Strange days indeed - a 24 x 7 experiment

[oznl]

On 2/2/2024 at 1:49 AM, Little Sherri said:

I sighed, reading this, as well. My beloved suffers a few chronic ailments, most in the not-too-serious category, things like migraines and unpredictably inflamed joints that can be deeply inconvenient but that rarely benefit from urgent medical intervention. You take the pills, you go lie down, you wait it out. When these episodes arise, there is an expectation that my sympathies will run to depths measured in fathoms. Which I don't usually struggle too much with - hey, pain sucks - unless I feel like I'm being manipulated. ("I really have no interest in Carl & Doreen's landscaping grand reveal party... oh my, I can feel a crippling migraine coming on. Oh, you're not going, either? Want to go out for dinner?")

My beloved has never done that but interestingly, my own mother was famous within my childhood family for this very thing.

Mother’s tactical migraines coincided with the appearance of family social events she disliked (which were most of them) with the predictability precision of celestial mechanics.

These migraines were epic: conducted at a drama and scale befitting a Pink Floyd concert and with an associated degree of build-up and logistics.  Even as single-digit-aged kids, both myself and my sibling knew at some level that this was all BS and the net outcome is that we would NOT be going to Aunty Clarice’s Christmas pool party but there was nothing we could do about it.

19 hours ago, Stroller said:

Hmm.  I'm going for cardiac tests on Tuesday.  Probably nothing, but there have been a few worrying symptoms. If I need to be admitted to hospital at some point in the future I'm pretty confident that Mummy will bring in the nappy supplies periodically though.  Betterdry rather than Astronauts I hope...  Good luck with it oznl.

Oh good luck.  If it's anything to do with arrhythmias just PM me.  I've got 12 years of battle-tested experience with most of them 🤣  My current paroxysmal episode is again, fortunately over.

8 hours ago, NoIllDL said:

@oznl, I find your interactions and relationship with your wife endlessly fascinating.

She doesn’t get a fair press in this place 🤣  This isn’t because I’m running any kind of campaign against her but more that the core topic of discussion intersects with her at her worst in terms of tolerance and fairness and never her best.  There are many positive things about her that don’t get airplay in this space because they have nothing to do with this space.

8 hours ago, NoIllDL said:

Do you believe your beloved wife would feel similarly if you had had a medical "situation" that resulted in incontinence and therefore a need for nappies?  Or, is it simply the fact that you have become somewhat nappy-dependent of your own volition? 

Good question.  Her track record says that should diapers be an inconvenient outcome of a medical situation, she will support it as she supports the petty inconveniences of the one or two chronic conditions I life with as the price of ageing disgracefully.

More than a decade ago when my low level chronic cardiac condition suddenly turned serious requiring major surgical intervention, there were neither sulks nor antics, only support and a quiet desperation at the thought that I might actually check out (evidently, I did not) that made me feel terrible that I'd somehow "done" this to her.

A medical situation also removes the aspect of volition that troubles her deeply.  The fact that I would WANT to live in nappies challenges her preferred view of me and of course, I can't explain it to her because it IS inexplicable.

8 hours ago, NoIllDL said:

How has she taken to your epilated nether regions?  If she detests the idea (and reality) of you in nappies, I cannot think how she would approve of hair removal.  I can only imagine the underlying tension that must exist on a day-to-day basis in your household.

She spends a great deal of time avoiding seeing my nappies.  She leaves the room when she knows I'm likely to change.  She HAS actually seen "bald me" some years ago and made some joking comment "Oooh, a Brazilian!".  I've always kept the lawn manicured down there anyway so taking it next level maybe wasn't such a jump.  I don't think she's even glanced at my nappy zone in the last 2 years though.  It's an open question as to whether this was my nappies, her menopause, or some combination of the two.  It isn't for discussion.

8 hours ago, NoIllDL said:

Next time you're in the US, look me up; while my wife may not be thrilled with my choice of undergarment, she does empathize with my personal history and psychological needs, and has never made me feel bad because of it.  Plus, she might want to meet another one of "us" to make sure she's not having to deal with the only person on the planet like me!

It may be that my traveling days are over (at least for work) but I would like that.

But, there's a problem.  My beloved.  I don't believe I could ever convince her that people of this place were anything other than sick and twisted perverts attempting to seduce her husband off into a gay fetish orgy.

There are loads of people I'd like to spend some time with (including you).  Even though @Little Sherri lives in the arctic's backyard where beer freezes, that doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to go there and help him save some of it (or even a lot of it) from this awful fate by drinking it with him.  I'd like to walk to the pub with @Stroller and solve some of the world's problems prior to ridding it of yet more pints, and maybe a ploughman's lunch (or at least scampi and chips).  Closer to home, there are people right here in Australia (and maybe New Zealand) that I've met and would like very much to integrate into my mainstream life but I just don't know that I can sell the idea to my beloved without just having a huge fight instead.  It seems there are things that she just can't get past.  That is a matter of significant regret to me 😞

[Tadpole]

Quote

Closer to home, there are people right here in Australia (and maybe New Zealand) that I've met and would like very much to integrate into my mainstream life

When I eventually manage to be passing by, I’ll just say you are a mate from my distant IT sector past - and we would most likely end up talking tech at some point anyway 🙂

[oznl]

52 minutes ago, Tadpole said:

When I eventually manage to be passing by, I’ll just say you are a mate from my distant IT sector past - and we would most likely end up talking tech at some point anyway 🙂

Oh yeah, we could totally manage that.  It's the same with @ozziebee although having you both here at the same time might be a stretch to explain 🤣

[Stroller]

On 2/3/2024 at 4:18 AM, oznl said:

I'd like to walk to the pub with @Stroller and solve some of the world's problems prior to ridding it of yet more pints, and maybe a ploughman's lunch (or at least scampi and chips).

Any time.  Mind you, scampi was a 70s thing over here.

[ozziebee]

20 hours ago, oznl said:

Oh yeah, we could totally manage that.  It's the same with @ozziebee although having you both here at the same time might be a stretch to explain 🤣

Hehe, I do remember our last few convos descended into tech (including weather station tech), so yeah... lots of commonality outside of our hidden commonality.  But, sadly, I'm a rum drinker, so no beers for me!

[oznl]

In other news of the week, I deleted my Discord client after finally realising that even IF any of the self-absorbed channel-nazis wanted to acknowledge the existence of, let alone talk to somebody over the age of say, 22, their conversations were as egocentric as they were dull.

Ave Discord.  You never worked for me.

[Little Sherri]

On 2/3/2024 at 11:11 PM, Tadpole said:

I’ll just say you are a mate from my distant IT sector past

I had the same thought. I don't have an IT sector past, but, I work for a company with a multinational footprint... if @oznlever ends up in the Toronto area again, or if I find myself anywhere near the Gold Coast, I would probably tell my wife that I wanted to have beers with a local colleague, and that the conversation would undoubtedly be stiflingly technical and boring, so she should go shopping or find a spa or something. Or, in the case of him (or any of you) coming here, I would do a cursory introduction and then say that now we're going to look at blueprints and drink beer, please do not feel obligated to participate, I'll order takeout. 

[oznl]

Still somewhat taken aback by the semi-serious (even if since redacted) position from my beloved that I should retrain myself to be dry at night prior to submitting to hospitalisation, I’ve been cautiously dragging factoids of my current nappy-status out from under the marital obscurity rug before her.

I consider this strategy to resemble that in treating a peanut allergy with progressively larger exposure to peanuts in the hope of desensitising the patient.  Generally speaking it can make things better or alternatively, much, MUCH worse but Hey Ho, you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.

In pursuit of this, I’ve deliberately tried to be a little less coy about exposing the gritty reality of my current diaper-dependency circumstance.  If nothing else it’s good to get the adrenalin pumping in a “jumping on a volcano” kind of way.

As an example, one of her standard “good morning” questions is along the lines of “How did you sleep?”  I’ve introduced a bedwetting status (albeit in a light hearted way).  As facts support, I’ve replied along the lines of “Well, no hospital admission allowed for ME today”, a none-too-subtle coded message that I’d wet myself whilst asleep.

She must have some residual guilt lurking.  Any previous references to this relatively confronting new party trick would provoke an instant emotional ice-age, tears, or some combination of the two.  Instead, I’ve had nothing more than a slightly exasperated fleeting smile followed by a swift change of conversational topic.

On Sunday morning, she was relating to me a rather strange dream she’d had about getting lost in a shopping mall.   It featured all of the usual dream weirdness; phase-shifted reality with sudden jump-cuts in time, space and situation.  She then asked me if I could recall any dreams the previous night. 

As it happened I could.  I’d had a fleeting “pee dream” and, instead of making something up about penguins and time travel, as a part of my new peanut-allergy-desensitisation tactic, I told her about my real dream.

“I dreamed that I was peeing in a really hot, in an airless cupboard.  Then I woke up to find that I was in the middle of wetting my nappy and we’d forgotten to turn the ceiling fan on before bed so the room was oppressively hot!  I finished my wee, flicked on the fan and fell back asleep.  It was 3:36am, I can remember that as clear as a bell”.

This was listened to if not enthusiastically, then at least politely enough.

Whilst on a conversational roll of sorts, I went on in an attempt to explain to her that this transition to bedwetting had occurred as a by-product of prolonged night nappy usage to moderate the effects of advancing nocturia.  Whilst masking nocturia was not the prime reason for taking flight back to nappies, it is something that nappies accomplish pretty well.  I’m sure that by now I DO have nocturia but my ability to at least on some nights, sleep right through it means that I’m not unduly bothered.  It’s not even like I have much to do about it if I DO wake up needing a pee.  Just pee where I am and fall back asleep asap.  I described the process of increasing episodes of night time peeing eventually followed by occasionally “forgetting” them until I realised that I was in fact starting to sleep through some or all of them.

I went on to tell her that whilst I had daytime control, attempting to use it showed that urgency was a serious thing and that my nappies really did make going about one’s day a heck of a lot simpler.  I pointed out that I couldn’t manage the two hour drive up the coast we often undertake without multiple “stops”.  This is perfectly true.

I then reminded her of how my own father was, at the very age I am now, ruled by his bladder with relentless urgency and inconvenience.  Stopping so Grandad could find a toilet was woven into the family sagas belying a well-known patriarchal genetic heritage.  It IS possible that not ALL of my current circumstance might be self-inflicted.

Not unreasonably, she asked me if I’d shared this with my doctor. 

I kind of have.  He does (at our yearly check-up) ask the perfunctory question about bladder habits.  I’ve told him before that I’ve been experiencing reducing range and increasing frequency (which is of course, utterly true albeit understating the magnitude of the trend).

 “Nothing catastrophic then?” he enquired once.  Since I don’t regard a wet nappy as a catastrophe, I replied in the negative.  After glancing at my PSA blood score (I get tested for this regularly due to my family history) and deciding I probably don’t have prostate cancer, he largely loses interest, making some polite but clearly-clinically-going-nowhere noise about my experience being common enough for my age.

I couldn’t say that she’s in any way enthused to receive these kind of updates but perhaps this repeated exposure might wear out her shock and horror responses, or like the "sometimes" outcome of the peanut allergy exposure treatment, invoke a catastrophic consequence.

In addition to the the fact that I think it important that my life partner knows where I am (nappily speaking), I’m hoping these insights will buy me the soupçon of understanding I’m going to need from her if we go away together and I’m the one getting hauled out of airport security lines and carting too much luggage. 

[Little Sherri]

5 hours ago, oznl said:

I consider this strategy to resemble that in treating a peanut allergy with progressively larger exposure to peanuts in the hope of desensitising the patient.  Generally speaking it can make things better or alternatively, much, MUCH worse but Hey Ho, you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.

This is an apt metaphor, and also something that I have been doing, probably less cautiously than you have, in some respects, but more cautiously, in others. I've been very open about ordering diapers, storing them, disposing of them, and in particular, wearing them - I hang out in a just diaper with some regularity (although winter temperatures impose practical limits on this wardrobe preference). I pack them for trips, and she has even packed them for me (although I didn't request that, and I found her selections and assumptions intriguing and hilarious). So, she's being fed peanut butter sandwiches with some frequency, on that front. 

But, when it comes to root causes... the how or why of it all... she hasn't asked and I'm not volunteering anything, beyond my initial revelation that I'd been wetting the bed again (with vanishingly low incidence), and so had decided to wear diapers "to bed." She knew about my award-winning childhood bedwetting career, and, I also have a medical condition that I could possibly "kind of" pin it on - it's a stretch, but some people in similar circumstances have experienced an uptick in nocturnal enuresis, and I discussed it with my doctor after about the second time I woke up in damp sheets, and she said "Hmmm, maybe, but it's not the first place I would look." 

I then gradually stretched the boundaries of what being dressed "for bed" could look like, almost the way I wish I had thought to, when I was a DL kid and didn't know what that was and was wracked with shame about it. So, I started staying "obviously" diapered until noon some days, and I started "getting ready for bed" pretty much as soon as the kids' lights were out. I was wearing diapers all the time, but keeping it discrete for the noon to 9 PM shift. 

Eventually, I stopped being secretive about wearing them all the time, and she gradually caught wind (pun there) of the fact that, hey, her husband wears diapers now. But there was never a mea culpa moment. So, as in most aspects of "this", you are out ahead of me, sir.  

[oznl]

This week I’ve been prompted to mourn the loss of the “BetterDry” adult nappy which seems to have been killed off and replaced with a not-quite-as-good doppelganger whose shortcoming although of themselves minor, are writ large by the inevitable comparison with its predecessor.

We’ll call this substitute nappy the “Slightly-Less-BetterDry” or “SLB Edition” to save me wearing out a perfectly good keyboard.

The classic BetterDry has been a true and faithful friend (assuming you are ok with peeing on your friends before throwing them away).  I was using them even way back in the “before” times when my nappies were intermittent and recreational.  Then I used overwhelmingly cloth but for travel, some BetterDrys were nice to have around.  I even used to wear them on some of the longer domestic flights (thinking of YOU, 6 hour flight between Brisbane and Perth) because it was less hassle than clambering over fellow passengers out of my preferred window seat location, they didn’t leak, and the first hints of late middle-age urinary urgency were making themselves known to me.

I’m not sure when the SLB replicant displaced the original.  Here in the Antipodes, supplier nappy stocks deplete slowly and it’s entirely possible that I was peeing in the “classic” BetterDry up until only a few weeks ago.   The latest case (which are undoubtedly “SLB”) I bought just before Christmas.  It had to be fresh stock because as is usual, the sold Australian supplier had run out of BetterDry a few weeks earlier.  I had to wait for the shipping container gods to smile before buying more.  This new case had then proceeded to spend a month or so in my study cupboard acclimatising itself from European to local weather before the inexorable cycle of nappy changes saw them pressed into service a few weeks ago.

Almost immediately, strange new phenomena appeared.

1. Persistent but minor leaks. Usually around the inner crotch but sometimes the right rear thigh in classic “Rearz” failure mode:  Predominately noticeable in bed by morning through wet spots on the terry towel layer sewn into my night time plastic pants.
2. Repeated “blow outs” due to tape tension tearing the plastic outer shell.  Less common than the new inner thigh leak, these failures compensated for this by being more destructive to my terry towel lining as well as leaving handfuls of yellow-duckling-colour soggy fluff on the bathroom floor at change time.
3. Waking up with “birdbath bum” more frequently.  It seems that far more of the SLB padding is wet by morning relative to the classic BetterDry leading to wet bum mornings.  This however could be a feature.  I’ve always found that higher capacity nappies are limited by poor wicking rather than the want of absorptive material.  To be honest, BetterDrys could have done with slightly better wicking however the coincidence of leaks suggests otherwise.

Last Friday however I had to go up the coast for the day to take care of some business.  It’s about a 2 hour drive each way and I wasn’t 100% sure of how long I would be up there.  Usually on Fridays (I don’t work Fridays) I wear cloth but I didn’t fancy having a Kung-Fu-Panda sized arse and possibly smelling (however faintly) of wee in front of the business folk I needed to spend time with.   Still the day would have been a big ask for my usual Abena/booster weekend disposable combination.  Their absorption is ok but their hopelessly stretchy outer cloth-like cover and love of gravity invariably has them continually escaping to visit my socks by mid-afternoon.

Instead, I decided to use one of my new BetterDry (SLB Edition).  For some reason, I pulled on heavy plastic pants over the top of them instead of my usual PUL waterproofs before pulling on compression shorts and jeans.  Maybe I thought that crinkly, milky white plastic and thick elastics would return some of Friday’s recreational air lost to the use of disposables.  Maybe I thought that encasing my crotch in a Swedish sauna would give me the Greta Thunberg slenderness that I yearned for.

I was a bit wet before I’d even gotten to the freeway and that’s really how the day went.  I’m often finding myself slightly surprised by how little I can “hold on” now.  In order for me to stay comfortable, I really need to be letting things drain a tiny amount every 10 minutes or so.  Attempting the 120km drive north without nappies would have descended into farce and it’s this kind of implicit dependency that does sneak up on you over the years.

Several hours later and with the last of my errands completed, it was time for me to head back south.  Things felt pretty squishy in the underwear department but being a BetterDry, I assumed all would be well.

There was a complication.  I really needed a #2.  These used to appear with clockwork precision at my morning change but with general changes in the pelvic floor area, things are not as quite as reliable as they used to be. 

I suppose I could have found some facilities but I was well aware that any taking down and pulling back up of my by-then Wetterdrys (SLB edition) could be highly injurious to their already-compromised leak security. 

I suppose I could have tried to hang on for the 1.5 hour trip back down the highway but that seemed like a tall (and uncomfortable) order.  “Hanging on” isn’t such a thing these days.

On the other hand, I needed to face no further humans and waiting back at home was an empty house.  My bowels read the memo.   “As you wish sire!” they saluted and by the time I’d gotten back to the car in the carpark, I was waddling in a fully loaded nappy.

I lowered myself very gingerly into the driver seat.  It was a substantial payload.   A bit squelchy sitting down but things kind of spread out and I didn’t have to adjust the rear view mirror any so it wasn’t like I was sitting much further off the seat.  My plastic pants and compression shorts limited air exchange sufficiently so that I could breathe so I then headed for home.

It really felt perfectly comfortable.  I don’t know why babies cry.  It’s the clean-up that sucks and they’re not the ones doing that anyway.

As the kilometres rolled by however, I became aware that things seemed remarkably “oozy” down there.

I was fairly sure I wasn’t contributing any further to the substantial load on board but things seemed to be moving around in the seat of my nappy of their own accord.

I drove on.

Things were definitely seeping out.  I could distinctly feel the terrain in my underwear “changing”.

This was a complete mystery to me.  As far as I could tell, that job was DONE.  If there was more, I could neither tell for sure nor stop it.  Going home to my beloved an announcing that I’d suddenly been stricken with faecal incontinence would be at best awkward.

I drove on more.  Periodically, it felt like I was sitting on a body-temperature octopus and it was trying to escape.  I peed little bits here and there as is my habit but this didn’t seem to change things one way or the other.

I made it home without incident.  I made it upstairs without incident.  I removed my jeans, again without incident although certain atmospheric changes that occurred as I peeled off layers of clothing hinted at horrors beneath.

And then, I removed my compression shorts.

Instead of the smooth white plains of my thick ‘kins plastic pants, it looked like I was wearing a peanut butter sandwich inside out.  It felt a bit the same way.  Some kind of disastrous containment failure had clearly occurred.

Glumly, I surveyed the formerly-white leg elastics and wondered if the stains could ever be removed before pulling them down to expose the nappy beneath.

Then, things got MUCH worse.

Gobs of suspiciously brownish ooze had collected in the crotch of those ruined plastic pants.  The asymmetry of their lowering causing this substance to flow out the leggings and splatter to the floor whereupon the biggish brown pieces broke into hundreds of smaller brown pieces that in a curiously non-newtonian fluidic fashion, slid across the bathroom floor before splitting into even more brownish pieces.

It was pee-soaked and slightly-poop-infused SAP gel from inside my BetterDry (SLB edition).  It wasn’t poop but the difference was a bit technical by this stage in the nappy lifecycle.

There’d been a blow out of biblical proportions. That constant oozy, moving about sensation I’d been experiencing on the way home was sodden gel particles sliding out of my nappy into my plastic pants whereupon they would wander about aimlessly as though exploring some kind of art gallery.

I cautiously un-taped my BetterDry (SLB edition) and, as I drew it out from between my legs and up towards me.  At the first tug of gravity-induced torque, the entire inner lining and padding of the product, resplendent in squashed poop icing 1.5 litres of pee-sodden gel simply slid OFF its plastic backing sheet to disgorge itself entirely onto the tile floor before me like a drunk throwing up.  More brown goo made non-newtonian sprints for the far corners of the room as I stood in speechless awe holding the remaining “nappy” which was by now no more than a damp sheet of plastic.

The mess was epic.

My beloved would be home in maybe 15 minutes.

I suddenly recalled that scene in “Pulp Fiction” where Vincent in the front passenger seat of a car in broad daylight downtown Los Angeles was conversing with Marvin, his rear seat passenger in an animated fashion.  Gesticulating to make his point whilst holding his pistol (an epic failure of gun control), Vincent violently and unintentionally discharged the weapon directly at him.  A brief but comprehensive shower of meat inside the car cabin ensued.

“I just shot Marvin in the face!”

The gruesome and reckless immorality of the killing was as irrelevant to the moment as its mechanism.  Dostoyevsky morality would have to take a back seat.  The prime issue was a sudden, massively-difficult-to-hide, semi-public uber-mess evidencing a crime that invited certain and severe punishment.

Unlike Vincent, I had no “Wolf” to help me. I was on my own.

The clean-up was fast, furious and superficial and at best dubiously successful.

 A real BetterDry would NEVER had done this to me.  Welcome BetterDry (SLB Edition).

[Little Sherri]

2 hours ago, oznl said:

I suddenly recalled that scene in “Pulp Fiction”

I thought of exactly this, just before you wrote it - "My God, he needs The Wolf..." 

I've had some diaper failures in my day, with, as you so aptly described it, yellow-duckling-coloured fluff raining below me, once while I was out walking with the dog, and more recently, after tearing the arse out of a diaper while walking past a dog crate, but I've never had both a Code Brown, and, a catastrophic structural failure, at the same time. While my wife was inbound like a cruise missile of judgement. That's when you have to summon your inner trauma surgeon... all distractions are ignored, there is only decision, action, decision, action, no wasted steps, no second-guessing, for a life hangs in the balance. 

[soggster]

I've been following your story since the begining being a serial lurker on here, and wished to create an account just to say how much I'm enjoying following you on your journey!
 

For emergency cleanups, might I suggest a spray bottle filled with bleach water? I use this as I can spritz everything with it, tiles, padding, escapees, walls, ceilings (if it's gone horribly wrong) etc.

Makes everything smell fresh, though do make sure you have ventilation. It still announces a Code Brown, by the very nature of everything smelling *too* clean

[oznl]

18 hours ago, soggster said:

I've been following your story since the begining being a serial lurker on here, and wished to create an account just to say how much I'm enjoying following you on your journey!

Thank you for your kind words.  I'm still trying to work out if by setting an example of such luminary value that it encourages another to subscribe to DD I am somehow advancing civilisation or rather sending it rapidly back in the opposite direction!

18 hours ago, soggster said:

For emergency cleanups, might I suggest a spray bottle filled with bleach water? I use this as I can spritz everything with it, tiles, padding, escapees, walls, ceilings (if it's gone horribly wrong) etc.

I'd briefly considered arson.  Eventually, I settled upon a strategy of waylaying her downstairs upon her return home and plying her with sufficient Friday-evening gin and tonic to mute any traumatic memories she may have formed upon using the ensuite shower.

To misquote Ogden Nash: "bleachy is peachy but liquor is quicker" 🤣

[superabsorbantpolymer]

Have you had any messy incidents around your wife before? I'm sure she'd be fuming, but obviously with the way your control is going it could happen sooner or later.

[justforfun]

On 2/15/2024 at 4:35 AM, oznl said:

There’d been a blow out of biblical proportions. That constant oozy, moving about sensation I’d been experiencing on the way home was sodden gel particles sliding out of my nappy into my plastic pants whereupon they would wander about aimlessly as though exploring some kind of art gallery.

I just have to say how much I appreciate your writing!  It's not often that I'm literally laughing out loud while reading!

[oznl]

On 2/20/2024 at 4:18 PM, superabsorbantpolymer said:

Have you had any messy incidents around your wife before? I'm sure she'd be fuming, but obviously with the way your control is going it could happen sooner or later.

I'm wondering if this might be sufficient to propel her mind over the edge into a Douglas Adamsian "Somebody Else's Problem" (SEP Field) scenario.

The SEP field is one inhabited by a problem that is so wildly outside the observer's conscious mind's willingness to deal with that they subconsciously abdicate responsibility for it and thusly fail to perceive it at all.

Either that or I'd be looking for a nice dumpster to sleep in for the night. 

It could go either way.  It's hard to tell 🤣

[Babygeebee]

8 hours ago, oznl said:

The SEP field is one inhabited by a problem that is so wildly outside the observer's conscious mind's willingness to deal with that they subconsciously abdicate responsibility for it and thusly fail to perceive it at all.

Beats messing around with bending light with all the energy it takes.  To be safe you should wear a diaper looking resplendent in a large pink elephant motif. 😂

[oznl]

This week however has been insightful not through my own adventures but rather the adventures of somebody else.   I know quite a few people in this place have been quite absorbed by what might be the ABDL equivalent of a moon landing:  @Reddy, taking himself off to Guadalajara, Mexico having organised meticulously (and at considerable expense) surgery to make him permanently, totally and irreversibly urinary incontinent.  Compulsory nappies for the rest of his life: end of discussion.

I realise that the “moon landing” metaphor breaks down under examination insofar as he isn’t the first “on the moon” so to speak but he’s probably the first who has televised the voyage (ok, it was a blog and not grainy black and white TV but metaphors aren’t perfect).

I’m not interested in reigniting debate around his decision.  It’s done now and for the record, whilst I had some misgivings about him “buying before trying”, my principle of bodily autonomy trumps my own reservations and I support his right to make his decision 100%.  I sincerely hope it is everything he hopes it will be for him.

I’m also not intending to paraphrase or editorialise his journey here: this is his story, not mine.

Instead, I’ll address the question I’ve been asking myself: “Would I do it?”

No, but it’s a curiously reluctant no.  I’m not afraid of elective surgery.  I’ve worn that t-shirt.  Admittedly, the alternative to my “elective” surgery was an earlier-than-I-would-prefer death as opposed to dry underwear but my elective was still a complex procedure with a significantly greater-than-zero risk of what we’ll call, the “ultimate complication” and I took it for mid to long term lifestyle gain.

I wouldn’t take the incontinence body hack not because of the risk to me but because of the risk to others. 

For a start, it would seal the coffin lid on my beloved’s hope that one day I will come to my senses, head off to K-Mart and buy myself half a dozen pairs of boxer shorts.  I’m entirely aware that this isn’t a rational position for her to take after this long but let’s face it, neither is it rational for me to be choosing to pee in my pants for this long.  I still just don’t want to hurt her any more than I already have and I certainly don’t want to break the relationship.

Secondly, there is the fiscal consideration.  I could afford it.  It would hurt but I could.  But does that entitle me to spend that kind of money?  In a kind of pre-retirement, fiscally treading water, earning-just-enough-to-stay-out-of-savings mode I could never replenish such a depletion of capital.  Whilst it was I that earned that capital, the unspoken pact is that it was for both of us for our retirement.   It’s only partly “my” money.  It’s bad enough that I will be dripping it away on nappies.  Fire-hosing a tanker-load of it on a highly unusual (and not entirely risk-free) Mexican vacation strikes me as being simply morally unacceptable in my circumstance (Reddy’s is very different).

Then there would be the question of what if something went wrong, all the way over in Mexico?  I know for a fact that she would immolate our life savings in an instant to medivac me across the whole planet and how could I then live with myself?

I doubt that the actual incontinence would pose any logistical issues or social prices I’m not already paying.  I haven’t been using urinary continence for around 5 years now so it’s not as though I don’t know what I’d be getting myself into.

But for me, no.  So I guess his story just remains a fascinating glimpse into what would otherwise remain as a secret world. 

But watching this adventure close-up, in slow-motion and analysing my own thoughts as I do is adding to the uncomfortable constellation of data points suggesting that I actually DO want incontinence, even if I started out thinking that I did NOT.  Perhaps my current position, that I could use incontinence as a tool to take my nappy use off the behavioural negotiating table by baking it in to my physiology, is just another layer of me attempting to rationalise the irrational.  Maybe I just WANT it.  I’m honestly not sure.

There’s still some good news for me in Reddy’s story though.  For a start, his thread survived largely unmolested. 

Historically speaking, poking one’s head above the ramparts of the body-hack-to-incontinence topic (even within the theoretically “safe space” of an entirely appropriate sub-group) appears to be an invitation have it shot off.  We’re not talking about simple challenges to ideas (I believe that NO idea should be above challenge).  Too often the responses however stray into simple ad hominem insults.  Sometimes these morph from clumsy-but-well-meaning attempts at warning, just as often from the righteous evangilising and occasionally, from the simply tin-eared-and-clueless.  The chilling effects of these historic internet-based flame campaigns have perhaps tended toward keeping these stories under a blanket.

His tenacity in relating his account blow-by-blow is vanishingly rare on the searchable internet and I suspect a considerable number of others will use his example as a reason to pursue this strange dream to its conclusion.  I believe this can only be a good thing.  We may even learn if that itch has indeed been scratched for him  by all of this.  He has moved, and may yet move more metaphorical needles here.

Perhaps one day, sufficient scale will exist for better recognition of the condition that drives it and the effectiveness of the remedy.  Perhaps one day this kind of surgery WOULD be legitimately available from local medical providers in a similar way to which sexual reassignment surgery is available today.

That would be something to think about.

[oznl]

One of the annoying things I’ve found about giving up toilet training is that for vast amounts of time, nothing changes.  I guess this is what happens when one tries to forget something by concentrating on it.  It’s not a super-effective strategy.

Sure, there’s a blaze of so-called “developments” in the very early days but (so it seems) but I’ve learned the hard way that they’re probably not real.  We see things we want to see hiding in ambiguity.  They’re a bit like those mirages shimmering in the distance over sand dunes that, if you squint your eyes carefully enough, look like pirate ships.  Sorry to burst bubbles for anybody 3 months in to their “24/7” stint and reading this…

Eventually of course, things DO happen but they tend to sneak up on you, at first they appear mundane or intermittent, or both.  It’s only when one looks back and realises that some kind of trend is emerging. 

Still, it seems that I’ve been in that “nothing is changing” plateau for a VERY long time now, maybe a year.  Frankly, I was starting to think that “This is it.  This is as far as this road goes.”

I’m noticing an increasing number of data points however suggesting that I’m becoming increasingly thoughtless in the department of nappies.

I think I’ve mentioned before about my suspicion that I’ve been losing insight into my bedwetting which may well be masking the frequency of incidents.  I’ve been concluding that I’ve been dry at night because I can’t remember noticing that I’d woken wetter than I think I should be but it ain’t necessarily so.

I’m not noticing “wetter” very much anymore it seems.  Noticing that I’m wet was something that faded quite early on.  For me, being wet is normal and the only variable is HOW wet.  I’d usually have a fairly solid vector on how wet I was based on how much I’d used my nappy.  It’s just that this recall seems to be disappearing.

The fact that I’ve woken with a mostly empty bladder, a soaked nappy and no specific memory of waking and using it just isn’t always registering anymore.  It just seems normal.  I suspect I’m wetting the bed quite a bit some weeks but I’ve stopped noticing it.

Today I only realised I’d wet the bed when later on in the day at work, I suddenly had a flashback to a rather involved “pee dream” which would nicely explain why I was woken by the clock radio at 6am instead of my bladder with a soaking wet “bum-in-tepid-birdbath” sensation of an adult disposable terribly close to leaking (BetterDry “slightly less Better” edition payload of 2000ml – thank you very much IPA and vat of red wine). 

Additionally, I’ve started recently finding myself being a bit unclear if I’ve “used” my nappy or not during the day.  This ambiguity window is relatively small however.  If I’ve had a nappy on for more than 30 minutes, there’s a better than even odds chance it has seen some tiny amount action whether I can specifically recall that action or not.

My work-morning day-nappy fresh on at 6:30am usually has a couple of drops in it by the time I’m parking my car at 7:30am.

Later on however, when I’ve found myself seated at my office desk as my morning coffee decides it’s had enough of frolicking around inside of me and it’s time to come back outside and greet the day, I can’t remember.  In those few fractions of a second between feeling that bladder spasm and moisture in the relevant area, I guess I kind of step through some kind of “pre-flight checklist”:

1. In a nappy?  Check!
2. Nappy securely fitted?  Check!
3. Nappy has serviceable capacity?  Check!
4. All systems go.

I can’t stop a pee that’s started these days but at least I can have some forewarning that I’m likely to leave a wet-spot on the chair.  I might even stand up (peeing in a nappy whilst seated is higher risk than whilst standing I’ve discovered).  The thing is, I’ve gotten to the “how wet am I?” bit of the list only to realise I’ve no idea.   Am I dry or not?  If it’s not that far of my last change, lately I often don’t know.

The evening corollary to this happens after I change into my night nappy.  I’ve often come back downstairs and sat down in front of the daily-doom-digest (aka “evening news”).  At some point, I’ll realise that I’m about to wet a little and, somewhere in that automatic checklist, I also realise that I can't remember if it’s this nappy’s first rodeo or not.  Sometimes I’ll take a quick grope down there just out of a sense of morbid curiosity.

So, Occam’s razor says that I’m wetting my nappy lately and not remembering doing it.

It’s more likely cognitive decline than incontinence.  I’ll call it urinary “incogniscence” and graciously place my shiny new noun into the public domain.  You’re welcome.

[Little Sherri]

On 2/29/2024 at 7:36 AM, oznl said:

Sometimes I’ll take a quick grope down there just out of a sense of morbid curiosity.

So, Occam’s razor says that I’m wetting my nappy lately and not remembering doing it.

It’s more likely cognitive decline than incontinence.  I’ll call it urinary “incogniscence” and graciously place my shiny new noun into the public domain.  You’re welcome.

I've found myself doing this occasionally as well. I was having pints with some friends and actually got up and went to the washroom, just to check how wet my nappy was - I'd been in it for about three to four hours at that point and I simply had no idea how wet it was, other than "somewhat wet." This was during a session where we ended up becoming more serious about our drinking than had been originally intended - a buddy showed up who is going through a separation, and a round of Scotches came into play, and then sure, another IPA... agreed, let's uber back... so sure, another IPA... wait, how wet is this plastic bag I'm sitting in? 

I've done it other times as well. I, too, have largely attributed it to cognitive decline associated with aging (and drinking), along with habituation to just always being at least a bit damp, and to forgetting about pee incidents the way I forget about the last time I sneezed or any particular breath I've taken in the last half hour. I haven't concluded that I'm wetting myself unknowingly, just carelessly. 

Although this week I did notice that I'd dripped onto the floor after a shower, and before applying a new nappy - a couple of dime-sized droplets appeared on the tile. That's new. Later attempts to replicate the outcome failed to do so. I seem to have just "hiccupped" a couple of droplets in that instance. 

[oznl]

12 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I've done it other times as well. I, too, have largely attributed it to cognitive decline associated with aging (and drinking), along with habituation to just always being at least a bit damp, and to forgetting about pee incidents the way I forget about the last time I sneezed or any particular breath I've taken in the last half hour. I haven't concluded that I'm wetting myself unknowingly, just carelessly.

Yep.  I'm pretty sure this isn't any kind of incontinence but rather a kind of mindlessness...  I can confirm the alcohol definitely helps.

12 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Although this week I did notice that I'd dripped onto the floor after a shower, and before applying a new nappy - a couple of dime-sized droplets appeared on the tile. That's new. Later attempts to replicate the outcome failed to do so. I seem to have just "hiccupped" a couple of droplets in that instance. 

I did read that but didn't comment as I didn't really want to sound like a Negative Nellie.  I've had the same thing, including on a couple of occasions relatively early on in the 24/7 piece and unfortunately for me, I conclude this to be bits of left over pee left in my urethra from previous voids that make their way to the great outdoors as I shift around and gravity has its wicked way.  It never seems to be more than a few drops and once they're gone, they're gone...

[superabsorbantpolymer]

I had a similar thing happen to me yesterday when having "me time". I took mini me out of my diaper and upon the first stroke an involuntary spurt of urine was milked out of my urethra and wet my bedsheet. I was quite surprised, but it was exciting. I have been practicing "reverse kegels" lately and I think I don't clear my tract after voiding anymore. The odd times I've gone without protection in the past year I've had post void dribbles and wet patches in my undies/jeans. I think it's safe to say I have disrupted my voiding pattern, but you're right it's not the same as a bladder leakage. At this point I would benefit from wearing light male guards even if I gave up diapers. 

[oznl]

After a few recent weeks of re-discovery, I’d like to pay homage to the simplest type of nappies that I own: my humble pinned, terry towelling squares.  60” x 60” white (well, mostly white:  most of them have dealt with one or more “incidents”) towel-like garments, kite folded and pinned under voluminous milky-white plastic pants.   Old school.

They’re years old.  I don’t even know how many years.  Some of them are more translucent than others, having sacrificed a reasonable percentage of their mass to the demanding gods of tumble-drying but even those can still easily be augmented with a laughably-cheap 24” x 24” baby’s terry nappy as a “booster” pad or, in the possibility of foul weather being encountered on its voyage, a liner.

I use cloth nappies 2 -3 nights per week in a way similar to someone devout might give up jelly beans for lent hoping to atone for a lifetime of mortal sin (clue: they’re wasting their time. Sin is the stock-in-trade currency of most religions and legions of highly inventive priests, prophets and pastors will be working hard to maintain market liquidity).  I use cloth (when convenient) in the forlorn hope that doing so will offset my recreational bent for peeing into non-biodegradable, fossil-fuel-sourced plastic bags filled with pulverised tree-and-chemicals before tossing them into landfill.  Twice per day.

That and cloth is cheaper.

Having realised that re-engineering my nappy cadence to go to bed dry and thus “catch” myself bedwetting was doing little more than re-training me at night, I’ve put the various less-than-12-hour-solution cloth “nappy garments” I have back into a holding pattern in the cupboard and dug out my trusty old towelling squares for some long-haul (12 hour) overnight flights.

They work.  Like an old Cleveland 351 V8, they’re not sophisticated and they can smell a bit but they absolutely will get the job done.

They’re not for the faint-hearted though. 

From a sartorial elegance perspective, they’re more “Baby Huey” than “James Bond”.  Your bum really WILL look big in them.

Then there’s all of the modern odour suppression technology that we associate with cloth nappies: none at all.  Pee at your peril.  Secure fitting plastic pants will help mute, but not erase olfactory evidence of your misdeeds.  At some point you WILL smell like a toddler, even if you think you don’t.

Terries will also stretch a little when wet, a tendency that unfortunately misaligns with a tendency for them TO get wet.  They can then get saggy (I can’t fathom why this wasn’t a problem for Baby Huey).  Compression pants help a bit (and will additionally, obscure some of the worst of the bulk) but pinned terry nappies are probably not your weapon of choice if you were planning on going out for a run, or, if the mood takes you, a bout of pogo sticking.

Bed is definitely where they are at their best.  There, their visual bulk is utterly irrelevant (at least to most of the world) and their orientation towards the horizontal mutes the siren song of gravitational attraction.  Bed also showcases their greatest negative virtue.  Assuming anything short of criminal negligence, leaking is practically impossible in them.

You’re wearing padding ALL the way around you with none of the impoverished “plastic only” bad-lands that disposables have.  You’re literally wrapped in thick cloth and furthermore, that cloth, has superb “wicking” capability.  Wicking (capillary action for the technically inclined) is that mysterious process whereby moisture (that’s pee in this case) is rapidly transported from “ground zero” to be dispersed across the whole nappy.  This to the point where sometime after an initial wetting, the nappy at “ground zero” has de-saturated sufficiently to cop another round of fire without incident.   Wicking works in defiance of gravity as it relies upon inter-molecular forces between pee and nappy fibres to transport fluid.   (I’m betting that “intermolecular forces” and “nappy” don’t typically cohabitate the same sentences very often – this is how we push envelopes in our strange world).

These are the ONLY nappies I have where I can lay on my side in bed and completely dump a whole bladder-full into them feeling nothing more than a comfortable warm wetness spreading down to whichever of my hips is the one on the downhill side of my position in bed and a warm glow of confidence that this warm wetness is inside my nappy and not inside my mattress.

They feel wet when they get wet (in the manner of cloth) but I don’t find it at all uncomfortable.  The whole “nappy wetting” sensation is probably a little more vivid in cloth and after the deed is done, it’s more of a distinctly clammy warmth in the relevant parts but even if I disliked that, the sensation fades soon enough, or I stop noticing it.  I’m not sure which it is.

Folded cloth nappies are relatively easy to launder.  They compare and contrast nicely with some of my “all-in-one” style cloth nappies.  Whilst similarly absorbent and similarly good at wicking as my folded/pinned cloth nappies, those monocoque-chassis construction adult cloth garments can pose challenges on laundry day.  All that thick-core absorbency that suffered in noble silence at pee time, exacts its revenge at wash-and-dry time.  Regular necessary use of anti-bacterial additive to the wash suggests that there’s some memory lingering on inside them and irrespective of whether it is pee or simply wash water, it can be very, very hard to get moisture back OUT of them.   They are a LOT easier to wet than they are to dry.  Folded and pin towelling nappies do not suffer from this issue.  Although suitably thick whilst worn, once unpinned and unfolded it is no worse than a towel to launder.

They last for years.  For the last few weeks I’ve had these back on “high rotation” as a part of my weekend cloth nappy dictum.  Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights have been spent pinned into these old-school nappies and I’ve noticed something.  I think I’m “wetting the bed” an awful lot whilst wearing these. 

I’m currently reflecting on why this might be so.  Standby for updates.

[superabsorbantpolymer]

Great update. I've found a similar level of increased comfort peeing in bed in the last month that I've ensured I was in an ultra absorbent disposable. I've considered cloth to close that metaphorical and physical gap in my protection, but I don't know where to start. I grew up well into the disposable era so I never saw a cloth diaper as a child. I had a terry pull up a few years back that I used as a diaper cover, but it was pretty useless for full voids. The sensation of wetting it reminded me of the fake towel diapers I'd make as a kid (and still do when I am really desperate and separated from diapers, which is probably just a few days a year) -- not unpleasant but not the glorious chemical thirst sensation that SAP diapers have imprinted deep inside me.

Where do you get your cloth diapers? 

[oznl]

8 hours ago, superabsorbantpolymer said:

Great update. I've found a similar level of increased comfort peeing in bed in the last month that I've ensured I was in an ultra absorbent disposable. I've considered cloth to close that metaphorical and physical gap in my protection, but I don't know where to start. I grew up well into the disposable era so I never saw a cloth diaper as a child.

I suspect that at some level, it is their security that is potentiating my bed-wetting.

My infancy was the late 1960s and cloth was the go-to product.  Back when my nappy use was purely recreational (and intermittent), I only used cloth.  I started using disposables when I began using nappies to deal with longer flights.  When I switched to 24/7, as I was working and traveling a lot, cloth nappies wouldn't have been a viable option and in any case, my beloved regards disposables as (fractionally) less repellent to her than cloth.  I've gotten used to disposables.

8 hours ago, superabsorbantpolymer said:

I had a terry pull up a few years back that I used as a diaper cover, but it was pretty useless for full voids. The sensation of wetting it reminded me of the fake towel diapers I'd make as a kid (and still do when I am really desperate and separated from diapers, which is probably just a few days a year) -- not unpleasant but not the glorious chemical thirst sensation that SAP diapers have imprinted deep inside me.

If it's anything like the Babykins terry-pullups I have, they are only good as boosters for other, heavier pull-up cloth nappies or at least as one of a multiple number of layered pull ups.  They are good for what they are but the elastics fail long before the terry material does.  The sensation of wetting a cloth nappy is different for sure.  You really DO get wet.

8 hours ago, superabsorbantpolymer said:

Where do you get your cloth diapers? 

https://littlesdownunder.com.au/shop/terry-toweling-square-cloth-nappy/

They are expensive but cheaper if I pick them up (I'm local to this vendor).  Some folk just make them, buying terry towel lengths at a fabric shop but firstly, I don't own an overlocker and secondly, you don't seem to really save that much money.  In any case, they last for years.  I was thinking about lashing out and just buying a new half a dozen and a few pairs of plastic pants (use the "high waist" for these nappies) but the Australian Tax office has just let me know that they have a different plan for my savings so THAT will have to wait 😒