the purchase of which will be dismally but predictably necessary.  I’ve been wearing nappy left-overs: odds and sods of packets or cases I’ve not fully consumed for one reason or another.  Accordingly, I’ve spent the week wearing ABU Simples during the day in what is by now, a strangely “retro” experience.

I have been reminded constantly of the ABU Simple holy trinity:

1.       They do not feel anything other than decadently soft and comfortable: wet or dry

2.       They do not sag, I could pogo-stick across the outback in a wet ABU Simple and gravity would not prevail

3.       They do not keep my jeans dry

I don’t care how much SAP you dial in to your nappy core if the simple fact is that my pee will never reach it.

With my night time BetterDry doing the lion’s share of the day (usually 6pm to at least 9am), you’d think an ABU Simple would manage the other 9 hours but no…  Inevitably, by the time it gets around to about 4pm and I decide to take an afternoon constitutional brisk walk, I realise that the inside of my crotch is wet.  If I’ve been sitting down, it’s more likely than not that there will have been a press-out leak that’s gotten past my plastic pants and planted the crescent-shaped, darked nappy flags-of-shame on the backs of my thighs.

At change-time, I discover that less than 40% of the nappy core is actually wet.  The pee just got to the lowest point in the crotch area at which point it started seeping out in preference to wicking up to the parched plains of un-sullied absorbency at my bum.  I guess that if I was peeing in them once in a hormone-charged sex-session, or perhaps peeing on them at some critical supine angle they’d be ok but just walking around and habitually wetting them all day whilst doing other stuff, expect trouble.

They do hold up well to an afternoon 5km brisk walk though even if the back of my shorts are evaporatively cooled.  My Abena L4 + booster whilst generally not leaking, is a quivering mess of jello in the seat of my plastic pants after something resembling exercise (not so much of a problem as upon my return it is changing time anyway).

I’ve recently resumed the 5km brisk walk during the week: partly as an antidote to deteriorating levels of physical activity and partly as an effort to ward off depression (or at least stop it from getting any worse).

The “large” are a bit better than the “extra large” but neither are great.  I’m fully aware that I could pay nearly half as much money again and get something called the “ABU Simple Ultra” but I somewhat resent the term “Ultra” being used as a proxy for the more illuminating label “actually works”.  The price premium also makes the ABU Simple Ultra prohibitively expensive for me as a daily driver.

Sadly ABU Simple, we are through.  When the last nappy has hit the flip-lid-bin along with another pair of jeans consigned prematurely to the wash, it’s over…

[oznl]

A significant update:  It’s official.  I really DO wet the bed now.

With the complete (albeit I suspect temporary) remission of COVID-19 internal Australian travel conditions, my beloved fled interstate for the weekend.  This afforded three days and two nights of unfettered privacy and access to the laundry facilities.  In what may seem as an ironic inversion of preferences for most ABDL, I thought “What better way to leverage this window of opportunity than to sneak back home and NOT wear nappies – just to see what happens?”

My “daytime” findings were unsurprising.  I can be continent if I need to but I’ll be running to the toilet every 90 minutes or so.  There are some associated minor issues with post-void dripping and weak flow causing minor pee spillage into my pants, such as could be easily handled by a pad.  I’ll provide a more detailed update later on that.

Night time was what I was REALLY curious about.  For those following my blog, there has been evidence of intermittent bedwetting accumulating for some time: nappies far wetter in the morning than I can remember, “pee dreams”, waking up with an empty bladder, even one or two instances of waking to find myself wetting.

It was all nebulous stuff happening at the hazy border between awake and asleep.  It’s been suggested (and I recognise that it was possible) that what I THINK may be a sleep-wetting event, may instead be a wakeful wetting event but one for which I am sufficiently trained to accomplish without waking “all the way”, instead swiftly diving back into sleep and forgetting what I have done until I discover the evidence afresh in my nappy the next morning.  This means that at night, I am CHOOSING to wet myself without thinking much about it but that I am still continent.  I do it because I know I can: it is “ok” for me to use my nappy in bed.  There will be no consequences or problems.  It is safe.  A wetting can be disregarded.

The corollary to this is that when it is UNSAFE, I would NOT wet without remembering but would need to force this (assuming I wanted to deal with the fall-out of an uncontained bedwetting, which I do not). 

So the theory went…

The test is as simple as COVID made my partner’s travel difficult in giving me the leeway to conduct it alone: sleep without nappies on for a couple of nights and see what happens.

Night 1:

Friday, around 11pm, I had the unusual experience of taking OFF a wet nappy to clean up and dry off before going to bed nappy-free.

Our mattress is protected by a waterproof cover and the sheets were due to be washed in the morning anyway.  Any pee going upwards however was still likely to hit the doona (duvet, coverlet, insert culturally appropriate terminology here).  This would be catastrophic.  The thin cotton cover on the doona?  No problem.  The doona itself however is a thick, downy bulk filled with polyester feathers from polyester ducks.  Washing the doona entails logistics, effort and a drying time long enough to be worth naming as an “era”.  It would be highly unlikely that this could be all done prior to her flight returning on Sunday.  The doona MUST stay dry.

I decided to at least mitigate this risk by wearing a small pair of lined training pants under my pyjama pants.  They were not nappies, they didn’t have the bulk of nappies and they certainly would not contain any significant quantity of pee but their outer waterproof lining would at least deflect fluid down so that only the bottom sheet (and my pyjamas) would pay the price in the event of unanticipated showers.

Thusly attired I went to bed.

At 11:30pm, a mere 30 minutes later, I had to get up to have a pee.

At 4am, I had to get up to have a pee.  This was nearly one hour after waking up and trying to pretend I didn’t need to go.

At 7:30am, I had to get up to have a pee.   It was a pee I’d been trying to pretend I didn’t need since 6:30am.  I didn’t bother going back to bed.  There didn’t seem to be any point.  This sucked…

It had been a terrible night’s sleep.  I’d tossed and turned, acutely aware of my “no nappies” state and the associated need to manage my bladder manually but I’d remained dry apart from a post-void drip or three.

Actually, this experiment was panning out in a way I had anticipated.  Like daytime, I had continence but there were some new limits that had to be obeyed and I didn’t overly enjoy it.

I’d get another nappy-free night in before my beloved returned but Saturday was wash day.  So confident was I that I was a “nappy wetter” rather than a “bed wetter” that I went ahead and stripped the bed to wash the sheets.

Night 2:

Saturday, around 10:30pm, I again traded out my sodden towelling day nappies for my thin, waterproof, terry-lined training pants under my pyjama pants and t-shirt and went to bed.  I was a bit sleep-deprived after the previous night’s restlessness but there may also have been more alcohol, and bad Netflix movies involved.  I’d made sure I’d emptied everything into my nappy (this happens near-automatically when brushing my teeth) before showering so, empty-bladdered but minimally protected, I just fell into bed and fell asleep swiftly.

At 2:53am I woke up confused.  I was cold, damp and uncomfortable.  Reaching down under the covers I felt around.  I knew I wasn’t in nappies and shouldn’t pee but somehow, everything down there had gotten wet anyway.  I was laying on my back in a pool of wetness and it appeared to have emanated from my underwear.  The training pants had done their job insofar as the waterproof lining had stopped the doona getting wet but pee had simply run out from the downward-facing elastics prolifically enough to so that my hips and bum were soaked and even my t-shirt was damp.  At first I thought maybe I had dripped or squirted a bit but no, this was a full-on, grown-up-sized pee party that had happened under the covers (could be more than one, I wouldn’t know) and it could not be ignored.  

I had ZERO insight into when this might have happened.  I did not recall authorising my body to urinate and I would NOT have authorised it.  There was no warning “pee dream” or indeed any other cue that something might be going on inside my pants.  I was not wearing anything resembling sufficient protection to avoid a wet bed and I knew that.  It would NOT be “ok” to just pee in bed.  That was a part of the point of the exercise: to test my hypothesis that what I had previously experienced was not truly bed-wetting.

Turns out it probably was.

With confusion turning to shock that this had actually happened, I staggered out of my swamp of a bed, turned on the lights before stripping the doona back to keep it dry from the wet bedding below. 

With the mattress uncovered, a faint smell of fresh pee scented the air and I took a mad morsel of solace that whatever was the cause of my stinky cloth nappy problem, it wasn’t the native smell of my pee which actually wasn’t even unpleasant, just readily identifiable.  Blinking in the sharp light, I surveyed the magnitude of the disaster in a pre-dawn chill made more acute by the cold and uncomfortable wet pyjama pants sticking to my thighs.

The cat, locked out of the bedroom, had heard me moving about and decided that if I was up, it must be her breakfast time.  The night was further disrupted by a moth-eaten moggy yelling at me from the hallway.

Still trying to process what had happened, I saw that all was not lost.  My travelling-beloved’s side of the bed had remained dry.  The padded, polyester mattress protector between the bottom sheet and the plastic sheet absorbs pee and limits its migratory capacity.  Although there was a LOT of pee, it had remained strictly on my side of the bed.  I was impressed what a remarkably neat bedwetting it was.  I clearly hadn’t moved much during it.  Right at the point where my bum was at the mattress, a roughly oval-shaped dark, yellow-ish stain extended for something over two feet in width.  The bedding wasn’t just damp there, it was sopping wet.  You could have wrung it out.  I actually took a couple of brief photographs of it with my phone because I still couldn’t quite believe that it had happened.

Everything I was wearing was a write-off though.  I went to the toilet but unsurprisingly, there wasn’t much pee in me (it was all in my bed).  After putting on a dry t-shirt, I grabbed a cotton pull-on nappy-pant and some plastic pants.  I wasn’t planning to use nappies for what remained of the night but another bedwetting event on the other side would kill any chance of dry refuge and sleep so some insurance was in order.

Carefully arranging the doona so that it did not touch the sodden sheets to my right hand side, I got back into the dry side of the bed (in my safety-nappy) and eventually fell into a fitful doze, dreaming about nothing nappy related at all.  I woke at 7 as my arm had strayed into a wet part of the bed and was cold.  This was followed by a nagging message from my bladder and I had resolved NOT to use nappies this night.  I just decided to get up.  I know there are some people who bed-wet recreationally.  I just can’t see the attraction myself.  I’d clearly slept through the comfortable-but-brief “warm and wet” bit and was awake for the protracted and uncomfortable “cold and wet” bit that inevitably follows.

Of course, in strict accordance with Murphy’s law, I’d washed the sheets the day before.  I hoped I could get everything washed and dry again before my beloved was to return at evening..

It occurred to me that given the slowly elevating frequency of other clues, this issue has probably been bubbling along for some time.    I know I’ve had “wet” nights before but I think at the back of my mind was that I knew I was in a nappy and so it was somehow “ok” for this to happen.  Even if I thought it truly was a sleep-wetting event, in some strange way, I felt that it happened with my permission and would not happen elsewise. 

Not this time and I’m not sure how I feel about this.  It’s a weird alloy of elation and nerves.  This night was proof-positive that something has gotten away from me here and taken off by itself.  I wet a bed that I did not plan to or even want to.  It just happened, outside of my conscious control and it happened on the 851st night of this journey.  What a strange day it was.

[sparklezBear]

17 minutes ago, oznl said:

A significant update:  It’s official.  I really DO wet the bed now.

One of us! One of us! One of us!   Sorry  . It's a pity you can't select more than one "Diapers" category in your profile, otherwise I hope you'd now be making an update.

The way you write though, I wonder if there's some hesitancy or even a small degree of remorse. Are you okay? Are you okay being a bedwetter? Is this something that you want?

I'm also curious about the pee or nappy dreams you've talked about. Mostly because this isn't something I share. Now days, I dream plenty, but it's normally about other things such as work, or people, or other older memories. There's been the odd dream when I'm already in a nappy while doing something else, but it's never been the main feature. I also wonder if this relates to my realisation of bedwetting itself without reservation. Unlike most who attempt to become bedwetters, I reached my goal with relative ease and these days always wake up wet without memory. How many "pee dreams" do you have, and when did they start?

[oznl]

10 hours ago, sparklezBear said:

One of us! One of us! One of us!   Sorry  . It's a pity you can't select more than one "Diapers" category in your profile, otherwise I hope you'd now be making an update.

I'll do it.

10 hours ago, sparklezBear said:

The way you write though, I wonder if there's some hesitancy or even a small degree of remorse. Are you okay? Are you okay being a bedwetter? Is this something that you want?

I’m not out on any metaphorical window ledges about it but I’m surprised to find myself shocked a little.

When evidence started to appear that I MAY be wetting my nappies in my sleep a year ago, I was slightly surprised about how calm I was about it.  Despite mounting evidence, I think a part of me was taking refuge in my conclusion that these events were most likely conditional upon my granting of “permission” for them to occur.  I only wet at night because my subconscious knew I was in nappies and that it was “ok” to wet.  I may not even have been 100% asleep:  it’s entirely possible I was half-awake, just not enough to remember.  If push came to shove, I could ditch the nappies and whilst I might be uncomfortable for a while, I would be ok.

The evidence from Saturday night proves that this isn’t necessarily so, at least anymore.  I was not dressed to wet the bed, I’d taken reasonable precautions to NOT wet the bed (voided completely before retiring), I did not want to wet the bed (I’d just washed the bloody bedding!) and yet I wet the bed - thoroughly.  This was reflected in my absolute confusion about what had happened after I woke.  Admittedly I'd drunk too much before bed but I've been drinking like that on occasion for decades with no such outcome.

For the first time, I realized that an aspect of this game had gotten beyond my control and my “escape” option may not actually be available to me.

I’ve remained in nappies though.  That’s how deep this thing is cooked into me.  Many others would recoil, regroup and retrain.  Perhaps as some kind of rebound shock, I can distinctly remember using my nappy through the night last night but with the way of these things, there’ll be another mystery wetting before long…

Is it what I want?  I don't know.  I suspect I'm conflicted on this.  Clearly some part of me does.

10 hours ago, sparklezBear said:

I'm also curious about the pee or nappy dreams you've talked about. Mostly because this isn't something I share. Now days, I dream plenty, but it's normally about other things such as work, or people, or other older memories. There's been the odd dream when I'm already in a nappy while doing something else, but it's never been the main feature. I also wonder if this relates to my realisation of bedwetting itself without reservation. Unlike most who attempt to become bedwetters, I reached my goal with relative ease and these days always wake up wet without memory. How many "pee dreams" do you have, and when did they start?

There are a lot of pee dream references scattered through my blog.  They started quite early on when I went “24/7” and in shifting contexts over time.

An early theme was getting used to habitually wetting in bed.  I’d be dreaming about peeing and wake to find that I needed to pee.  I’d use my nappy and fall back asleep.

A later theme was about wearing nappies in public and various types of unwanted exposure: probably a reflection of anxieties about being “outed”.

After several months of 24/7, I started to have VERY realistic dreams about repeatedly peeing without relief before a strikingly realistic pee sensation that DID provide relief.  It is possible that these were very early incidents of bed wetting (or at least nocturnal nappy wetting).

Nappy dreams are rare now.  They still happen but they are not common.  Something unusual will trigger them.  I suspect this is due to the fact the wearing and using nappies is normalized for me.

I don't think I've EVER had a pee-dream about bedwetting.  They have been either about nappies issues in public, simple peeing or using my nappies for peeing.

 

[Little Sherri]

15 hours ago, oznl said:

A later theme was about wearing nappies in public and various types of unwanted exposure: probably a reflection of anxieties about being “outed”.

 

15 hours ago, oznl said:

Nappy dreams are rare now.  They still happen but they are not common.  Something unusual will trigger them.  I suspect this is due to the fact the wearing and using nappies is normalized for me.

This was an interesting read, @oznl - I'll probably go back and have another look, there's a lot to unpack here. Very interesting. I don't think the same thing would happen to me if I decided to go to bed without a nappy on - I've been pretty dry overnight lately, or, I can distinctly recall almost every time when I wet, because "I" was involved - it didn't happen by itself. But the only way to know for sure would be to do it... and I'm somewhat afraid to try. I know I would sleep like crap. 

As for the dreams, my trajectory follows yours there as well - I had a few very vivid "public exposure" dreams early on, wherein I'd find myself in some stupid situation that required me to wear a diaper in public. Once, I went for a drive (in a dream) wearing only a diaper below a shirt, and I needed to turn my car around in a tight residential area with families all over the place, and I couldn't back the car up without getting out and checking to see if there was someone standing behind it. In another one, I drove to a local mall, again, clad thusly, and a dog I was babysitting escaped from my car, and I had to give chase through the parking lot - I had no choice.

However, these instances of declined of late, as have pee dreams. Although I had a strange one this weekend - I'll write about it on my thread rather than treading all over yours. 

[oznl]

7 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I don't think the same thing would happen to me if I decided to go to bed without a nappy on.

Prior to Saturday, I would have said the same thing.  That's why I was shocked I think.

7 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I've been pretty dry overnight lately, or, I can distinctly recall almost every time when I wet

I would have said this too prior to Saturday.  I thought I was in something of a dry spell but I've weighed a couple of morning nappies since the weekend road-test and output is in fact normal.  What is happening is that I'm losing complete insight into overnight wetting.  It's a little different for me because I'm always a bit wet before I go to bed (well obviously on the nights when I skipped the nappy that wasn't the case).  In the morning, I can rationalise that the wetness is from the night before and my bladder is empty, well, just because...

I've moved on from this as in my case, it is clearly self-delusion.  This is yet another instance of things becoming clear to me only in retrospect.  I took @sparklezBear's advice and changed my profile status to "bedwetter" because that is apparently the case.

[jeremy12312]

Must be something in the air. I woke up to an unexpected soggy diaper this morning, and I’m neither untraining nor a person with a history of bedwetting. 

Hopefully you’ve been able to continue wrapping your mind around this, oznl. I want to say I’m jealous of your new condition, but also completely understand what the sudden shock of a new reality can do to a person’s mental state. 

[oznl]

27 minutes ago, jeremy12312 said:

Must be something in the air. I woke up to an unexpected soggy diaper this morning, and I’m neither untraining nor a person with a history of bedwetting. 

Hopefully you’ve been able to continue wrapping your mind around this, oznl. I want to say I’m jealous of your new condition, but also completely understand what the sudden shock of a new reality can do to a person’s mental state. 

Thanks.  I actually doubt it's a new condition.  I suspect I've been quietly weeing in my sleep off and on for months and months.  All that has happened is that the "no nappy" experiment has absolutely confirmed this probability as fact.  It has  also however proved that it is at this point, outside of my conscious control.  I think it's the "outside my conscious control" bit that freaked me a little but I'm calming down.  Really, what did I expect to happen?

I'm pretty sure I wet in my sleep last night (it's morning here now and I'm yet to change)  but as there was a nappy involved, it was perfectly comfortable and no trouble.

[oznl]

After the previous relatively apocalyptic discovery that I really have become a bed wetter, a quieter (and possibly) more useful update on detoxification of cloth nappies. 

If you’ve read previous updates you will know that sustained use of my cloth nappies had caused them to rise up in revolt.  Despite being apparently clean and fresh smelling, when they get wet, they very quickly wreaked vengeance with a powerful sulphurous ammonia smell that just as quickly became a point of marital friction.

Using the collective might of the DD hive-mind, @Stroller thought that it was bacterial build-up (which aligned nicely to the timed delay between pee and ammonia) and @Little Sherri proposed a sanitising washing regime based on the known (and substantial) limitations of my washing machine and hot water service.

Accordingly I washed a malodorous load of cloth nappies on the longest, hottest wash setting, with “eco” mode turned off (maximising water usage) and spin disabled.  I’d used a strongly alkaline dishwashing tablet to up the PH, added a couple of tablespoons of bicarbonate of soda to ram the point home with some carbonate hardness and 180ml of 5% concentrate bleach.  At the conclusion of the wash, I ran an additional rinse cycle with spin dry.

The nappies survived but I’m sure it was traumatic for them.  Still, I guess if you are a nappy, shit happens.  There was however, no plan “B”.

On Wednesday, I went to bed in a thusly-treated 60” x 60” kite folded terry nappy.  I’m pretty sure I wet in my sleep that night again.  There had been wine (a strong leading indicator of a bedwetting event) and although I was damp when I went to bed.  I was soaked up to the back waist by morning and my bladder was empty.  Peeling off my wet nappy in the shower the first thing I noticed that I was NOT assailed by the strong smell of ammonia.  If anything, it smelled like the bed I’d wet the Saturday before: a kind of “warm pee” smell but not overly offensive, a bit like you’ll get from a toddler.  I rinsed it and dumped it in my nappy bucket.

This were replaced by a Babykins pull-on dual-layer terry nappy-pant underneath a Babykins pull-on cotton nappy (sufficient cloth nappy for all-day use) which had also been subjected to the same sanitising cycle.  Thusly clad, I went about my day, peeing freely.

I was still in them when my beloved came home that evening.  Obviously by then I was pretty wet but as near as I could tell, I did not stink.  Certainly, she said nothing and appeared to be happy to stand  near me.  Again, at change time, I could smell pee when I pulled down my plastic pants but it was a mild smell, almost fresh.  You wouldn’t bottle it as an air freshener but nor was it about to clear the room.  Without undressing, nothing was detectable.

Time for the “control” test.  For the Thursday night nappy, I changed into an UNTREATED 60” x 60” terry.  It smelt just fine off the shelf but I’ve been fooled that way before.  I figured that by the time there was any significant degree of wetness in it, I’d be in bed and the smell (should it return) would be somewhat contained by a combination of plastic pants, pyjama pants and limited movement. 

Wrong. 

It wasn’t long after dinner, sitting in my comfy chair mindlessly in front of the TV when the odd subtle ammonia waft became noticeable from the general area of my pants.  It reminded me of that memorable day when our ancient and famously grumpy cat, protesting the state of her litter tray, had her wicked way in the  washing basket and we did not realise until the warmth of the sun had time to chemically mature its contents.  If that moth-eaten mog craved oblivion that much, she only had to ask…  By bedtime it was less than subtle.  It was a good thing my beloved was already asleep.  My plan to get away with this was based more on optimism than science.

The thing was, the next morning she woke up. There was much sighing.  When I didn’t take the bait, a terse marital complaint was issued: “it’s pretty smelly in here – deal with it”.

Soon another load of nappies will be put through the machine using my new “nuke it from orbit” methodology.

My conclusion here is that both @Stroller and @Little Sherri were correct.  The underlying problem was bacterial build-up which would activate and create ammonia when my nappy got wet.  The solution (in the absence of a sufficiently hot wash capability) was a calculated dose of bleach augmented by a high PH wash solution.

I’m hoping I don’t need to do this every wash cycle as I suspect it’s tough on the nappies.  I’ll switch to the non-eco wash mode for a while and see how things go.  Ideally, this kind of “uber-wash” would be something only done a couple of times per year (because my washing machine and hot water service is lame) but we shall see.

[oznl]

I’ve spent much of the days of this week in old-school terry and cotton nappies.  This has been in order to cycle them through a sanitising wash and expunge their ammonia-generating bacterial population.  I suppose I could just chuck them in the machine un-used but why waste a dry nappy? 

Classic cloth nappies like these during the day are bulky and (pending the sanitisation cycle) quite smelly when wet but during weekdays, I’m often home alone so I can manage this risk.  I just make sure I have changed out of them and that they are submerged/soaking before my beloved returns.  It seems like burial at sea, submersion obscures the odours of decomposition.

Last night in bed however I luxuriated in the decadent comfort of a kite-folded and pinned 60” terry nappy that had been sanitised to safety the previous week.  Damp, but not soaked at bedtime, I could detect no odour.  Wednesday is sometimes an alcohol night (mid-week-pick-me-up, a bad lockdown habit that seems to have persisted) and so accordingly, I think I wet in my sleep.  I woke around 4am to realise that my bladder was empty and my nappy was wet to my hips at either side.  Nil desperandum, still no smell.  My partner hadn’t fled the marital bed either which is always a good sign.

The next morning, there was, as with previous nappies subjected to my new sanitisation process, just the faintest smell of warm pee as the sodden garment slipped down my legs to land with a wet thud on the shower stall floor.  Again, it wasn’t even objectionable.  I imagine that’s what my mornings smelled like in 1967 (assuming I was only wet).  There had been no comment, sour looks, mournful sighing or even a “greet-the-dawn” profanity from my beloved so I think I got away with it.

The biggest challenge with old-school adult-sized cloth nappies during the day (especially the traditional folded and pinned ones) is mobility and chafing.  I’m sure that they’re fine for rolling about on a rug trying to suck ones toes but not so fine for gardening.  Yesterday, I went for my usual 5km exercise walk in an un-sanitised and a thoroughly wet terry nappy (I intended to shower and change upon my return).  The ammonia notes I thought I could get away with as I would be outdoors and distanced from others.  From the chafing at my inner thigh-backs from ammonia-sodden towelling however, there was no escape.   Additional, tactical doses of Sudocrem to ward off the nappy-rash demons have been applied.

Waddling about again today in my own private 1967 under track-suit pants I’ve been marinating yet another un-sanitised cloth in preparation for bio-nuking.  For this shift, I resurrected an obscure cloth nappy construction technique: the Chinese nappy fold.  This isn’t the most intuitive way to fold a nappy but I took the trouble to learn it some years ago and like bike riding, it seems that you don’t forget how to do it. 

The position of the bulk with this fold is concentrated more in the critical areas (between legs) with hips and outer thighs enjoying a thinner layer of padding.  It does seem as though I have more mobility and less chafing with this fold that I know is one of @Stroller's  favourites.  Folded this way, I can bend over without risking pin-popping and subsequent sagging.  It also feels very nice at this stage, only slightly damp, the ammonia demons have not yet awoken but I’m sure they will be there.  With respect to yesterday’s chafing incidents, either the new fold has left the wounded areas unprovoked or I’ve proceed through to nerve damage and am comfortably numb.  I will be sure to change and shower before my beloved returns from her office. It doesn’t look like the weather is going to hold for a 5km test-walk today anyway with, what is for us, rare winter rain.  I prefer only the inside of my pants wet.

Tomorrow will be again classic south-east Queensland winter weather: dry, sunny, around 23C.  Excellent weather for line drying another batch of nappies subjected to the sanitisation-cycle uber-wash.  I’m estimating that another week or so of predominately-cloth use and I will have cycled all my current cohort of terry nappies through this process and I’ll have some smooth air for a while.

I haven’t been working for six months now.  Something I try not to think about too much.  Too young to retire, too pale, male and stale to be considered by woke HR departments…