Strange days indeed - a 24 x 7 experiment

[BabyJilly_S]

Ah, its that damned cat again, isnt it?  It can't be actually measured as the act of measuring means its not unconscious.

I am still early on my journey so still hyper-aware of everything going on down there so I don't believe I have done that in the daytime whilst awake. Still, there has been the odd sensation now and again that is unaccounted for, like feeling a very small amount coming out but not having any bladder action. It certainly wasn't very much though, probably a drip or two's worth.

 

 

[Stroller]

I found myself in the middle of wetting twice yesterday when I hadn't realised it had started.  It's still becoming more and more automatic for me even after this long exercising no control.  I think my conscious brain is pretty much learning to ignore any signals it gets, and just let it happen.

[oznl]

A couple of days ago, in the cool damp air of a Queensland early autumn morning I dropped my beloved at the airport.  She, clad in scarves, coats and noise-cancelling headphones as befits jet travel to cooler climes.  I, less glamorously clad in a grotty t-shirt, oversize jeans covering a rather wet pinned-terries-and-plastic-pants night nappy (damned if I was going to attempt a nappy change at 4:30am).  She was off down south for a suddenly-planned weekend with the girls, a celebration in part before she starts her new job and spends her first year accumulating leave entitlements.

It’s a strange feature of my strange days that the departure of my spouse affords me exactly the opposite kind of nappy-related opportunity to that conventionally available to husbands with less-than-enthusiastically-supportive spouses.  After she’s gone.  Instead of spending my alone time happily frolicking in nappies, I can spend my alone time happily frolicking OUT of nappies.

The reason for this is simple enough in the context of my relationship.  She knows I wear nappies permanently and, after the first year or two, things have settled down somewhat.  It’s a cease-fire though, not a peace agreement.  Any hint of me coming out of nappies in her company is highly likely to reignite old conflagrations upon my inevitable return to them.  I must therefore continuously occupy the territory I have captured to avoid having to re-capture it.

It’s been not quite one year ago since her last trip.  I used those days to remind myself I was still continent and the nights to prove to myself once and for all that my “bedwetting” was neither planned nor conscious.

So, upon my return home alone, I used my long weekend (it is yet again a public holiday Monday here in Queensland where rather irritatingly, the public holidays, like buses, travel in packs.  There will be no more long weekends for 6 months after this one) to do the same.  A kind of “pulse check” to see how things work without nappies.

I couldn’t find any underwear.  I suspect my beloved may have thrown out my last, revoltingly-dilapidated pair of gym undies. This does raise the question, assuming she does NOT want me in nappies, why discard my last pair of underpants?  Whatever. Rummaging around, I found a Kins pull-on flannel panty – a completely non-absorbent product answering a need that for the life of me I cannot define.  Perhaps it’s for those who might like something that at a glance might resemble a rather thin pull-on nappy but which is completely useless in the event of any action.

With my nearly-grown-up underwear on, I pulled on some pants.  It felt like I was wearing an empty house.  There was so much room down there.

So how did that work?

I stayed dry all day.

I was acutely aware of my non-nappied state and pee urges became uncomfortable after about 90 minutes to two hours.  When I did pee (in the toilet), I was struck to the point of being disturbed at how weak the pee stream was and how long it took to achieve relief.  A void (such as it was) occured in 2 – 3 weak episodes, punctuated by dripping before several seconds of zen-like contemplation.  It literally took minutes.  That doesn’t sound like much but it’s a long time to stand contemplating a wall in a small room.  After the void, it didn’t really feel like I was truly “empty” either but as I wasn’t in a nappy, that just had to wait for the next time (which was never far away).

I must have used the toilet 7 – 8 times across the day.  It’s entirely possible that this IS in fact my new “normal” voiding pattern but of course in nappies, I simply don’t notice it because I’m doing something else whilst it happens.  There were one or two times where I pulled myself up before habitually releasing “in situ” but no catastrophic lapses.  I did wonder however that if I’d stayed out of nappies a bit longer, perhaps long enough for the novelty of not wearing them to fade if I might have wet myself by simply forgetting NOT to. 

After my evening shower, I pulled on a cheap disposable.  I was just sick of being ruled by a bladder and having to remember NOT to wet automatically.  At night, I peeled off that soggy disposable just before retiring.

It was suggested to me after last May’s experiment that I may have tilted the table in bedwetting favour by wearing training pants.  It’s true I did do that.  The training pants had no hope of containing a bladder full but their waterproof lining could (and did) deflect pee from firing up into the heavy doona/duvet/coverlet that I’d never be able to launder and dry before my beloved’s return.

This May (well, it was April last night) has been considerably warmer though so far.  The bed was still covered by a light blanket and I was sleeping under the ceiling fan.

So, I just found a pair of long pyjamas, put them on and went to bed.  No nappy, no training pants, just some of China’s finest polyester.

For an hour or so, I contemplated the ceiling.  Then I got up and spent a few minutes having a pee.

I got up and spent a few more minutes having a pee at 1am and again at 4am.  At 7am I got up to have a pee and stayed up.  I made some coffee so I could make some more pee later.

Not desirous of another day spent hovering near a toilet.  I pinned on a terry nappy and resolved to spend the next night nappy-free as well.

Night 2 I again retired wearing only pyjamas after assiduously assuring that my bladder was as empty as I could make it.

I woke up.   Rather disturbingly, I had felt the rather distinct and uncomfortable sensation of a substantive nappy-leak in bed.  I thought I may have dreamed that.  Then I remembered that I wasn’t wearing a nappy at all, let alone a leaking one.

It was 1am and my pyjama pants were wet as was the sheet below me.  I had wet the bed.  Properly.  Old school.

The problem was I was dog tired and the last thing I wanted to do was to get up and strip a bed.  Probing around suggested that it had been a relatively small wetting. The front of my pants was wet, one hip was wet and so was my bum but it didn’t feel that bad.  I didn’t need to pee anymore so presumably I’d finished what I’d started before waking.

I decided I would try to sleep in it.  Amazingly, I did.  It was quite a warm night for May.  That helped.

At 3am, I woke again, needing another pee.  I was still somewhat-comfortable although damp but suspected another wetting would wreck any chance of further sleep.  Reluctantly, I got out of bed and staggered to the bathroom.  There is something ironical about pulling down a pair of pee-wet pants to use a toilet before clambering back into a wet bed.  The bed had cooled somewhat at my departure and it was more difficult to get comfortable but rolling onto my side away from the wet patch helped.  At least I didn’t have to worry about causing leaks by sleeping on my side.  I dozed off again.

At 6am I woke again, needing another pee.  It was debatable that I’d “been” a little more during the night as the sheet beneath me was wet again and my pants seemed wetter than they did at 3am.  I REALLY did not want to get up at 6am.  My pants were already wet, the bedding was a write off anyway, the mattress was well protected with a waterproof cover and by then I knew that a pee in a toilet would take ages.  I just relaxed.

Wetting a bed (whilst awake) is a bit like wetting a nappy for the first second or two but it rapidly becomes much, MUCH wetter.  Unconfined by plastic and padding, pee goes everywhere quite quickly, you feel it travelling and you get wet in a lot more places quickly.  There seemed to be rivulets and puddles happening everywhere down there.  Despite years of conditioning that it’s “ok” to pee in bed, there were still mental warning lights flashing as all of the deeply-conditioned constraints around keeping bedding dry went out the window.  Leaks are completely meaningless in a true bed-wetting scenario.  Go your hardest.

Again, made obvious by taking place outside of a hidden nappy, I noticed that this pee was long, interrupted and weak but it was nice not having to be standing on cold tiles in front of a porcelain throne waiting for it to hurry up and finish.  I think I actually may have fallen back into a doze still dribbling a bit here and there.   

Suddenly it 7:30am, I was cool, but not cold where I lay but I could feel the bed around me was cold and swampy.  The smell of fresh pee hung in the air.  Waking in a wet nappy isn’t always that obvious in terms of physical sensation but there’s no mistaking waking in a wet bed.   My wet pyjama pants had scope-crept to include a wet-t-shirt and everything was stuck to my skin in a vaguely uncomfortable cold-frog way.  I peed a little more which warmed the inside of my pants in a babbling-brook fashion but the rest of the bed was getting cold.  It seemed there would be no more sleep. It was time to carpe diem and get a rather substantial load of washing going.

So here is what I’ve learned:

• I am still continent during the day without a nappy but I will need to pee every 90 – 120 minutes at least and I had some near-misses based on forgetfulness  (it occurred to me that a 90 - 120m "range" is insufficient for me to be able to do my job.  I actually NEED nappies for work!)
• My pee stream is strikingly weaker, slower and episodic to the point that having to use a toilet is quite annoying.  It’s much easier for me to use my nappy.
• I need to get up and pee three times per night (assuming I don’t just do it in my sleep)
• I *might* have a dry night nappy-free at first, but the night that follows won’t be, same as last year.
• I will sleep wet even without ANY kind of protection on – pyjama pants you have been warned.
• Bedwetting is MUCH more comfortable in a nappy

The only real surprise to me was the extent of my voiding dysfunction, revealed in sharp relief when no longer concealed by preferential nappy use.   Ten pees per day at well over a minute each doesn’t seem like how I remember things.  I have no idea whether this is related to prolonged 24/7 use or some other physiological issue.  As a late 50s male, I have regular PSA testing which has been highly normal but I’m still toying with the idea of bringing this up at my next routine GP consultation.  It’s NOT incontinence but it’s NOT normal.

I’m back in a nappy now (Rearz Omutsu cloth with a cloth booster).  Even though I’ve got two more days of solitude, being continent is just too much trouble.  I’ve spent too long already in the toilet this weekend.

[Kif]

1 hour ago, oznl said:

I have no idea whether this is related to prolonged 24/7 use or some other physiological issue.  As a late 50s male, I have regular PSA testing which has been highly normal but I’m still toying with the idea of bringing this up at my next routine GP consultation.  It’s NOT incontinence but it’s NOT normal.

Glad you're checking that out! 

I feel I can relate to this not-incontinence-but-also-not-normal thing. It's an awkward position to be in, but always better to check and be safe, rather than sorry. And in my case post-op, I'll still have to do PSA tests because the prostate stays in.

But it's also kinda funny in a way! The Overton window is so shifted towards untraining that it's easy to forget sometimes that the average person would not be comfortable going to the bathroom as often as I do. It doesn't "raise alarms" for us until we realize we need diapers to do some kinds of work, for example. Whereas I think the average person would have raised hell way before then...It's such a strange position to be in.

[BabyJilly_S]

Fascinating read, thanks.

For myself, even before I started 24/7 when stood at a urinal, I would feel slightly, hmm whats the word, "outmatched"  perhaps when those next to me would be going with what seemed and sounded like a fire hose. My mere delicate tinkling seemed very underwhelming. Maybe I don't have the capacity to fill up like some overstretched balloon and fire it all out rapidly...Not sure if that's normal, but for me it has been. 

As for ten times a day, in pre nappy days once I had "popped the cork" , it was every hour if the volume is going in. Now I am in nappies its much more than that.

[oznl]

15 hours ago, Kif said:

Glad you're checking that out!

yep.  My next PSA is due in a couple of months.  I've mentioned urgency to my GP before but his reaction was that within reason, that was to be expected with advancing age.  I remember my father was pretty bad at my age.  It's a bit tricky.  I've no interest in throwing money at urology or leading practitioners down any merry dances.  My only thought is that I'd hate it if something was hiding-in-plain-sight here because my nappies mean that it doesn't matter to me.

15 hours ago, Kif said:

But it's also kinda funny in a way! The Overton window is so shifted towards untraining that it's easy to forget sometimes that the average person would not be comfortable going to the bathroom as often as I do. It doesn't "raise alarms" for us until we realize we need diapers to do some kinds of work, for example. Whereas I think the average person would have raised hell way before then...It's such a strange position to be in.

I'm actually struggling to remember how often I used to pee in the "before" days but I'm pretty sure it was NOT ten times in a day!  There were early hints of urgency back then.  I remember becoming increasingly "tactical" to deal with things like plane flights and eventually, I just started wearing nappies for them.  That's probably not normal.

3 minutes ago, BabyJilly_S said:

As for ten times a day, in pre nappy days once I had "popped the cork" , it was every hour if the volume is going in. Now I am in nappies its much more than that.

Yes, when I'm in nappies (which is obviously now all the time) it's far more than ten times per day. It's probably a tiny bit every 10 - 20 minutes just because I can.  Occasionally I might get distracted by something enough to go an hour. 

During the day OUT of nappies I just didn't give in that way.  I waited. I was aware at one hour that I needed to go and somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours, that need was sufficiently uncomfortable that I was starting to grab at myself and so I went.

The pee cadence reduced a bit at night (thank you vasopressin) but was more like 2-3 hours.  The same as when I'm in nappies, I notice that it's the FIRST pee of the night that is the one that tends to get slept through.  Sometimes the second, rarely the third.

[BabyJilly_S]

7 hours ago, oznl said:

During the day OUT of nappies I just didn't give in that way.  I waited. I was aware at one hour that I needed to go and somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours, that need was sufficiently uncomfortable that I was starting to grab at myself and so I went.

Ah, that's different to me. I never waited before, as soon as there was a vague signal from below I used to deal go with it. Never felt comfortable holding it in. May be worth testing myself in that way on an out of nappy Sunday morning/early afternoon. Currently then I don't really drink as I don't want to use the toilet.  

7 hours ago, oznl said:

The pee cadence reduced a bit at night (thank you vasopressin) but was more like 2-3 hours.  The same as when I'm in nappies, I notice that it's the FIRST pee of the night that is the one that tends to get slept through.  Sometimes the second, rarely the third.

 I  think that's the same with me, I remember waking up in the "wee" hours (cough) needing to grant permission but from the amount in the nappy in the morning that probably wasn't the only occurrence. May be the mechanics of being in the deep sleep state ?

[Little Sherri]

On 5/1/2022 at 3:34 AM, oznl said:

I actually NEED nappies for work!

I'm curious about if this is the case for me as well. Currently, I continue to work from home about 95% of the time, although there is no toilet within convenient proximity to my office. But if I were willing to walk back to the main house every 90 minutes or so, I wouldn't need nappies. I'd just miss them. Particularly in winter. It is damned convenient to be able to sit up here for 6 or 8 hour stretches, courtesy of my plastic underpants. 

But were I doing what I used to do, and sometimes leaving the house for a rousing 400 km drive to visit a plant or boardroom in need of my particular brand of expertise, I'd be stopping a heck of a lot, or I'd have to experiment with restricting fluidic intake. 

It's interesting that we've both arrived at the same place, with respect to our holding range - I'm good for 90 minutes, and uncomfortable to the point of unpredictability at 120 minutes. The notes here about the flow characteristics are also ringing true, which suggests that either I'm experiencing the same prostate condition that you are, or, that this is an outcome of both of us being out of shape in the plumbing department, due to a lack of exertion. Since I was just at a urologist, and have both a normal PSA, and, a prostate exam that provoked no concerns from my practitioner (but a sharp intake of breath from me), perhaps what you have going on might be within the realm of normal for those of us on this abnormal journey? 

On my golf weekend with my buddies, I used the toilet for #1 periodically, because I deeply distrusted the man pull-ups I was in some of the time, and when I did that, I also noted somewhat of a reluctance for things to start out, and, a general lack of force to the proceedings. It felt like I was passing less fluid, and it was taking longer. So maybe this is our new normal. 

[oznl]

The return of my beloved from her travels and her remaining at home this week pending the commencement of her new job next week has placed my nappies and her gaze firmly in the “overlap” zone of one of my domestic life’s stranger Venn diagrams.

I feel deeply awkward and uncomfortable when my nappies are exposed to her.  This is because I know how much she hates them and that it is a pain point in our relationship.  Obviously she knows about them.  I can’t exactly hide that but I can help her pretend.  Right now, this unwanted exposure is most unavoidable at the relatively unusual (and temporary) scenario of early mornings where I am getting up to go to work and she isn’t. 

I woke the other morning sometime before 6 when the alarm was due to go off.  My nappy was wet, my bladder was empty, my bed was dry and I could remember little of how this had happened.  I was decadently snug.  Whilst I’m well aware the vast majority of the adult population would rather have skin cancer than bedwetting they shouldn’t knock it until they’ve tried it.  Well padded, it’s surprisingly comfortable and convenient.  After more than three years of 24/7, my preference for using nappies has not faded one bit, in stark contrast with my ability to avoid them anyway.

The problem of course was that by 6am my beloved too, was now awake.  Alarms are like that.  They don’t discriminate but only I had to get up to go to work.  Embarrassingly, this would involve revealing myself to her from my cocoon beneath the covers to be clad only in a t-shirt and a rather soggy BetterDry nappy not so much camouflaged as highlighted by a puffy pair of terry-lined plastic pants covering it.  From my waist down I looked pretty much as I did in 1967 with the possible exception of leg hair.  Despite winter only being a few weeks away, it has remained warm at night.   The windows are open, the ceiling fans are on and so my insulating pyjama pants remained on the shelf.

It was VERY pleasant being in bed.   I’d even received something resembling a cuddle from her, a rarity these days as I know she dislikes any part of her skin touching plastic pants but this morning, she seemed to have forgotten this.  She was distinctly snuggled up against what she had to know was a reasonably wet bum beneath a reasonably thick nappy and a reasonably plastic pant.

Eventually, time marched on and the call of duty became a shout.  Arising reluctantly from my comfortable marital bed, a faint pee-whiff arose like some kind of silent fanfare to start the day.  Great.  Now she’ll love me even more.  A series of alcohol nights and resulted in a series of sleep-wetting nights and the unmanaged nature of peeing from within the land of nod is that leaks happen.  My terry-lined plastic pants had seen some of that leakage action this week and their urgent need to visit the washing machine was writ large upon adjacent olfactory organs.

Strangely enough, instead of sighing and laser-glaring fixtures and fittings around the room, my beloved simply started chatting with me about what my work day was looking like.

That’s all very well and sociable except that I was standing resplendent at the foot of our bed rummaging in a nappy hamper wearing nothing but a cartoon t-shirt and a VERY obvious bulky and somewhat pendulous wet nappy under plastic pants) whilst looking for supplies for an imminent nappy change, to wit, a large white Rearz “Barry”.  In terms of keeping my toddler-mode underwear out of her metaphorical face, this was clearly in “epic fail” zone.

Truncating the conversation awkwardly, I retreated, work clothes in one hand, dry nappy in the other to our ensuite bathroom whereupon I slid down the dry-ish but distinctly pee-smelling trainers and removed the tapes on my wetterDry: four cavernous ripping noises, each at least 113 dB echoed around our small ensuite, out the flimsy sliding door to reach my beloved’s ears which I felt could be no more than 95mm away.  This followed by a quick noisy-splashy rinse of the relevant areas in the shower before some sudocrem (at least THIS was silent) and the rather crinkly application of the “Barry” nappy of the day (cue more ripping tape noises) before more crackly plastic pants and a compression stocking to shut all of that gear up.

Re-emerging after covering the lot in work clothes, my last task was to carry out a neatly-bundled-but-unmistakably-yellowishly-used BetterDry, like some warm, dead chicken past her gaze from the bed and down the hall to my study so that it could marinate with its cohort before I haul the lot of them down to the kerb to join the big bin in the sky.

As a spouse, you can’t un-see that kind of stuff.  If she was angry, she did a pretty good job of not showing it.  I don’t think I’m about to get changed by her any time soon (not particularly a fantasy of mine but I AM a lazy bastard) but I did extract some cool comfort from the absence of abuse.

[Little Sherri]

On 5/6/2022 at 2:17 AM, oznl said:

As a spouse, you can’t un-see that kind of stuff.  If she was angry, she did a pretty good job of not showing it.  I don’t think I’m about to get changed by her any time soon (not particularly a fantasy of mine but I AM a lazy bastard) but I did extract some cool comfort from the absence of abuse.

Your recounting of your morning reminds me of how lucky I am that most of the time, my wife "seems" to be fine, or, at least, to have come to terms, with the fact that her bedmate is clad in a nappy, all the time. Perhaps I have overwhelmed her, and in so doing, rewritten her software regarding what "disconcerting" is, somewhat akin to cognitive behavioural immersion therapy. Just as locking an arachnophobe in a coffin full of spiders is going to either destroy them, or, somewhat reset their alarm trip thresholds, so it goes that spending most nights from, say, 10 PM until midnight, clad in only a diaper below the waist, and sometimes a ridiculous looking one, has perhaps inured her to just how strange this once seemed, when I first started living this way.

Although I would point out to anyone reading this who is unfamiliar with my backstory that I did not just leap out of the bathroom in a toddler-print Tykables, plunk myself on the bed, and proceed to lounge unconcernedly. I started out wearing white diapers almost exclusively, under pajama pants or shorts. I gradually became less and less concerned about if my diaper was poking up out of said pants or shorts, until, one warm early summer night, I went back to sleeping the way I used to - IE just in underwear. Except that my underwear was now usually disposable and taped on, or, less frequently, washable and pinned on. I also introduced prints gradually, while explaining that "they were on sale" and "sometimes these ones are better than the medical ones." I'm still not completely comfortable wearing cloth diapers in front of my wife; there is something about plastic pants that triggers a deep blush response in me, even three years later. When I got caught out as a "DL" by my stepfather when I was 12 or so, it was a cloth diaper that he seized from my stash and waved around while yelling at me - maybe that's the root of it?

[deewet]

Very interesting reading if I may say so myself.  There are several gifted writers on this forum, and reading the above transcripts is certainly some of the most descriptive and well written context I have seen in a while.

Reading the very illustrative happenings reminds me of my journey in some respect, but considering I have not yet succumbed to diaper use, it still hits close to home.  I am in my early 70's and expect the need for diapers to be just around the corner, and have been trying different brands on occasion to be prepared for the inevitable. 

In my case, I am now using icon pads in my underwear, which along with other changes in my behavior, seem to be adequate.  

An important note to add here is that my urologist has said that all these things that are happening are predictable and related to my prostrate condition, and procedures already done on it, as well as my acute ED which has been around for years, and my more recent Type II Diabetes which is also playing a part in what is happening when I void.

The descriptions of how often I go and what I feel when I go is spot on, I couldn't have said it any better, but one thing I will add is that for the last year or two, I have found that I can no longer successfully stand in front of a urinal to void unless I want my pants to get wet, as the weak stream and prolonged dribble will get me wet if I do so.  I find that sitting to wiz is the only method to ensure that this doesn't happen, and when sitting, I feel little as the urination occurs, other than hear the dribbling occur into the toilet, and wait long enough for the slow process to finish.

As to the frequency during the day, the time frame seems to be no longer than 60 minutes in the morning, and probably a bit closer to 90 minutes in the afternoon.  Prior to bed, I limit my liquids and ensure that I void at least twice in the last hour to get through the night without having to get up, but that only gets me through the first 5 or 6 hrs. before I do have to get out of bed for a potty trip.

While this is my normal routine, when traveling I do use a bit more protection to prevent a recurrence of something that occurred 4 or 5 years ago when I wet my pants in an airplane waiting to get to a bathroom, and again in the terminal.  Not a happy time, and since then, I wear pull ups anytime I am away for more than a couple hours.

So again, thanks for the very descriptive analysis of what some of us are experiencing, and while I am not brave enough to jump into diapers full time yet, I am slowly getting to the point where the decision will be made for me, I suspect.  

[oznl]

STILL no BetterDry “large” cases available in Australia!  The sole Australian importer of BetterDry RAN out of them, months ago…  I have no idea if or when BetterDry will again be available in Australia, or, what lavish amounts of money will be required to procure them.  Such are the chaotic times in which we find ourselves.

Suffering under an embarrassing largesse of Abena L4, I tried wearing one of those with a booster pad to bed. 

Epic fail.

That super-stretchy-to-the-point-of-utterly-useless cloth like backing along with tapes constructed using an amalgam of pixie dust and a highly refined sense of marketing optimism means that I don’t so much “wear” the Abena after a few hours in bed but simply have it rattling around inside the cavernous and humid confines of my terry-lined plastic pants, along for the ride.  By morning, any proximity of the Abena to the relevant parts of my anatomy is largely coincidental.

Foxtrot, foxtrot sierra people!  HOW can a nappy stretch that much and fall off in bed?  I’m fairly sure I’m sleeping, not dancing the Macarena.

During the non-work days, I solve Abena’s little saggy/sticky problems by wearing them under a firm compression pant.  This seemed less painful than TIG-welding them to my groin.  I suppose I could just wear a compression pant under my waterproofs to bed and put up with the almost-inevitable extra washing but why can’t they just work?  The core of the Abena L4 nappy is fine.  Actually, it’s quite good.  It’s just the ability to avoid stretching and stay taped up that is woeful.

Compounding this issue, my dependency tide was “in” this week.  It seems to be an especially annoying truism that as our bodies slowly over years adapt to being permanently diapered, the reliability of certain underutilised systems below our waists fluctuate wildly from week to week.  In this case, in stark contrast to previous weeks that featured sequential dry nights, a series of going-to-bed-in-a-dry-nappy experiments resulted in a three from three clean sweep for team bedwetting.

Under normal circumstances, it’s hard for me to accurately enumerate bedwetting because I’m usually wet anyway to some extent when I fall asleep.  By varying my changing cadence (or as per the experiment of a bit over a week ago, dispensing with a nappy altogether) I can go to bed dry without having to break my rule about making rules for my bladder leaving any subsequent wetness to throw into sharp relief whether or not I was awake when it happened.

I was in cloth for three consecutive nights (rationing my dwindling supply of BetterDry).  The first night I managed a wee within 90 minutes of falling asleep.  Since I’d made sure I was empty before my final change, I’m not sure where it came from.  It was probably about 11pm when I retired.  I woke at 1:30am, I’m not sure why but I frequently wake during the night.  I can’t easily tell if I’m wet or dry in bed.  A “poke” test is required.  Based on the time alone I expected to be dry so I was quite surprised when the exploratory index finger passing my plastic pant waist elastic immediately encountered the unmistakable warm clamminess of wet towelling. 

Feeling around more broadly, it was just the front of my nappy that was wet, probably no more than a teacup’s worth but god knows where it came from.  Perhaps there’s a giant wombat called Neville who climbs into my nappy after the snoring starts and dances the Macarena, has a pee and escapes leaving me to wear the blame?  It’s a theory.  I’ve seen religions based on more dubious premises.

The second night I was woken at around 2am by a warm trickling sensation at my nether regions.  As I gradually surfaced into consciousness, I realised that I was having a pee and Neville the Nocturnal was nowhere to be seen.  Nil desperandum.  I was dressed for the occasion.  I let if finish in its own time and fell back asleep.  I may have even fallen back asleep and THEN let it finish.  Things can be a bit weird at 2am.  Next thing it was 5am and I’m not sure if I woke to pee or was woken by the act of peeing.  Whatever.  Still no Neville.

The third night I’ve no idea what happened.  I went to bed dry but was quite wet at 5am with zero idea when or how this had occurred.  I suspect I’d been more than once and I’d been on my side as I had one dry hip and one wet one.

Nights after that go blurry because I went back to my conventional change cadence meaning that I was going to bed wet anyway although I DID manage to pee my terry trainers one night with an Abena inside them acting more as a witness than any kind of intervening force.

All of this is slightly beside the point.  The key update is that having become a bedwetter and dependent on my BetterDrys, I find myself less than 3 weeks away from being forced to wear a Crinklez “Aquanaut” to bed (in poverty) and hope that my beloved doesn’t notice.  Although there have been green shoots of tolerance here and there, a full on AB experience would most likely jackboot-grind those back into the mud. 

All because of a bat…

[BabyJilly_S]

Betterdry stock does comes and goes here in the UK, but is not too bad overall as we are closer to the source in Germany. Presumably the postage from the UK/EU would be ferociously prohibitive...  

[oznl]

On 5/13/2022 at 12:22 AM, BabyJilly_S said:

Betterdry stock does comes and goes here in the UK, but is not too bad overall as we are closer to the source in Germany. Presumably the postage from the UK/EU would be ferociously prohibitive...  

Yes, you are correct!  Also, with the world logistics the way it is today, I think my ancestors made it out from the UK to Australia back in 1852 in less time than it takes DHL to do it today!

I've been trying to use cloth nappies more to offset my BetterDry consumption but in strict accordance with the Murphy Law sub-clause that says that everything that CAN go wrong should also go wrong at the SAME time, the rainy season in South East Queensland in addition to being severe this year, is prolonged.  We are practically in winter (which is supposed to be dry, mild and sunny here) and we're currently in our 11th consecutive day of pouring rain in a month of near constant showers.  It's a kill-zone for laundry.  Even if I wanted to tumble dry nappies, the queue for the dryer is out the laundry door into the kitchen.  Even the cat is mildewed.

[oznl]

This week I did something interesting and something I haven’t had the opportunity of doing since COVID tipped everybody’s world upside down.  I went out and met a new-to-me fellow ABDL (who happened to be local) for a coffee and a chat.  Whilst this kind of venture may pale in comparison to something like the moon landing or the painting of the Sistine chapel, it’s the kind of mundane conquest-in-miniature that can make a Tuesday more tolerable than Tuesdays generally are.

I’ve met a few fellow ABDL in my time.  For me it’s usually been an event met with relief.  Partly because (so far) they have proved NOT to be sex-crazed serial killers but mostly because they offer reassuring glimpses that although we may be mis-wired, misguided and/or hedonistically derelict (a position enthusiastically endorsed by my beloved), we are not alone.  Chatting face to face with another provides a reassuring reflection that despite the doubts of ourselves and those close to us, we remain at least 97.5% human and largely sane.

(Stopping to think about it, the dangers posed by a fellow-traveller in the ABDL space are probably considerably lower than those in say, cannibalism fetishists so perhaps I over think things.)

Organising the meeting logistics was somewhat hit and miss.  In this case my fellow-traveller is as appalling with insight into internet technology as I am with insight into major sporting teams but we made it work.

For a brief moment, there we were, coffees in hand, having a chat.  We could have been any John and Joe Average in Main St Newtown, solving the problems of the world using caffeine-infused empirical speculation resting upon flawed assumptions.

Except we were both in nappies.  And that was ok.  As mundane as it is to me since I have worn nothing else for some years, it is STILL surprising to me to find myself siting across the table from another similarly clad.  He got bonus points for managing to wear cloth nappies that were neither obvious nor smelly!  

Together we solved world peace, the fortitude-drought of modern youth, the challenges of parenthood and the inherent paradox of faster-than-light travel given Einstein’s theories (ok, maybe we didn’t do that last one). We then compared notes.  How did we get here?  How do we cope?  What’s our favourite tip for keeping the pee where it needs to be and out of the furniture?

Certain striking similarities inevitably emerge and offer hints as to why we are what we are.  We shared our common bewilderment and asked “Why us?

There were differences too.  Despite a similar sustained path of 24/7 nappyhood, it seems that by regularly practicing control he has avoided the dependencies that are by now blossoming within me like mildew on a week-old cheese cake.  I learned it was just me who has rediscovered bedwetting and needs to think about staying dry during the day should such a need arise.

The big thing about this for me though is the short holiday of the unrelenting “aloneness” of the weird world in which I find myself placed.

There still some regrets.  I could have done it better.

My first regret was that it had been a busy working day and thus our chat was wedged tight into a narrow space between the earliest time I could reasonably escape the office and the hard stop of needing to be home to cook dinner for the family (an obligation that falls to me, being in the twilight of my career).  I had little more than one hour.

My second regret is that I’ve met loads of interesting people this way and I’d like to integrate them into my mainstream life and I can’t.  At least not yet.  I might think of a way.  For now, I have to compartmentalise ABDL friendships into an encrypted channel.  This is for the sake of a doubtlessly-misunderstanding family and in particular, my beloved.  I’m quite confident that it would be Herculean task to convince her that any casual chat with another ABDL over a coffee would be anything less than a fetish-fuelled gay sex romp forged in the crucible of my infidelity and cruelty.

My third regret I successfully avoided by not leaking on the chair!  Our meeting was at the end of a very long, and evidently well hydrated working day (recall my first regret).  I didn’t realise how wet my nappy was until I got out of the car to meet him.    

At this stage of affairs, I don’t really notice being wet.  It’s a kind of default.  Generally speaking these days, if I DO notice my nappy is wet, that is a cue that it is in fact soaked and I should consider doing something.  It was disturbing to me therefore to clamber out of my car and walk towards the venue entry, immediately noticing a distinctly floppy, weighty, slightly luke-warm wetness from my nappy zone.   I felt like I was wearing a lead-weighted pair of wet swimming trunks under my dry jeans.  That last long comfortable wee in the car driving there really had moved the needle.  Suspicious evaporatively-cooled spots around my plastic pant legging elastic hinted at future leaks.  It really wasn’t ideal dress for a first date. 

Inside, I squelched down into my chair very carefully but my Rearz “Barry” and Gary PUL waterproofs held the line as they usually do.  My outerwear was even still dry when I got home but at my evening change (which happened more or less immediately upon arriving home), my used Barry nappy fell off me like a dead koala out of a tree.

Upon reflection however, I felt that I had dominated the chat (perhaps that was the missing third regret proving that regrets, like disasters, do tend to travel as a threesome).  I’d like to think it was because I was being asked so many questions but I must realistically countenance the possibility that I just talk too much.  There were so many question I had of my counterpart that I’d failed to ask, presumably because I was talking about ME.

I guess we’ll just have to have another coffee and even up that score…

[ozziebee]

I was near your location a few weeks back, but time wasn’t on my side to organise something. Even had thoughts of dropping in to our favourite supplier. 

 

Next time!

[oznl]

10 minutes ago, ozziebee said:

I was near your location a few weeks back, but time wasn’t on my side to organise something. Even had thoughts of dropping in to our favourite supplier. 

 

Next time!

Aww you should have sent me a text or something.  Maybe we could have done a road trip to Brendale (supplies are low)  although work has crept up to 4 days per week full time now.

[oznl]

There’s nothing like 22 consecutive days of rainfall to test the mettle of a cloth nappy enthusiast.

The big wet in South East Queensland continues.  With Brisbane’s usual annual rainfall of around 1200mm having been reached and breached by February (with associated major flooding), the persistent La Nina weather pattern in cahoots with another meteorological monster called the “Indian Ocean Dipole” has served to funnel an apparently endless series of high-humidity warm rain events into our area well past the usual season and onward into what is supposed to be our sunny, cool and dry winter.  So much like my underwear these days, the weather has been unrelentingly warm and wet.

The household mildew colony has progressed from “pervasive” to “dominant life form” and is doubtless proceeding rapidly to “self-awareness”.  Wet beds are de rigueur for both of us (at least my nappy is warm) and dry washing but a distant memory.

Throughout the house, strategically placed racks of damp-ish clothing hang about waiting their turn for the dryer or just remain in place, optimistically hoping that the moisture within will somehow just get bored and leave of its own accord.

My habit of going into cloth nappies on Thursday night and trying to remain in cloth until Sunday morning has proven especially exasperating lately.  For six consecutive weeks, it’s been impossible to line dry anything during the day because the ground and foliage around the line is super-saturated AND/OR, it invariably rains at least once heavily during each day, typically when I am at work.

The “ka-thud, ka-thud, ka-thud!” of the tumbler dryer tumbling is as much part of the soundtrack of our lives as the rain on the roof.

My 60” x 60” flat terry square nappies tumble dry reasonably well although it is painfully apparent by the state of the dryer lint filter at the end of each load that some traumatic weight loss occurs with each episode.  Perhaps I should tumble dry myself once a week instead of giving up beer to lose weight?

The thicker products (my Rearz Omutsu and also notably, my Babykins pull-up cotton diapers) are a different story.  Whilst on the surface, they emerge from the dryer, apparently warm and fluffy, this is but a fancy dress costume.  Beneath this warmed surface, cooler, humid climes reign benevolently over doubtless-abundantly reproducing micro-flora.  With tumble drying it seems they are never completely dry and therefore never completely clean.  I’ve taken to upping the dose of wash sanitiser I routinely add to the machine loads to try to control bacterial build up but this is an exercise that could be compared to using abortion when what was really needed was birth control.  I’m aware that I’ve woken up smelling of pee more than once in cloth recently which is a harbinger of domestic strife.

A strange thing though:  In the face of overwhelming and endless precipitation, my beloved seems to have called a truce on her usual campaign against on my unconventional washing.  With equanimity, she’s been advising me when the washer and/or dryer have become available for my “things”.  Last week, a pile of 85% dry cloth nappies remained, on display, in a spare bedroom for an entire week without attracting comment.  A couple of pairs of compression pants have been picked up and washed with more conventional loads.

I doubt very much that she’s coming around to the idea of a husband who lives in nappies and plastic pants but instead, somewhat pragmatically, is looking for ways to get them out of the laundry as quickly and as inoffensively as possible.

One possible out, BetterDry came back into stock this week but with an eye-watering 20% price hike. 

Chatting with the proprietor, this apparently is all to do with freight charges from Europe.  Now, the biggest supply chain charge with BetterDry is making them appear on the other side of the planet, eclipsing the cost of the nappies themselves.

Of course if they were made in China, it is debatable if freighting would even be an option, such is the chaos in Chinese ports right now.  Regardless of this, a unit price this high for BetterDry means that they are now competing with many other premium ABDL brands.   I am close to reconsidering brands.

A case of Barrys and BetterDrys now sets me back almost AUD300 and even with cloth nappies a few nights per week and Abena L4 on non-work days, this “investment” will only last a couple of months.

It’s always been at the back of my mind during all of this that in the event of unforeseen and catastrophic events (including runaway inflation and consequential economic penury), I could abandon this mad venture and re-join normality.

That’s no longer the case really.  At night I’m a proven bedwetter and I know that a decision to forego the night nappy is effectively a decision to have pee-soaked sheets at 2am.  If I slept alone, maybe I could risk this in an attempt to re-train but in a perverse turn of events, sharing a bed with my beloved means that this isn’t really an option. 

It could be that she herself is the one thing that will defend and preserve my growing dependency on the one thing of me that she hates most.

[oznl]

On Friday night I went to bed in a dry cloth nappy.  I woke at 3am.  My nappy was dry.  My bladder was full. I found this annoying.  I went in my nappy and fell back asleep but I remained slightly annoyed the next day.

On Saturday night I went to bed in a dry cloth nappy.  I woke at 3am.  I was wet.  I didn’t really need the finger check to tell me but I checked anyway:  a well-used nappy. My bladder was empty.  I was strangely comforted by this.  I didn’t need to use my nappy at all on waking so I fell back asleep.  I was happier the next morning.

I have no idea where this mindset sprang from.  Go figure…

[WBxx]

It’s precisely the same here.  The day after sleep wetting everything is good.  Traffic jams, stupid politicians, nothing bothers me.  Glow follows me the entire day.  I have a secret, I’m special, I wet the bed last night!

Conversely, waking dry I’m down on the world, depressed. 

[Stroller]

6 hours ago, oznl said:

On Friday night I went to bed in a dry cloth nappy.  I woke at 3am.  My nappy was dry.  My bladder was full. I found this annoying.  I went in my nappy and fell back asleep but I remained slightly annoyed the next day.

On Saturday night I went to bed in a dry cloth nappy.  I woke at 3am.  I was wet.  I didn’t really need the finger check to tell me but I checked anyway:  a well-used nappy. My bladder was empty.  I was strangely comforted by this.  I didn’t need to use my nappy at all on waking so I fell back asleep.  I was happier the next morning.

I have no idea where this mindset sprang from.  Go figure…

I suspect we'll never understand this.  Sometimes I wet automatically in bed, but only when I'm at least half awake.  Usually I just wake up for no apparent reason, wet, then go back to sleep.  No sense of urgency or a full bladder.  Very occasionally I'll wake with a full bladder, and then I sometimes find it difficult to wet.  No idea why.  During the day I just wet automatically these days.  But...I never wet in my sleep.  No idea why, because there's nothing stopping it happening the rest of the time.  No conscious decision-making to relax any muscles or to prepare myself in any way - I just start wetting.  So why on earth doesn't it happen when I'm asleep?

[oznl]

17 hours ago, Stroller said:

I suspect we'll never understand this.  Sometimes I wet automatically in bed, but only when I'm at least half awake.  Usually I just wake up for no apparent reason, wet, then go back to sleep.  No sense of urgency or a full bladder.  Very occasionally I'll wake with a full bladder, and then I sometimes find it difficult to wet.  No idea why.  During the day I just wet automatically these days.  But...I never wet in my sleep.  No idea why, because there's nothing stopping it happening the rest of the time.  No conscious decision-making to relax any muscles or to prepare myself in any way - I just start wetting.  So why on earth doesn't it happen when I'm asleep?

I’ve (rarely) experienced the “auto-pee” thing laying in bed shortly after waking but the bedwetting thing is definitely a sleep thing for me.  Sometimes the sensations around peeing will wake me but sometimes not.  Sometimes there are dreams fabricated around peeing.  Sometimes there is just pee when I wake.  Sometimes my body behaves like it used to and I’m woken by an urge to pee in the small hours.

It’s totally unpredictable but it happens a LOT more than it used to.  Alcohol helps a LOT (greatly increasing the probability of a "wet" sleep) but that of course too much alcohol brings its own problems.

It’s hard for me to suggest why you might not be sleep wetting since I don’t really understand why I DO.  I know that in my case, emerging nocturia was giving me plenty of opportunity to use my nappies during the night and using my nappies gave me loads of positive reinforcement as in contrast to getting up, I remained warm (even a bit warmer!), comfortable and more prone to falling back to sleep quickly.  Over time, it seemed I needed less and less wakefulness to pee until some nights, I didn’t need any at all.

17 hours ago, WBxx said:

It’s precisely the same here.  The day after sleep wetting everything is good.  Traffic jams, stupid politicians, nothing bothers me.  Glow follows me the entire day.  I have a secret, I’m special, I wet the bed last night!

Conversely, waking dry I’m down on the world, depressed. 

This has been a rather startling discovery I've made about myself.  When I started "24/7" I thought I might stop if something like bed wetting started.  Instead, I rationalised-away the evidence for months and when finally confronted, found it weirdly comforting.  Now I even find part of myself looking forward to “getting rid” of dry nights completely.

[Newbee]

I was a bedwetter well into my teens then it stopped and then started to have accidents in my 30s I am medically diagnosed as incontinent the point of this is that in the last three nights I have woken up dry twice and I found that comforting I wish it happened more often so I guess it’s the opposite to you

[BabyJilly_S]

It is an odd thing isn't it. I feel disappointed when i wake up in the night and those mornings when I awake in a full nappy I don't recall using I am basically beaming with happiness. 

I strongly suspect that the time i go to bed is affecting what happens. Those nights where I don't stay up late or don't fall asleep on the sofa and go to bed at a normal time seem far more likely to have uninterrupted sleep and no recollection of wetting.

 

[oznl]

17 hours ago, BabyJilly_S said:

It is an odd thing isn't it. I feel disappointed when i wake up in the night and those mornings when I awake in a full nappy I don't recall using I am basically beaming with happiness.

I'd love to understand the psychology behind it!

17 hours ago, BabyJilly_S said:

I strongly suspect that the time i go to bed is affecting what happens. Those nights where I don't stay up late or don't fall asleep on the sofa and go to bed at a normal time seem far more likely to have uninterrupted sleep and no recollection of wetting.

It's funny you should mention that, particularly the "fall asleep on the sofa" bit.

On the "failed Friday" venture, I'd actually fallen asleep in my recliner chair in front of the TV (helped in part by mediocre TV, fatigue, and a vat of red wine).  I actually woke with a start, realised it was past bedtime and changed before going to bed.  I can recall looking at the state of my Abena L4 upon removing it and suspecting I'd used it whilst asleep in the chair. 

As an "afternoon shift" nappy (it was a 3 nappy day), it was unusually wetter than I would have expected and I was completely empty-bladdered upon changing.

Falling asleep in front of YouTube Nurburgring hot laps at 9:30pm doesn't do much for sleep in bed later for sure...

On 5/30/2022 at 10:09 PM, Newbee said:

I was a bedwetter well into my teens then it stopped and then started to have accidents in my 30s I am medically diagnosed as incontinent the point of this is that in the last three nights I have woken up dry twice and I found that comforting I wish it happened more often so I guess it’s the opposite to you

Yours is most likely the more normal disposition towards things so I guess you can take some comfort that it's not YOU that's the weird one here ?