Strange days indeed - a 24 x 7 experiment

[oznl]

Only occasionally do I recall my dreams.  For the past 6 months (mostly spent in nappies 2/47) there have been a few occasions I’ve had “nappy dreams” which usually have involved vivid dreams about me needing to USE my nappies.  Sometimes I suspect those dreams segued into some kind of semi-conscious wetting event but the evidence is highly subjective.

To be honest, I haven’t had so many of those lately but the pattern of decreased (or no) recollection of wetting my nappy overnight remains.  Partly because this is the complete inverse of the received wisdom on acquired diaper dependency and partly because I often DO remember, I am still stubbornly convinced that I AM waking for these events but no longer enough to always clearly remember doing it next morning.

Recently there has been something new repeatedly appearing in some of these recalled dreams.  The plot of the dream is the usual random mix of symbolism and re-arranged reality but as I go about my business in my dream, I am aware that I wear nappies and this is something I need to account for.  The nappies are not the SUBJECT of my dream but they are factored in.  In these dreams, I co-incidentally think about things such as avoiding public exposure of my nappy, nappy changes, access to dry nappies etc.  I’m not dreaming ABOUT wearing nappies, but the fact that I wear nappies is reflected within them.

It’s a bit like my sub-conscious has caught up with current affairs.

[Little Sherri]

That's interesting - it's like your subconscious has now put nappies on the same status as having two feet and two hands - dreams will in all likelihood integrate this infrastructure, and a dream without it would be unusual. 

I haven't had dreams in which my diapers are just a background feature yet, or, really, any dreams about diapers at all, with one exception: I dreamed last week that I was wetting my diaper in bed, and I had the thought at one point that I better check into if I needed to change it,  and then I woke up, but my diaper was dry. So, I dreamed about wetting my diaper, but didn't actually wet it, which is unusual, because, historically, when I was a kid, and even on rare occasions as an adult, if I had a dream that involved going #1 - peeing behind a bush, say, or reliving myself in a toilet after desperately needing to do so, that was a sure sign I had wet the bed. 

This week, my family went away on vacation, and I have the house to myself for about three weeks, and I happily put all my underwear into a bag in the closet, and am operating strictly out of my diaper drawer. One question for you: I saw the post about wearing a pull-up to the gym - how did that work, other than the failure afterwards? I would banish my underwear to the basement but for the fact that I will be at the gym a couple of times a week, and I have yet to find a diaper that can survive an extended run on the treadmill without either chafing, blowing apart, or both. 

[oznl]

17 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I saw the post about wearing a pull-up to the gym - how did that work, other than the failure afterwards? I would banish my underwear to the basement but for the fact that I will be at the gym a couple of times a week, and I have yet to find a diaper that can survive an extended run on the treadmill without either chafing, blowing apart, or both. 

Apart from the egregious operator error, it can hold up fairly well.  I don't do it as a matter of course, I'm still inclined to wear old fashioned underwear for the 45 - 50m involved in a session and go straight to my evening Molicare in the private bathrooms the gym has.   This is ok but sometimes there is a drip or two when I first switch to underwear and there is usually great relief when I re-diaper myself later on.  On evenings where I will be going into cloth, I don't NEED a full Molicare and so a pull-up is ok.   I find them expensive though.  A$39 for a pack of 14 is frankly ridiculous and when these run out, I'll be looking for something cheaper.

[Little Sherri]

That is steep. It's part of why I'm not a fan of pull-ups. Also, the ones we can get here mostly look like what you would envision a grandmother's panties to look like - not my, er, style. I don't know how much the Canadian diaper market crosses over with the Australian scene, but I will mention that I have drawn some luck from a rather unusual source; I think I told you before about the mystery box of sample diapers that got delivered to my door a couple of months ago, how it turned out to have been a prank, etc. Anyway, one of the diapers in that package - Prevail 360 Breezers - can be had here for about a dollar a diaper, basically, from a mail-order distributor, if you buy a case at a time. I've found them pretty reliable to about the 75% point, they're comfortable, and they are relatively slim, so I can wear them for daytime use under basically anything I own. They aren't much to look at - just a basic white diaper of the "breathable" variety, but the fasteners are tenacious and seemingly infinitely re-adjustable. They have elasticized wings (like a Pampers Cruiser) and stay snug, and they are quiet. I save my more expensive, bulky premium diapers for the evenings and when I have the house to myself and stealth is not a concern. 

[oznl]

The retail adult diaper range in Australia isn't good.  Chemists (drug stores) will stock a highly limited range of dubiously-effective products at highway robbery prices (think $39 for 14 Molicare pull ups).  I suspect most incontinent people use an online surgical supplies vendor.  I do.  If I want BetterDry however, that's only available effectively through ABDL channels and with associated pricing.  I'd love to be able to get things like NorthShore down here at prices that would make them viable for everyday use but it seems not to be.

I had a look at my supplier.  They have some "Prevail Breezer" but I couldn't see any "360 Breezer".  I don't know if there is a difference.  The Prevail certainly were cheap.  18 x large Prevail Breezer briefs were A$18 (about C$18) so it would seem to be comparable pricing.

I'd need to be able to remove the diaper for a shower after gym and get it back on again  (it would be barely wet at all).  Easy for a pull-up but tougher for a tape-on.  Tena pants are an option.  They don't have to last long.

[oznl]

Today marks 3 months of 24/7 in my second 24/7 semester and 5.5 months of 24/7 this year.

I am clearly noticing now that the frequency of me waking up wet without clear recollection of when this happened is becoming higher and higher.  Over the last week, it’s been the case more often than not.

The evidence is that I AM waking to wet.  Most nights I’m in Molicare disposables under terry-lined waterproofs.  Like most disposables, the Molicare are only reliable for me in bed if I wet them whilst laying on my back.

I am an inveterate side sleeper and have been for most of my life but lately, I am increasingly waking up on my back. 

I can sometimes vaguely remember waking and going onto my back in order to wet but it seems that I am falling back asleep before turning again.  Other times, I remember waking, intending to wet and not remembering what happened next.  It’s not clear if I fell back asleep peeing or forgot to pee and fell back asleep.  I usually never feel any urge to pee these days but I presume this is because I never allow my bladder to fill to any extent.

Every morning now I wake with a soaked nappy and an empty bladder which frankly, I find very pleasant.  In my pre-24/7 days,  I’d invariably be woken by my bladder at 4am  and spend the last 2 hours of my sleep fitfully dozing, trying to pretend I do NOT need to pee because if I get up to deal with it, my body “wakes up” and I’ll never fall back asleep.

[Stroller]

8 hours ago, oznl said:

The evidence is that I AM waking to wet.  Most nights I’m in Molicare disposables under terry-lined waterproofs.  Like most disposables, the Molicare are only reliable for me in bed if I wet them whilst laying on my back.

I am an inveterate side sleeper and have been for most of my life but lately, I am increasingly waking up on my back.

That makes a lot of sense to me.  I only get to wear at night occasionally, so I haven't got as far as not remembering whether I woke to wet or not.  When I can wear a nappy at night, I'm getting into more of a routine though, & it sounds very like you are talking about here.  I generally sleep on my side, but it's much easier for me to wet if I'm on my back.  Last night Mummy was away, so I was in nappies.  I half-woke three times to wet, each time pretty much automatically rolling onto my back as I woke.  I wet, then rolled back onto my side and went back to sleep.  If I was doing this every night I'm pretty sure I'd soon stop remembering I'd half-woken, wet & gone back to sleep.

[nappylover78]

16 hours ago, oznl said:

In my pre-24/7 days,  I’d invariably be woken by my bladder at 4am  and spend the last 2 hours of my sleep fitfully dozing, trying to pretend I do NOT need to pee because if I get up to deal with it, my body “wakes up” and I’ll never fall back asleep.

That's why I'd recommend sleeping in nappies to anyone, not just AB/DLs and bedwetters/incontinent people! It takes away the choice between those two undesirable alternatives (and anyone who gets up more than once a night should definitely wear a nappy).

[oznl]

Busted.  Well, kind of.  Not really.  But it seems like I may have annoyed somebody.

I went to the gym today for my normal change and work-out to find an A4 size printed sign on gym letterhead stuck to the wall above the sanitary waste container:

“IMPORTANT NOTICE:  PLEASE DO NOT PLACE ANY NAPPIES OR INCONTINENCE PANTS IN THESE BINS!”

Subtle eh?  They must have been annoyed.  It was all in upper case.  I would have thought a “this bin is only for…” would have been a little more diplomatic but I don’t manage a gym franchise.

I’m not entirely sure what the problem might have been.  There are a number of bathrooms in the facility and it’s not like I ever got close to filling one of those containers up.  Furthermore, used nappies were wet only and tightly wrapped and the bin had pivoting deposit compartment (like a parcel mailbox) instead of a lid making it airtight as you’d want a container of that purpose to be.  There was no smell.  It's a gym, it's the towels you need to fear.  Another mystery is that those bins are (according to their label) collected by an outsource service provider (nothing to do with gym or even base building staff) and as far I know, they are classed as biohazardous and nobody touches the contents.  So where the forensic examination of bin contents happened I cannot imagine.

Well, that’s a little bit awkward.  Of course I will comply (as opposed to blow cover and escalate) but it makes a complicated life just that slightly more complicated.  There’s a (very slightly) larger bin in the disabled toilet that is generically labelled “sanitary waste”.   Ironically, a disabled services provider has just moved into the corporate park so if this too is a problem, they may have to lift their game for legitimate reason.

I wish I suffered from stamp collecting instead.

[Little Sherri]

Wow, eh? One could definitely legitimately argue that banning nappies from a sealed public waste bin is discriminatory, but one would have to stand there and personally make the argument, possibly in nappies, wouldn't one? Unless there is some way to submit an anonymous email to management, or to the head office, if it's a chain. 

Then there is the question of who complained about it. The collection service? But surly they've seen far, far worse? Other gym users? But how would they have become aware of it? Are there any local laws requiring post-collection sorting of commercial waste to screen it for organics and recyclables? Perhaps, if that's the case, the waste company has run into labour insurrection issues. But most of the larger companies of that sort make their bread and butter dealing with healthcare institutions, which means, again, they would be accustomed to far worse than a nappy or two. Maybe a staff member has to bundle it up and deposit into a central bin for collection, and they complained. The waste bin in the disabled toilet, marked "sanitary", is presumably handled differently, or handled with different expectations, anyway. 

This is one of those knee-jerk institutional reactions that probably opens up legitimate human rights concerns, but, in order for justice to prevail, someone has to point out that adult nappies are required by a portion of the populace, including presumably a portion of the gym-attending populace, and that businesses can't ban wheelchairs because they might leave marks on the tiles, and they can't ban babies because nappies are going to end up in the trash, and they can't ban the blind out of liability concerns. 

On another topic, @oznl, I wanted to ask you about plastic pants, because I know that you use them frequently, if not continually. I haven't added plastic pants to my repertoire very often up to now, primarily because of the bulk factor - if I want to wear diapers & plastic pants, at least during the day, I'd have to up-size my wardrobe in order to accommodate them. Though perhaps the ones I own aren't state of the art; I believe they are actually made of vinyl. 

However, as with you, I have had some near-catastrophes since I embarked on my own 24/7 journey about 3.5 months ago - diapers have failed me here and there, and I know that I am leaving a certain amount of diaper capacity (and money) on the table because of my conservative approach, particularly when I am in public. So, that said, I decided since I have the house to myself for a couple of weeks, to wear plastic pants more often, and that brings me to my question, if you don't mind me asking: my admittedly limited experiment seems to suggest that plastic pants contribute to chafing, and they contribute to diaper rash. This may be a function of my using the plastic pants with my least trustworthy diapers, which are cheap supermarket Depends that I am trying to burn through - I already knew they tended to contribute more to dermal irritation than the higher-quality brands that I prefer these days. But the plastic pants definitely made things worse, to the point of almost (almost) making me consider going a couple of days without diapers. In the end, I've used lots of zinc oxide cream, and switched to premium, cloth-shelled nappies, and I have managed not to resort to abandoning my project (except when running). 

But I am curious as to if you have had any chafing or diaper rash issues, and what you did to stave them off, particularly in light of your dedication to plastic pants. Thanks for any insights you have to offer, and thanks for your tutelage in general. 

Cheers.  

[oznl]

6 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Then there is the question of who complained about it. The collection service? But surly they've seen far, far worse? Other gym users? But how would they have become aware of it? Are there any local laws requiring post-collection sorting of commercial waste to screen it for organics and recyclables? Perhaps, if that's the case, the waste company has run into labour insurrection issues. But most of the larger companies of that sort make their bread and butter dealing with healthcare institutions, which means, again, they would be accustomed to far worse than a nappy or two. Maybe a staff member has to bundle it up and deposit into a central bin for collection, and they complained. The waste bin in the disabled toilet, marked "sanitary", is presumably handled differently, or handled with different expectations, anyway. 

This is one of those knee-jerk institutional reactions that probably opens up legitimate human rights concerns, but, in order for justice to prevail, someone has to point out that adult nappies are required by a portion of the populace, including presumably a portion of the gym-attending populace, and that businesses can't ban wheelchairs because they might leave marks on the tiles, and they can't ban babies because nappies are going to end up in the trash, and they can't ban the blind out of liability concerns.

This is exactly what has me wondering.  How in the heck did this get found out?  I would have thought those bins would be regarded as bio-hazardous and dealt with accordingly.  There is ONE thing playing on my mind.  At around 5:30pm, the corporate park cleaners assemble in a small posse down in one of the car parks.  Curiously for Australia, they all seem to be South American and there is lots of latin laughter and yelling before they get their collective arses into gear and start their evening toil.

The day BEFORE this sign, I was walking to the car and they were bantering and I distinctly thought I heard "NAPPIES!" and peals of laughter but it is entirely possible that this is nothing more than a variant of the cocktail party effect.  On the other hand, it is entirely possible that there is yet more dodgy dealings in this particular corporate park and the owner is actually "managing" biohazard collection using general cleaners and general waste.  I've never stopped to think about if there is regulatory considerations for this form of waste or not.  I may just be a corporate nicety that in fact has no legal standing and such waste can be collected and tossed in the general trash by anybody.  Let's face it, that's what is going to happen from the collective homes of the contributors anyway.

For the morbidly curious (with Fetlife accounts), I happy-snapped the offending sign and it is at https://fetlife.com/users/445082/pictures/84430136

6 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

On another topic, @oznl, I wanted to ask you about plastic pants, because I know that you use them frequently, if not continually. I haven't added plastic pants to my repertoire very often up to now, primarily because of the bulk factor - if I want to wear diapers & plastic pants, at least during the day, I'd have to up-size my wardrobe in order to accommodate them. Though perhaps the ones I own aren't state of the art; I believe they are actually made of vinyl. 

However, as with you, I have had some near-catastrophes since I embarked on my own 24/7 journey about 3.5 months ago - diapers have failed me here and there, and I know that I am leaving a certain amount of diaper capacity (and money) on the table because of my conservative approach, particularly when I am in public. So, that said, I decided since I have the house to myself for a couple of weeks, to wear plastic pants more often, and that brings me to my question, if you don't mind me asking: my admittedly limited experiment seems to suggest that plastic pants contribute to chafing, and they contribute to diaper rash. This may be a function of my using the plastic pants with my least trustworthy diapers, which are cheap supermarket Depends that I am trying to burn through - I already knew they tended to contribute more to dermal irritation than the higher-quality brands that I prefer these days. But the plastic pants definitely made things worse, to the point of almost (almost) making me consider going a couple of days without diapers. In the end, I've used lots of zinc oxide cream, and switched to premium, cloth-shelled nappies, and I have managed not to resort to abandoning my project (except when running).

MOST times I will wear some kind of waterproof pant over my nappies and this has saved me countless times.  During the day, I will wear Gary wear PUL pants and these are just awesome.  Bulk is less of a consideration because I wear them beneath a form of compression pant.  Around 10 - 15% of the time, there will be some minor wetness, usually around the rear leggings on my PUL pants by the end of the workday that would otherwise be on my clothes.  The PUL pants are hard wearing and somewhat breathable which I think considerably lessens the diaper rash risk.

At night, I wear full on dual-layer terry lined vinyl waterproofs from Babykins (go team Canada!) over Molicare slip maxi.  The Babykins are awesome.  Maybe I could use more expensive disposables but as things stand, they take hits for the team roughly one night in three.  Usually, they can be dried out during the day and I wash them once per week.  I don't care about bulk here because I'm in bed.  These ARE bulky.

Pretty much the only times I will NOT have waterproof pants on at gym (I'm either diaper-free or in a pull-up) OR my evening diaper after gym.  It's a Molicare slip maxi and I just wear it under a compression garment (I use women's shaping pants - they are perfect and cheap).  The evening Molicare has the lightest duty of them all so I don't need waterproofs.  Even so, if I am out of an evening, I will upgrade to a more premium diaper and re-add the PUL waterproof pants.

I don't run. I'm indifferent about it but my knees just hate it.  I'd be wary about plastic pants in that scenario though.  I *have* run in nappies and waterproofs prior to 24/7 and recall hellish chafing on my inside thighs.  I might consider the lycra-lined ones from Babykins.  They are useless under cloth because the moisture wicks to the lycra and then into pyjamas and bed but under a disposable during exercise, they might be ok.  Overall though, I'd still be inclined to ditch the plastics during exercise.  Their time to shine is with long haul nappies and a lot of sitting down.  I wear PUL or vinyl waterproofs at night and during the day as insurance over disposables but I'd avoid gym time in them.

Hope this helps,

 

 

[ozziebee]

I wonder whether the cleaner at that place do what the cleaners at my current place of work do when cleaning the toilets (disabled toilet too) - reach in and remove all the rubbish from the bin, but leave the bin liner in place. 

Cheapskates. 

99% of the time, the rubbish in our toilet bins are paper hand towel. So they get away with the practice. 

The bin liners themselves are often clear plastic, not black. I’ve never changed in these toilets as a result. 

[oznl]

46 minutes ago, ozziebee said:

I wonder whether the cleaner at that place do what the cleaners at my current place of work do when cleaning the toilets (disabled toilet too) - reach in and remove all the rubbish from the bin, but leave the bin liner in place. 

Cheapskates. 

99% of the time, the rubbish in our toilet bins are paper hand towel. So they get away with the practice. 

The bin liners themselves are often clear plastic, not black. I’ve never changed in these toilets as a result. 

Yep.  The more I think about this, the more I suspect that some low cost short-cuts are getting taken here and the cleaners are emptying these bins into general waste and having a moan about it.  There are a couple of nappies in the disabled toilet sanitary bin now.  I'll be fascinated to see if they arc up about THAT.

[oznl]

It’s been a while and I should probably make some kind of update. 

This week I was attending a corporate conference (in my own city at least) where amongst other duties, I was the speaker for a keynote address.  It was a small audience, less than 100 people in a city hotel but as I was up there facing the usual glitches:  the AV people had positioned a time counter right in the middle of the front-of-stage fold-back monitor meaning that I couldn’t read my own slides, my lapel mike would feedback if I walked to close to one side of the stage and the stage creaked alarmingly.  But in addition to these usual headwinds against forgettable presentations, it occurred to me that for this year’s conference, I had a new challenge: on stage I realised my nappy was actually pretty wet and I wondered if my crotch was visibly swollen.  It was a darkish room, I’d worn dark jeans and a loose dark jacket as partial camouflage and hopefully much of the audience were sleeping peacefully after their early morning flights. 

A corporate photographer took high resolution photographs of me from every conceivable angle (as he did for every other speaker).  That didn’t worry me quite so much.  I’ve been going to these kinds of conferences for decades and I’ve NEVER seen ANY output from those photographers.  I think they are just there to perpetuate the illusion of occasion and afterwards, just delete the pictures and send us a bill making everybody happy.  In olden days, they probably didn’t even bother to load film.

Day #1 I was able to sneak an afternoon nappy change in the hotel disabled toilet before the day segued into the awful inevitability of a corporate evening dinner.  Day #2 I had no such break and was practically floating in my BetterDry as I helped others pack equipment at 5pm hoping that my nappy wasn’t showing.  I actually leaked a little in the car driving home but it wasn’t enough to really notice.

Apart from a couple of local trips coming up I have a new curved ball to deal with.  A couple of days worth of internal conference in Thailand.  Wearing nappies to this triggers not one but THREE challenges:

1. I will be the guy taking a suitcase for a 3 day trip

2. I will be the guy failing body-scanner testing potentially in sight of colleagues

3. I will be the guy who has decided to further insult and offend his wife by getting arrested for illegal diaper use in South East Asia, appearing on CNN being carted off to indefinite incarceration in some machine-gun-encrusted jail thusly losing my his job and confining his wife and dependents to humility-ridden poverty.

Still thinking this one through but my inclination is to give it a red hot go.  At this point, although I’m am TELLING you that I’m fully continent, I’m not sure I want to battle-test that assumption on an airline seat or an expensive hotel mattress (ESPECIALLY the latter based on recent-but-isolated circumstantial evidence).

[Newbee]

Hi onzl,

thanks for the update I must admit I did get a bit of a giggle out of your last point I can just picture that all over the news.

good luck with your trip I’m sure everything will be fine.

[oznl]

About a month ago I made mention of how the fact that I now wear nappies all the time had crept into my dreams.  This was somewhat different from my earlier, intermittent “nappy dreams” where the USE of nappies was the focal point of the dream and may (or may not) have been associated with an unconscious or semiconscious wetting event.  The “I wear nappies now” dreams were simply run of the mill dreams where managing my nappies was woven into the general narrative.  I can’t recall dreaming about managing toileting prior to wearing nappies full time but then again, there’s a lot less psycho-social baggage around just using a bathroom like a grown-up so it wouldn’t loom large in my consciousness.

Anyway…

One night earlier this week I had a series of disturbing, vivid dreams with periods of semi-lucidity between them that WERE focused on nappies but in a new way.  The recurring theme of these dreams was that my use of nappies were exposed to others.  I was not happy about that in these dreams and I have zero interest in exhibitionism but in each case, situational reality trumped discretion.

In my first dream, I was in a badly soiled nappy (which in real life, does not even routinely happen).  I’d taken it off outside of some cabin I was staying in and poop was falling out of it everywhere as I somewhat implausibly carried it around the parking area out front.  Yeah, gross and if you want to hide that you are in a full diaper, try not unpacking it outside in a car park.  It was a dream remember.  People turn into penguins in dreams.  I've seen it happen.  But I digress.

I knew somebody was watching me.  I was picking up pieces of it from the ground with sticks, trying to flick it into the garden but I couldn’t get rid of it all.  Somehow, it splashed back and got onto me and I rushed indoors to wash it off my face and I knew this would also be witnessed.  I was thoroughly uncomfortable and woke up.

Falling back asleep I dreamt again. I was in an office location I left nearly 30 years ago but some of my present-day staff were there with me.  We were moving office furniture from one end of the long, narrow building down to the other.   No idea why.  It was a dream.  My brilliant plan was that instead of carrying a heavy fridge a few hundred feet through the office, we could leverage an old office van we had and drive the fridge from one end of the park to the rear door at the other via the carpark that ran alongside (for a dream, this was a remarkably accurate reflection of that office’s layout and a curiously viable strategy)!   Carrying the refrigerator out to the van with the assistance of one of my team members, I was careful to make sure when bending and stretching that my nappies were not exposed.  This was to no avail because when we got to the van, a pile of my (clean) cloth nappies were on the passenger seat.  My team member made no comment on these but he saw them and his gaze lingered.  Going back into the kitchen for some leftover random fridge bits, a pair of my plastic pants was mysteriously laying on the table and if that wasn’t incriminating enough, they were pee-wet.  Figuring that all was lost, I nonchalantly rinsed them in the sink in whilst he stood behind me watching.  My secret was out.

Mercifully at this point, I was awoken by my partner getting out of bed at around 3am to go to the bathroom (ah, I remember when I used to do that).  I was laying on my side and became aware that I could feel pee slowly dripping behind the unpadded part of my Molicares on my hip that was down against the mattress and draining into the padding on my bum.  As far as I could tell, my bladder was empty.

This would only usually happen if I had peed laying on my side and but had no recollection of waking to do so.  Even if I did awake, I would roll onto my back to insure against leaks.  It’s possible I’d wet myself whilst asleep (I’d had wine the night before which seems to inhibit recollection), more likely I’d half woken and gotten the “pee” bit wrong and failed to recall it the next morning but any wetting that may have occurred did not manifest in my dream at all but that’s a bit of matter by the side.

I didn’t enjoy those dreams very much and can remember them clearly days later.  I’m wondering if this is some hangover from the gym-sign debacle from a couple of weeks ago.  Those @#$ing signs remain on every wall in every bathroom and will probably be there until I can somehow discretely retire them myself. 

I’ll complete month 4 of this 24x7 shift early next week (6.5 months in total).  I’ve a quick trip down to Sydney but that’s pretty routine these days.  I don’t even bother to pack emergency underwear anymore, just a couple of spare nappies and a change of pants.

[oznl]

So here’s an impromptu update:  I wet the bed last night.  No ifs, buts or maybes.  Well, technically I wet IN bed because I was suitably attired but you get my point.

We’d had a bit of a dinner party last night and, amongst a lot of hilarity and reasonably good Spotify, rather a lot got drunk, a fair share of it by me.  I’m not sure at what point we all thought that we could massively improve our Fitbit scores by taping them to the ceiling fan and running it for a while.  It was that kind of night.

Things finished up around 11pm and whilst my partner got the dishwasher started, I collected a bountiful collection of empty bottles and took them out to the recycle bin.  She’d gone to bed by the time I’d gotten back inside and I changed out of my fairly wet Molicare into my night time Molicare Maxi under terry-lined waterproofs and headed for bed.  I was sober enough to recall that unusually, I was still dry when I got into bed.  Normally I’d deliberately empty myself before falling asleep but it seemed the late change threw off my routine and there was nothing in the tank so to speak.

Unsurprisingly, I must have fallen asleep almost instantly.

Next thing, it’s 6:50am and I’ve woken up.  As is my habit, I relax to empty my bladder but I don’t need to pee at all there’s nearly nothing there.  Just a dribble really. Everything is warm down in the pants department anyway so it’s a bit hard to tell what’s going on.  I must have fallen back asleep again quickly because the next time I looked at the clock it was 8am.  A good time to get up and make some coffee for us.

As I walk down to the kitchen, I can feel that my nappy has some weight and I’m a little confused by that because I’ve no recollection of wetting and by my calculation, should have nothing more than a damp spot at the front.

It’s only at my morning change that I realise that my night nappy was thoroughly wet.

I went to bed dry, and woke up 8 hours later the next day to find myself with an empty bladder and a soaked nappy.  It was that simple.  There were no diaper dreams, no hints, no hazy recollections, nothing at all.  I don’t recall waking up at ANY point during the night.  It was a great night’s sleep and the morning’s evidence was incontrovertible.

Last night was my 119^th consecutive diapered night and my 190^th night in diapers this year.

[oznl]

Month 4 has rolled past and I’m off into month 5 (7.5 months YTD) of my 24x7 experiment. 

I remain interested in developing incontinence, probably as a way of rationalising my preference to be diapered.  In terms of daytime continence however, I remain pretty well toilet trained.  Sometimes I think I’m actually more in control now than I was a month or so ago!  Quite a few times I’ve found myself holding.  I’m wondering if that is a kind of reverse effect of habituation.  I’m so used to wearing nappies that I forget to use them?  There is some evidence however to say that my bladder has indeed shrunk:  I found myself “needing to go” the other day for the first time in a long time (forgot to release for a long period of time).  I worried about flooding my already-wet nappy. No chance.  There really wasn’t much.

Night time is a different story.  Whilst I’m a long way from calling myself a bedwetter.   I DID wet the bed the other week and this was the first bedwetting incident for more than 50 years that I’m absolutely certain that I slept completely through.  It’s now very clear to me that in comparison with Oznl of 6 months ago, current Oznl has only vague insight into what happens in his nappy in bed at night.  I await curiously to see if there is a repeat of one of those incontrovertible “you wet the bed” nights coming up.

Another trip this week once again, with flights disrupted by violent winter weather systems down south.  Sydney airport responded in its usual fashion to any puff of wind capable of dislodging leaves by closing one of its two runways, cancelling a slew of flights and delaying the remaining ones at which point the airlines play their part in the pantomime by progressively lying to their passengers about the magnitude of the delay.   What PR muppet thinks it might be better to inform passengers of a 5-minute delay 12 times instead of just saying “1 hour” up front?

Yet again, it was more than an hour past my scheduled departure time before we bumped and rocked our way through the night skies between Sydney and home in Brisbane.  I was going to stretch my BetterDry to last for the flight so that I could change straight into cloth night diapers when I got home but once the creeping delays started, I changed myself in the Qantas Club disabled toilets only to discover that I actually wasn’t that wet and probably would have made it.  This seems to be a part of a deteriorating ability to correlate urge with quantity.  Sometimes I’m wetter than I think (usually mornings) and other times, I’m drier than I think.  At least it was only a Tena I wasted.  I HATE wasting nappies.

I got home late and changed straight into a cloth nappy for bed.  I think I caught a sour look or two from my partner but got no comment.  It's clear she still hates this but I think she realises that I've made my stand and I'm not backing down.  She hasn't even mentioned the "nappy" word for weeks.

On the topic of “on the road” nappy changes, I should share an interesting postscript to the great “No nappies/incontinence pants in the hygiene bin!” gym sign crisis of three weeks ago.  Since then, I’ve been stuck with either carrying a used BetterDry the size of a football home with me after work or, tactically dumping it in the much-larger “sanitary waste” bin in the disabled toilet.  More of the former than the latter really.  I’d only used the disabled toilet two or three times.

On Monday, before I left for Sydney, I decided to dump my nappy in that bin after gym as I already had a load of stuff in my laptop bag.  Popping in I tried to open the bin lid but it was jammed.  Upon examination, it was jammed because it was full.  It was full of large nappies: not mine.  It must have been LOADS of them.  I did NOT try to extract one of these for forensic examination to see if it was an adult nappy but a number of revelations were thusly obtained:

1.       I am NOT the only entity in that corporate park who is disposing of nappies and this is NOT a kiddie-friendly kind of venue.

2.       It was large bin, a LOT of nappies to fill it and it didn’t smell good.  Either the local chapter of the incontinence society had a beer party at the café next door that day or (more likely), that bin is not getting anywhere near the kind of daily love it deserves.

3.       Although I cannot deny my role as an offender, I may not have been the ONLY offender in the great gym hygiene bin nappy mystery of 2019

[ozziebee]

Haha, thats gold!

I wonder whether those ones are from a DL covertly wearing at work and disposing before going home, or someone with a need, and find its the only place in the estate to dispose of them thoughtfully?

[oznl]

Saturday 10^th August 2019 (Day 125/Day 196 YTD)

Hot tip: How to strip-wash smelly cloth nappies and remain married

My wife has just headed off down to Sydney for a holiday with some girlfriends and so I have 5 days to myself.  I still have my remaining teenager at home but it is highly unlikely she will emerge from her bedroom but to collect food or visit the bathroom.  I do not anticipate being spoken to unless the internet fails.

My dear wife, in stark contrast to myself, is a member of the “Infrequent Flyer” program meaning that any kind of flight departure is an occasion of great ceremony involving a luggage ensemble worthy of the royal family (honestly, I travel with CPAP and nappies yet still travel lighter than her) and outside of her wardrobe-in-a-suitcase, carry-on including in-flight coats, jackets, perhaps a light jumper, magazine, backup-magazine, a kindle in case the magazines don’t work and of course, barley sugars in case her head explodes on cabin depressurisation.  By the time she gets herself sorted out after take-off, she will be on descent.

All of this pre-departure check-listing had to take place (for reasons I cannot fathom) in our walk-in-robe and en-suite this morning meaning that I was left with less than 5 minutes to remove-and-hide a very wet cloth night nappy, rinse, change, get dressed and down to the car in order to take her to the airport. 

So due to my shortcomings, we didn’t leave exactly on time.  Regardless, she still comfortably made her flight and as I type this, FlightAware is telling me that she’s somewhere over the Gold Coast climbing through 5,000m heading south.

So, for as much as possible over the next 5 days, I will be in cloth nappies instead of disposables (two work days I will deal with in BetterDry).  I drove her to the airport wearing a Velcro cloth "DPF" diaper with booster but she was too excited to notice my additional bulk.

The method behind this madness is that I’ve finally worked out how to strip-wash cloth my Babykins pull-on cotton nappies effectively so that they no longer smell like a 3 day old cat litter tray after use and these 5 days will give me the opportunity to cycle my cloth nappy ensemble through this process as I use them.

The trick?

I boil them.

This is only necessary with the heavier pull-on terry and cotton nappies.  With a folded terry square, a bit of a soak and a hot wash is enough.  But to de-stink the former, a 5 minute boil in 6 – 8 litres of plain water does the trick nicely, yielding a satisfying quantity of detergent residue and other mysterious chemical cloudiness in the pot water instead of the nappy.  Throw them in the washing machine afterwards and they come back smelling as fresh as the metaphorical daisy, even when they’re a bit wet the next night in bed.

This is something I dare NOT attempt in the presence of the minister for domestic affairs. 

For those of you who can recall the infamous kitchen scene in “Fatal Attraction”, I can assure you that boiling a bunny would involve considerably less marital back-draft than cooking a procession of used adult nappies on the range top.  Any conflation of kitchen utensils and nappy sanitisation would lead to conflagration.

Thus, I have 5 days to use (and subsequently sanitise) as much of my cloth nappy collection.  I will be cooking up a storm.

[Newbee]

Hi onzl, 

I must admit I’m bit like your wife we go away for a couple of days but unpack enough for about a week and a half and also I always pack enough nappies for a week more than I need.

Enjoy your time without having to worry about your wife I just hope your teenager doesn’t get suspicious on what your cooking and decides to look.

[oznl]

A combination of weekend, work-from-home, public holiday, time off, more weekend and the desire to strip wash a lot of cloth nappies has seen me do 24/7 “old school” this week.  With the exception of Monday daytime where I had to wear a BetterDry to the office, I’ve been in cloth nappies and plastic pants all week. 

As much as I love the soft feel, bulk, range (mostly just 2 nappies per day!) and leak-reluctant nature of cloth nappies however, wearing them 24x7 is a LOT of work!  There are a few downsides:

• My mobility is restricted.  No matter how you fold it, having a 60” x 60” terry towelling pad wrapped and pinned around your crotch is going to affect your flexibility.
• Odour control is non-existent: whatever you do in your nappy, you’re going to smell soon enough no matter how tight fitting your plastic pants may be.   
• They do nothing to manage rash:  I still don’t have nappy rash but I feel that wearing wet cloth nappies for protracted periods of time is tempting the gods.  I felt a little “sunburn” down there once or twice but a bit of a dry out and plenty of anti-rash talc seems to have kept things at bay.  I’m wary about using sudo-crème with cloth nappies though.
• The laundry load is intimidating:  it just never stops.  I have a large washing machine and 24x7 nappy use guarantees a full load just for nappies every other day and either the washing line is loaded with drying nappies or I’m running the tumble-dryer (which I hate to do).

But they feel gorgeous and in bed at night and I don’t have to think at all about what position I might be in for wetting at all.  Pee happens whenever and wherever with zero leaks.  Interestingly, I’ve still found myself waking up on my back, something that didn’t used to happen before I got conditioned to rolling onto my back in bed at night to use my disposables.

It will be back to mostly-disposable come Saturday.  There is no way I could get away with wearing cloth nappies at the office.  The bulk is muted somewhat under jeans and compression pants but wet cloth nappies smell like, well, wet cloth nappies.  Maybe if I ever found myself retired and on my own for any length of time…

I picked up my wife from the airport the other day after her holiday away with girlfriends and she’s been a bit grumpy ever since.  I’m not sure if it’s just that she’s sick of working (well, so am I but the money has to come from somewhere), it’s more of the menopause-bear or we’re building up for another round of underwear wars.  I might be reading too much into that though. 

Travel again next week (interstate – no biggie) and travel the week after (OS travel including body scanners and new changing logistical challenges)…  I’m so sick of it but I need to try to do this for at least 6 more years, much longer if my wife makes good on her threat and drops back to part time work or even retires early.

[oznl]

Another week, another domestic business trip: just an overnighter down to wintry, windy Melbourne where my flights were yet again, disrupted by the ongoing severe weather affecting Australia’s south east corner.  My travel-nappy routine is reasonably well polished by now and I don’t actually take any kind of grown up underwear away with me, just a spare nappy or two.

I had some minor issues underestimating how wet I am.  Flying down, I put on my BetterDry at around 4am at home and so by 4pm at the other end of the country, it’s done some hard yards.  Unsurprisingly, I found the leggings on my plastic pants to be slightly damp when changing in my hotel room.   Similarly, flying home, I put on my day-nappy in my hotel around 7:30am but it’s 5pm or later before I can change myself in the airport lounge into an evening Molicare.  This time, there was actually a very small puddle in the crotch of my waterproof pants and I’d narrowly averted a leak.

It was after 10:30pm by the time I yet again bounced home with the seatbelt light on.  Fairly wet again, I headed straight to our en-suite for a shower and a change before bed.  My wife was already in bed but awake and interested to talk to me.  That’s fine but it did somewhat limit the privacy I could have in changing and so inevitably, she saw me wearing a wet nappy under my plastic pants.  Also, inevitably, she would have heard tapes ripping at its removal before watching me disappear down to my study holding a balled-up wet nappy only to reappear carrying a fresh night time Molicare and my rather bulky terry-lined plastic pants.

I try very hard not to expose her to these things but in this scenario, I had no alternative.  To be fair, I didn’t notice any melodramatic eye-rolling there was no diaper-commentary from her: a highly credible effort at ignoring the elephant in the room all in all.

On Monday I head overseas for the week.  I’ve actually had to draft a “nappy plan” to work out what I need to take!  I’ll be in Thailand and I’ve no idea what disposable nappies would be available to me over-the-counter and probably won’t have the time to go and find them anyway.

I’ve worked out that in addition to a couple of hand-carried nappies, I need to pack around 12 diapers (along with plastic pants etc) to give me the range I need plus a couple spare.  A trial fit into my “middle-sized” trundle bag suggest depressingly little leftover space for clothing!   This OS trip is a little different from my previous one as it appears that I’ve now reached the stage that the combination of alcohol and bed just MIGHT lead to a bed-wetting incident.  I suspect the nocturnal "incident" of three weeks ago repeated again last Sunday night although I'm slightly less sure this time as I was damp to begin with.  At a hotel however, I feel I can no longer run the risk.

[oznl]

In this week’s installment, I complete my first ever international trip in nappies!

I’d love to tell you just how the whole airport security body-scanner thing worked out but, on this trip, I repeatedly failed to use it.  I tried.

Outbound from Brisbane, I’d steeled myself to having my (dry) BetterDry nappy detected and getting a free grope from a hopefully-disinterested security agent but as luck would have it, the lines for the dreaded body scanner were massive and I got yanked out of line and diverted by staff through an old fashioned metal detector: nearly 2 hours of rusty continence wasted right there.  I think I was at least damp by the time I’d walked through though.

Several hours later at Singapore’s Changi airport, it was time for me to change flights but even more importantly, change nappies: my BetterDry had seen BetterDays.  Wondering where the heck I was going to do this, I found in the bathroom at my terminal,  two “change cubicles”.  I think they meant “change clothes” rather than “change nappies” but whatever…  It worked.  The noise of the tapes ripping and the rustle of plastic pants could be heard all the way to the Malaysian border and yes, I just walked out of the cubicle with a balled-up nappy and nonchalantly dumped it in the trash. The closest shave was a colleague on the same flight who marvelled to me about my capacity to get through an 8.5 hour sector without having to visit the toilet…   Umm, yeah…  Let me tell you how THAT works…

Again, security to the next flight was the old school metal detector so everybody was happy. 

Around 4 hours later again, I arrived at my Bangkok hotel in a soaked Molicare to discover an in-room waste basket the size of a tea cup and trash-can-free communal bathrooms in the main areas permanently staffed by polite-but-disturbingly-watchful security guards (plain clothed but they were pretty obvious and pretty everywhere).

Sigh… Bangkok has had some “issues” and security is a thing.  I can’t blame them.

A quick step outside of the hotel offered no alternative solutions.  It seems that public trash cans aren’t really a thing in Thailand.   The general practice with respect to rubbish seems to involve piling it up (sometimes in bags, sometimes not) against lamp-posts: a practice that as a foreigner, I thought would be rather rude of me to emulate.

The shopping mall next to the hotel DID have one or two trash receptacles but these were not only tiny, but transparent Perspex boxes lined with a clear polyethylene bag in brightly lit, high traffic locations within line of sight of the security guards manning the metal detectors (they didn't do anything) at the doors.  I guess this was to close of the chance of terrorists concealing devices in such bins but for my part, I wanted to dispose of my nappies, not install them into some kind of illuminated display case!

The answer proved to be a hotel “disabled toilet” down near the meeting rooms on the ‘ballroom” floors.  It too, had a tea-cup sized trash can but this at least had a lid and there was no attendant.  Two adult nappies in a bag however and that bin was done for the day.  I filled that bin twice every day.  I don’t know why I’m so reticent just to leave them in my room bin, safe in the knowledge that a Thai room maid knows something unusual about me, but I am.

The conference itself was (like so much in life), further complicated by my nappies but at other times, being in them was rather convenient.  The ratio of toilets to delegates was apparently, not high.  Not that I would have noticed…

The return journey was again, body-scanner free.  We left in the afternoon, I changed my BetterDry in the disabled toilet one last time and resolved to remain dry until through airport security (a 1.5 hour car ride away due to Bangkok’s ludicrously awful traffic).

I needn’t have bothered.  In true Thai style, the body scanners were more about the appearance of security than actual security: they were all switched off.  I guess we could all feel safer in the knowledge that, in the event of some ineffable circumstance, the Thai Police *might* switch them on.  Again, I went through a metal detector that unsurprisingly, was disinterested in my underwear.

I flew back to Brisbane via Sydney.  The overnight flight out of Bangkok was turbulent due to monsoonal storms with lots of vectoring around, and again, Sydney weather was atrocious meaning more vectoring, reduced speed and holding patterns.  I was late, missed my connecting flight and the re-booked flight did not afford me time for a nappy change.  Fortunately (kind of), the turbulence flight had limited cabin service and this, and being wedged up against a window prevented me from getting many fluids.  In fact I was quite dehydrated actually and I knew that fairly little nappy-wetting had occurred.  A quick, exploratory grope got me to thinking that I could probably get away with the Sydney-Brisbane flight without any moisture on the seats and I did.

By the time I got home though, I suspect I smelled slightly of pee and  I’d been marinating in the same nappy for nearly 14 hours: a long shower, a fresh (cloth) nappy and a long day of “not falling asleep” before bedtime commenced.

I was curious to know if my extreme fatigue (by bedtime, I had been awake for 36 hours) would lead me to wet the bed again.  I’d changed into my night nappy after dinner and resolved to keep it dry so I could tell later but I just couldn’t.  It seems that urgency is a thing.  My urge was so great that I’d never have been able to fall asleep so I wet myself in a chair downstairs but it wasn’t that much – completely out of proportion to the monumental urge.  I don’t remember peeing in that nappy again before dawn, slept the sleep of the dead, woke up 11 hours later drenched and even having had an incredibly minor leak (damp patch on pajamas near my plastic pants legging) so I probably did wet in my sleep.

Five months 24/7 on this stretch by next week.  Wow…

[oznl]

Mmm, I feel like some guy doing the late night shift on an obscure pirate radio station:  is there actually anybody out there reading this or should I switch off the transmitter?  I'm not looking for validation, more just to check that I'm not broadcasting into dead air.