24/7 startups, and unexpected pitfalls?

[Little Sherri]

22 hours ago, WBxx said:

I was diapered for bedwetting in my youth

I fastened onto this phraseology (thanks, @WBxx) because it triggered an idea for a topic that was already loosely formed in my head. I was chatting with a buddy of mine who has two boys who both wear pull-ups to bed, one of them 9, one of them just about to turn 12. The 9-year-old I can completely empathize with, because I was a champion bedwetter until I was around 10. The 12-year-old has me beat; by then, I was usually dry overnight and had started making myself diapers out of pillow cases, because I still wanted to wear them, even though I didn't have to. 

But what I wonder about is this: will these kids have any kind of "unusual" diaper fixation growing up, like so many of the former bedwetters here? Obviously, I don't wish it on them, but, that part aside, my first thought is, no, it's not as likely. Why? Three factors come to mind:

First is the power of putting one's diaper on oneself. Most of the many people I've met here who wore diapers to bed as kids (and who sound like they're retelling stories they lived, rather than proffering works of ABDL fiction), grew up in the pre-pull-up era, so, at least when they were on the younger side, they were diapered by someone. I sort of graduated from that mid-way through my bedwetting career, when embarrassment at being briefly nude in front of a parent on the daily caused a minor insurrection, which they quelled by letting me start taping them on myself. But for people like @WBxx, who were raised in cloth, that might not have been an option, really - it's hard to put a cloth diaper on myself even now, and on the rare occasions when I wore them as a kid, I never did it myself. All of which is to say that the bedwetters of today are empowered in a way that the bedwetters of yesteryear were not. We had to get diapered, in many cases while younger siblings had already graduated from that, which reinforced the momentary infantilization, at least for me. 

Factor two is the power of euphemism, and this is what I really jumped off of initially. WBxx was "diapered" for bedwetting. I was diapered for bedwetting. So many of you were diapered as well. However, I witnessed a conversation recently between my buddy and his eldest, who was headed off for a sleepover at a friend's place, where he asked his son if he'd packed a "P-U" for overnight, and his son nodded. Earlier, I'd been running around the house helping them open windows after the kids set a packet of microwave craft dinner on fire in the microwave, and it was a windy day, so we were also propping doors open, and both kids pulled boxes of Goodnites off the floors of their closets to use as doorstops, which told me that these are no marks of shame for them. I would have jumped out the window myself, as a kid, before offering up my box of Pampers to hold the door open, to one of my dad's friends. But then again, my box of Pampers had a picture of a smiling baby on the front of it, and said "Diapers" in a few places, whereas my buddy's kids' Goodnites do not use the "D" word anywhere on the packaging, and there are no pictures of babies, probably wisely. (They do still have a Diaper Genie in their upstairs washroom, however, but the font on the lid of that thing is small.)

Third on my list is the factor that, for the most part, the idea of shaming kids out of bedwetting has gone out of style. Doctors usually say, at least in my experience as a parent, to wait it out and not make a big deal out of it, as this will eventually pass, and stressing kids out about it can make it worse. Whereas in my day (the 1980's), there was no internet (imagine that...), so people mostly got their parenting advice from other parents, their own parents (products of the 1940's and 1950's), or from books. So the idea that you could embarrass a kid sufficiently that they'd stop "being lazy" and get up to pee was still, if not prevalent, then at least present. 

So, for all these reasons, I suspect that today's school-aged kid who still wears some form of protection to bed might not think of themselves as being "in diapers", probably hasn't had the experience of having one put on them in a long time, and, hasn't been told that their need for them constitutes immaturity or some kind of fundamental flaw. 

I'd be interested in hearing from any of you here who are a bit younger than I am, and who grew up wearing pull-ups, as to if you'd agree with me, or, if you found wearing them to be as stressful and/or potentially embarrassing or humiliating as those of us who are a bit older found wearing "baby diapers" to bed as older kids to be. I guess my overall theory is that, if wearing pull-ups carries less stigma than wearing "diapers", maybe people who wear pull-ups don't bear as much psychological scar tissue from the experience, and, hence, would be less likely to find themselves secretly craving diapers once they no longer need them. Or maybe I'm completely off base. 

[Little Sherri]

I've often thought that a good test of one's fealty to wearing diapers is wearing them during an argument with someone who knows that you're wearing them. The only person in my life who knows I wear diapers that I've had occasional arguments with so far has been my wife. My kids now know as well, so in theory, I guess I might have to face down that experience with one of them eventually, but I don't get into a lot of pointed arguments with my kids, so thus far, I haven't had to deal with that. I'm kind of the "voice of reason" person in our household; usually they come to me after an argument with my wife, and I act as their lawyer, and suggest a best course of action to deal with their recent run-in with the law. 

Now, my wife has been very good about not mentioning the fact that, while I'm vehemently defending my position, I might also be walking back and forth in our room in a big printed diaper. In fact, she's never mentioned it. Until last night. 

The argument started when she said she'd had a stressful day (true) and she didn't want to talk about anything work-related. Which is fair, but, I had a buddy who was going to do some work for one of her clients, and he needed minor clarification on the details of a very tight schedule, the derailment of which might cost everyone a bunch of money.

Some further background may be needed in order to understand the dynamics of this disagreement: my wife likes to "wind down" in the evening in our room watching a TV show and knitting or reading for an hour or two before lights-out. She will often say that she doesn't want to discuss anything of great importance during this time, otherwise she'll have trouble sleeping. But here's the catch: I can't bring up any topics that she might find stressful, however, if she decides to bring up a topic that stresses me out, that's fair game as far as she's concerned. What's good for she isn't good for me. 

So, I basically said, can you please delay starting your final approach to the runway of Blissful Slumber International Airport by 3 minutes, and answer this question for my friend, who was doing her a favour in accommodating an absurdly contracted schedule for some work her client urgently required, because he (the client) is an idiot, and now we're all standing on our heads trying to save this guy from himself. 

My wife basically told me to shut up, no, not discussing it. That vexed me, but I let it go, initially. THEN, moments later, she starts into a conversation about something else related to the project, an aspect that I am assisting with, so I said, simply, "Hey, why is it okay to talk when you want to talk about something, but when I want to talk about something, I get told to shut up?"

I thought it was a fair question.  

Well, she went off the deep end at that point, and told me in no uncertain terms to either "shut the f*** up", or leave the room. I said, basically, I'm not one of your employees, this is my room in my house, go try and talk that way with anyone else you know and see how far it gets you, and if you want a room to yourself, go find one, I'm staying here. 

So she starts in, in a very loud tone, about how she has trouble sleeping at the best of times (true), and that this conversation is going to have her up until 2 AM because she won't be able to turn her mind off (but the related conversation that she wanted to have will not....?), and then it got nasty and ad hominem... keep in mind that during the following, I was sitting there in a Rearz Lil' Splash. I'll do my best to quote:

"I SIT HERE AT 2 O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING UNABLE TO FALL ASLEEP BECAUSE OF A CONVERSATION THAT YOU DECIDED TO HAVE WHEN I NEEDED TO BE WINDING DOWN, AND I'M LOOKING OVER AT BABY (my name) IN HIS DIAPER WITH HIS SOOTHER...." and then she made a motion with her fingers and her lips like someone sucking something... "SLEEPING LITERALLY LIKE A BIG BABY, AND I THINK TO MYSELF, SCREW YOU!!!"

At the heart of it, it comes down to envy, basically. I can generally fall asleep like a switch has been turned out, as long as I haven't had an espresso after dinner. The odd time, I might toss and turn a bit, but usually I fall asleep pretty readily. Whereas she's often struggled with that. Some of it, I think, comes down to "sleep hygiene" - she naps during the day almost every day, and she likes to sit and stare at her phone right before she wants to go to sleep, and, she does a lot of things in our bed - knitting, reading, eating, hours of TV, whereas I mostly use it for sleeping, and maybe a small bit of TV, and I pretty much never nap, unless I'm ill. Both her doctor and I have said that a change in her routine might help her, but she has no interest, so instead she takes sleeping medication, and it only works on occasion. 

All of which finds me where I am currently; having driven her to an appointment in silence this morning (her car is in being serviced), I'm now sitting in my office and feeling bruised about the fact that she called me a baby twice, at the top of her lungs, and mocked my wearing diapers and pacifier use.

There is a logical side of me that says "When you play silly games, you get silly prizes", and I guess I am playing a silly game. Yes, I am still sitting here in a diaper, although I went with white today because she might see it later and she's shamed me away from juvenile prints for the moment, which is a first. Live by the diaper, die by the diaper, I guess. I have to say that it was a test of my resolve to get up and walk over to the washroom to brush my teeth this morning, in a diaper, also carrying a diaper, when there was still smoke coming from her side of the bed. I'm glad I don't have any underwear in the house, or I might have resorted to it. 

I have no idea where I go from here. For one thing, I'm withdrawing my services from this project - her idiot client can crash and burn if that's what he wants to do, I am not going to be a proxy target for her frustrations related to him. I'll manage the part my buddy is playing, because he's been good enough to come to the table, and I won't abuse his generosity just because I feel like mine has been assaulted. I'd point out, as an aside, that, amazingly, I never, ever need my wife's help with my work, ever, full stop, whereas I get called in to her affairs to fight fires with some regularity.

Maybe we just aren't meant to work together. If it's coming between her and I, and between me, and my diapers, then, a course correction is called for. 

[oznl]

7 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

There is a logical side of me that says "When you play silly games, you get silly prizes"

Oooh!  That phrase is a keeper!  Up there with "Not my monkeys, not my circus".

I don’t know I’d conflate something said in a fit of fatigue-induced rage is necessarily a deeply-held and rational position as opposed to one outlier in the dataset of her thoughts on the matter that got weaponised.  Words are cheap, actions count.

Tossing verbal grenades because you’ve lost the plot is, whilst certainly a personal failing (of which I am guilty), a transient transgression.  Sleep deprivation doesn’t help.  I have terrible sleeping issues and watching my partner slide into sleep like a rock being tossed into a pond IS something that sometimes has me, quite unreasonably, on edge a bit sometimes.

The thing is, how will baking hostilities into eternity by consequentially withdrawing support from her friend at some critical juncture (a nugget that will be available for weaponisation on an ongoing basis) make things better?

I don’t know if there is some way you can (metaphorically) cover your arse in terms of warning your misgivings and proceed along a best endeavours basis?

[Vulpix77]

Seems like she's more jealous about your ability to sleep than being upset about the diapers and whatnot?

[BabyJilly_S]

Don't have anything to proffer other than I hope it all sorts itself out in a reasonable manner...

[Little Sherri]

13 hours ago, oznl said:

I don’t know if there is some way you can (metaphorically) cover your arse in terms of warning your misgivings and proceed along a best endeavours basis?

Yup, this is what I'm going to do. I was pissed off when I said I planned to withdraw my participation in their rickety adventure. There's no easy way for me to do that, and I have friends who have committed to seeing it through, so I have to be a buffer in the solution that keeps it from becoming excessively corrosive. But, my oh my, no good deed ever goes unpunished. I can't wait to put this guy and this episode in my rearview mirror. "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." Oh, wait, in this case, yes it does. The people we've marshalled to help this idiot are all eminently thoughtful individuals whom we've worked with for years, and I know they're questioning our judgment in even becoming involved in this. It's a bit of a charitable undertaking, but the person receiving the charity doesn't appreciate how badly he needs it, and leans toward being ungrateful at the worst possible times. At this point, I'm doing this for his family. He himself can take a long walk on a short pier. Does vigorously shaking someone constitute assault? 

The stress from this episode has turned my wife into a bit of a landmine, which is frustrating. I've put the kids on notice: avoid unnecessary confrontations. If she says unload the dishwasher, the correct response is "Yes", not, "But I did it last time!?!", lest you find yourself in Sauron's gaze. 

Last night when I got home at around midnight, having gone for pints with a good friend, I found the following on my bedside dresser: two new bottles of baby powder and two new tubs of diaper cream. My wife was already asleep. I didn't ask for them and I'm not anywhere close to running out of them. I suppose this is a peace offering. 

[jeremy12312]

On 8/11/2022 at 11:54 AM, Little Sherri said:

"Hey, why is it okay to talk when you want to talk about something, but when I want to talk about something, I get told to shut up?"

Oh my friend. Pointing out your spouse’s hypocrisies is like sailing to that spot on the map that has a dragon on it. 

[IminWetPampers]

On 8/8/2022 at 7:29 AM, Little Sherri said:

This is interesting, @IminWetPampers; what was your impetus for that, and how did it go? I'm not looking to have that experience yet, but I also feel that I probably want to get out of ahead of it, if I think the need will arise to discuss it with someone outside of my immediate family. One thing I'm wrestling with is an upcoming trip to the UK with four buddies; one of our group works for a major hotel chain and has secured us absolutely smoking deals on great accommodations while we're there, but, the downside to that is, whereas normally when I travel, I book my own room and can count on having a bathroom and a hotel room to myself, for this trip, I can't do that, because it would cost me an arm and a leg, first of all, second, it would force other people to pick up more cost, and, it would look weird. 

The difference in cost for me would be astronomical, going from, say, the equivalent of $50 - $100 CAD per night to share a room booked by our hotel executive friend, versus like $350 - $500 CAD per night to go try and book everything myself, even assuming I could find rooms in all those hotels. Plus we're doing some flying on European discount airlines that want to charge you extra if you wear socks, so packing 8 days worth of diapers means I definitely have to check a bag, whereas some guys plan to bring just a backpack. Sigh. Such are the complications of living a diapered life. 

To your point about the march of shame from the porta-potty to the trash can with a bulging diaper in your hands, I was on a golf course recently where they'd posted notices in all the porta-potties on the holes that they were in danger of losing their service provider because people had been throwing adult diapers/briefs/pull-ups into the toilets. They implored users to please, for the love of all that's holy, dispose of diapers in the trash cans... which were over by the tee boxes. On the Saturday I was there, the course was decently backed up, so had I needed to do that, I would have had to walk past both my group, and, another group, waiting to tee off, in order to dump a ball of plastic the weight of a dead cat into a trash can sitting practically on a stage. 

Well @Little Sherri to tell you the honest truth I was living with roommates and I had grown really tired of having to hide the fact that I wore diapers and so I decided that when I was in my room I wouldn’t hide my diapers anymore. I had a large screen tv and a PS4 in my room and people would frequently come in to play video games with me and I’d just be in a tee shirt and my diapers and I had to explain why I was wearing diapers so I told them that I wore diapers because I enjoyed wearing them and that I’ve always loved wearing diapers and was simply tired of hiding the fact that I liked wearing diapers so as long as they were in my room they would have to get used to seeing me wearing diapers and they did. It got to the point that where I would wear outside my room under my bathrobe and occasionally my diaper would show (briefly, no pun intended) and my roomies would lightly tease me about it but I didn’t have any negative reactions from anyone. 

[zzyzx]

On 8/10/2022 at 7:32 AM, Little Sherri said:

I fastened onto this phraseology (thanks, @WBxx) because it triggered an idea for a topic that was already loosely formed in my head. I was chatting with a buddy of mine who has two boys who both wear pull-ups to bed, one of them 9, one of them just about to turn 12. The 9-year-old I can completely empathize with, because I was a champion bedwetter until I was around 10. The 12-year-old has me beat; by then, I was usually dry overnight and had started making myself diapers out of pillow cases, because I still wanted to wear them, even though I didn't have to. 

But what I wonder about is this: will these kids have any kind of "unusual" diaper fixation growing up, like so many of the former bedwetters here? Obviously, I don't wish it on them, but, that part aside, my first thought is, no, it's not as likely. Why? Three factors come to mind:

First is the power of putting one's diaper on oneself. Most of the many people I've met here who wore diapers to bed as kids (and who sound like they're retelling stories they lived, rather than proffering works of ABDL fiction), grew up in the pre-pull-up era, so, at least when they were on the younger side, they were diapered by someone. I sort of graduated from that mid-way through my bedwetting career, when embarrassment at being briefly nude in front of a parent on the daily caused a minor insurrection, which they quelled by letting me start taping them on myself. But for people like @WBxx, who were raised in cloth, that might not have been an option, really - it's hard to put a cloth diaper on myself even now, and on the rare occasions when I wore them as a kid, I never did it myself. All of which is to say that the bedwetters of today are empowered in a way that the bedwetters of yesteryear were not. We had to get diapered, in many cases while younger siblings had already graduated from that, which reinforced the momentary infantilization, at least for me. 

Factor two is the power of euphemism, and this is what I really jumped off of initially. WBxx was "diapered" for bedwetting. I was diapered for bedwetting. So many of you were diapered as well. However, I witnessed a conversation recently between my buddy and his eldest, who was headed off for a sleepover at a friend's place, where he asked his son if he'd packed a "P-U" for overnight, and his son nodded. Earlier, I'd been running around the house helping them open windows after the kids set a packet of microwave craft dinner on fire in the microwave, and it was a windy day, so we were also propping doors open, and both kids pulled boxes of Goodnites off the floors of their closets to use as doorstops, which told me that these are no marks of shame for them. I would have jumped out the window myself, as a kid, before offering up my box of Pampers to hold the door open, to one of my dad's friends. But then again, my box of Pampers had a picture of a smiling baby on the front of it, and said "Diapers" in a few places, whereas my buddy's kids' Goodnites do not use the "D" word anywhere on the packaging, and there are no pictures of babies, probably wisely. (They do still have a Diaper Genie in their upstairs washroom, however, but the font on the lid of that thing is small.)

Third on my list is the factor that, for the most part, the idea of shaming kids out of bedwetting has gone out of style. Doctors usually say, at least in my experience as a parent, to wait it out and not make a big deal out of it, as this will eventually pass, and stressing kids out about it can make it worse. Whereas in my day (the 1980's), there was no internet (imagine that...), so people mostly got their parenting advice from other parents, their own parents (products of the 1940's and 1950's), or from books. So the idea that you could embarrass a kid sufficiently that they'd stop "being lazy" and get up to pee was still, if not prevalent, then at least present. 

So, for all these reasons, I suspect that today's school-aged kid who still wears some form of protection to bed might not think of themselves as being "in diapers", probably hasn't had the experience of having one put on them in a long time, and, hasn't been told that their need for them constitutes immaturity or some kind of fundamental flaw. 

I'd be interested in hearing from any of you here who are a bit younger than I am, and who grew up wearing pull-ups, as to if you'd agree with me, or, if you found wearing them to be as stressful and/or potentially embarrassing or humiliating as those of us who are a bit older found wearing "baby diapers" to bed as older kids to be. I guess my overall theory is that, if wearing pull-ups carries less stigma than wearing "diapers", maybe people who wear pull-ups don't bear as much psychological scar tissue from the experience, and, hence, would be less likely to find themselves secretly craving diapers once they no longer need them. Or maybe I'm completely off base. 

@Little SherriI'm older, not younger than you, but I have been thinking about commenting on this general subject...  And I think I can provide positive feed back on your thoughts.... 

As someone who went looking to find (cloth) diapers in his mid thirty's because a medical issue had turned occasional nocturia into occasional nocturnal enuresis, if you had asked me about AB/DL at that time I started looking, I would have given you a quizzical face and gone "What?"  However, once I got back into the diapers I now needed, and with an open mind have read more and "opened Pandora's AB/DL box", I think I'm qualified to give perspective to your thoughts.

So, while I agree that the youth you mention are less likely to be AB/DL like a lot on this site - starting at a young age, I still think that if they ever decide to experiment with  diapers as an adult - for any reason, including from a medical need to wear protection,  or introduced by a partner's kink, or getting curious after running into some material on the subject, etc., I think they could still "join the club".  And with the internet, it is now more easier to open Pandora's AB/DL box.

Now some background on me, and past exposure....

As stated, I don't consider myself a DL during youth.  However if I was honest about how I am now, well....   I'd have to say yes to being a DL (ok, what about AB....  ah....  I'm not ready to admit that yet..... )

Like some, I do have a few instances where the typical DL's memories can cross mine....

Mother always agreed that boys were harder to potty train than girls....  And I was her toughest challenge.  Somewhere between my 4th and 5th birthdays she managed to get me out of (needing) diapers.....

Between the 7th birthday and 13th birthday, there were 10 times (and that is base 10, not base 2 or another base) when I woke up to find the micturition cycle had triggered in my sleep, and I solidly slept through what ever happened.  In my youth, I never understood why it had happened when it did.  So, not normally a bed-wetter, but could on a rare occasion wet.  And when it did happen, it was basically a (very) full bladder release.   And mother said all of the siblings on rare occasion could.....  So, there is (in my opinion) a genetic component, but nothing was ever stated about prior generations or cousins. 

I will admit that when Dad's work took him overseas, (say age 12) we had the Sears (JC Penney's and Montgomery Ward) catalog(s) to order things from that the local base exchange didn't carry....  And I did notice the incontinence supplies listed in the near middle of the middle of the Sears catalog.   OK, that confirmed that some folks had the issue that a piece of me feared.....  And that fear probably helped keep me dry....

In high school, (in hind sight), it was obvious that the head of the year book (for one of the years, and a male), was a AB/DL, based on the full page picture of him in that year's year book, standing on the foot ball field in front of the stands in nothing more than a white tee-shirt and a bed sheet diaper....  Nothing clicked at that time....

In collage, there was a guy in a dorm I lived in that had a picture of him self as a young boy (not baby, standing up (and in a walking pose), maybe 3, 4, 5 or 6), wearing a white tee-shirt and (white) cloth diaper that he had hung on the outside of the door to his room.  One time coming back from band practice, I spent a moment staring at that, with the thoughts of "why would he do something like that"....

In hind site, I think that led to the next college incident....  for a band trip, being asked if I'd like to join a male player (who I suspect had listed me as a potential partner for the hotel room for the trip, I hadn't submitted any one specific), if I would like to wear diapers on the weekend....  That was from a friend of the guy....  I would not be surprised to find the friend was a "daddy" or another DL, but I don't know.  I'm sure the weird question came out of my stare mentioned in the previous paragraph, but I didn't connect it at the time.  Either that person had beat me back to the dorm when I stared at his door and was waiting for me to knock or leave so he could go to dinner, or waiting for me to leave so he could enter his dorm room...  In any case, the friend got a quizzical look and a no at the time.

So, yes, I've had opportunities knock before I knew what the diaper fetish was....

And now that early onset BPH has had its impact on the bladder, I find it is just better to wear protection (cloth diapers) all the time.  OK, on the last vacation the AB/DL community finally had a disposable diaper and doubler that actually worked for me overnight, so I did go disposable for the trip.

So, in my opinion, there are a lot more people out there that *if* they were introduced to diapers (being open minded -- by need, or by kink, or by ?) would end up falling into the AB/DL category.

As to me, putting my self back into diapers has "woken" the young boy in me....  The four year old that isn't out of them yet, through the 12 year old that didn't understand why there was an occasional bed-wetting event.  And the engineer in me keeps looking for practical ways of managing the situation....  Which leads to things like VI Products, Comco Mfg, ..., North Shore, Tykables, ABU, ...

Feel free to ask questions or move this to a new thread for further discussion.

[jeremy12312]

Everything ok, LS?  I always get nervous reading about big relationship fights followed by LONG silences...

[Little Sherri]

Yup, no worries, thanks @jeremy12312. I was in the US for business, just got back, now I have a pile of stuff to work on so I haven't been on the site. I'll write something in the next day or so I'm sure, just swamped right now, but I always enjoy reading everyone's thoughts on this crazy journey I'm on. 

I was in my office in person for the first time in about two years, which was interesting. I've been on site at client's locations here and there, although I mostly work from home. But I hadn't been into my office because there was no reason, but, they wanted me to train a new hire on some stuff so I finally went. I've been there and worn diapers before, pre-pandemic, but it's been such a long time that it pretty much felt new to me again, which is an interesting feeling. I'm so used to wearing diapers everywhere that I don't give them that much thought, day-to-day, but this felt like the first day of school for me. What diaper should I wear? How will it fit under my dress pants? How long can I go before I need to change? Where can I change if I need to? How do I handle disposing of the used one? What will the other kids be wearing? Do I look good in this golf shirt? Lol. 

It all worked out. I went with Megamax's for the most part, because I can still (barely) fit in a medium, so they're kind of "compact" for a serious diaper, and I know that they'll take a licking and keep on ticking. Plastic pants were too bulky under my dress pants (I've put on weight...) so I had to rely only on my diaper, no cover, just a onesie holding everything in place. I was cognizant of the possibility for wicking incidents or press-outs so I changed myself maybe a bit earlier than I otherwise would have. I had a break between meetings and my hotel was minutes away, so I was able to diaper myself there. Although I was in a rush to get back and dumped the diaper into one of the trash cans, thinking I'd come back and pack it up more discretely later, so I just threw a coffee cup into the bin on top of it and left. But when I got back, they'd come through the room and emptied the trash cans. So I left a tip for housekeeping when I checked out. The bins were lined with bags so all they had to do was pull it out and tie it up, but, still...

[oznl]

It wouldn’t have taken a genius to work out that the family “event” I alluded to in my most recent update was indeed a kid’s wedding.  I just kept that detail out of the post itself as I’m aware that DD posts are discoverable by search engine and I wanted to protect the innocent.

I also was plagued by guilt.  I felt like I was contaminating “their” event.

The thing was, I’m in so deep with this now that I thought I’d be more a conversation piece by leaving for the bathroom with monotonous regularity (only to spend far too long in there trying to hurry up a pee that will no longer be hurried for anybody).

Thusly I rationalised that I was doing it out of a sense of benevolent pragmatism rather than hedonistic self-indulgence.

I was quite surprised I could still fit into my suit (from the “before” times before the world imploded).  I couldn’t say it was any looser and the jacket button was under tension but the pants were ok-ish, even over the Molicare.

[Little Sherri]

Well, it's time for me to admit to myself that I am, once again, a bedwetter. After having denied it several times. I'd been convinced that ascribing that title to myself would fall under the category of wishful thinking, although that's not exactly accurate, because I didn't wish to become a bedwetter, per se, I just wished that I could sleep through the night without waking up to wet my diaper. 

Not to suggest that such events never happen; when I have enough IPA or red wine on board, I lose the ability to accurately track much of anything, but in the cold light of morning, I will often find my diaper wet, with no memory of having done that. However, on the four nights out of seven when I go to bed more or less sober, I almost always either wake up dry and needing to pee in the morning, or, I'd find myself woken up by the need to download fluid, which I would drowsily permit before sliding back into the depths of oblivion. 

Until lately. 

For maybe four of the past six nights, I've woken up to the sensation of my plumbing already actively transferring over to my diaper. I'm still waking up, but, when I do, things are well underway, which was not often the case before. It's interesting how we traverse plateaus of unchanging feedback, and then one day we step off of a precipice and start toppling toward, presumably, another unknown plateau. That seems to be where I am on this journey. There is no question in my mind that if I hadn't worn a diaper to bed, I'd have possible been shopping for a new mattress, such was the scale of the event I walked in on. 

Now, perhaps if I hadn't worn a diaper to bed, some subconscious failsafe might have prevented the incident. But whereas on previous occasions I generally suspected that I'd woken up enough to give the thumbs up to an emission, while not being awake enough to remember doing that, because when I woke up mid-act, it always seemed like things were just getting started, over the past week or so, I've been waking up almost when things were wrapping up.

Last night, for example, I went out to a bar in a Rearz Select, but only had two beers, so it was not an "alcohol night" by prevailing standards. The Select is a novelty vintage Pampers single-tab-per-side garment that actually works okay as a diaper, but that one had been in service for several hours and needed swapped. My diaper drawer is close to empty - I'd been thwarted in doing my weekly restock because of extended family staying with us - so all I came up with at midnight was a NorthShore AirSupreme (those folks love their interspersed uppercase letters). It's a breathable diaper, but, being a NorthShore product, still holds a lot, which is good... because when I woke up towards the end of last night's event, the thing was soaked. It was wet well out toward the rear, as well as over most of the front, and when I got up this morning to take the dog out, the diaper had a soggy bulge out back and a pendulousness that reminded me of being in a toddler diaper. It was rather pleasant, but I had to change it, because I could feel that the seam up the middle of the back of my shorts was forcing the diaper bulge over to one side in a way that I suspected could be visible. It felt notable, tactilely. 

When is the last time I killed a diaper solely with my overnight activities? It's rare. Evidently, I'd engaged in a decadent, unconstrained wetting, while blissfully exploring the land of nod. And not while intoxicated. 

There were three other lesser events of about the same description over the last seven or eight days. I woke up to an awareness that I was lying in a wet diaper, and the wetting was either coming to a halt, or had already stopped. 

[Little Sherri]

Sorry, I got cut off there. I wanted to conclude by saying that if I'm becoming conscious only after a process has started, then it stands to reason that the process is commencing unconsciously, ergo, involuntarily, ergo, it would be hard to assume any control over it. Ergo, I should wear diapers to bed... which I already do, but here we are.  

[oznl]

If your transition to bedwetting resembles mine, expect oscillating periods of "wet" and "dry" nights but with a slow, longitudinal drift towards "wet".  To be honest, I still find that a bit frustrating.

7 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Now, perhaps if I hadn't worn a diaper to bed, some subconscious failsafe might have prevented the incident.

For me, maybe in the early days yes but if you've followed the plot in detail, the answer now is "not necessarily".  With a well-protected mattress, I've had the chance to try this twice.  Both times involved a sleepless-but-dry-bed on the first night followed by a thoroughly wet bed on the second.  It seems that fatigue now trumps continence after dark.

And now, a correction:

So, in case you were struggling for context for my post below, it's because there is no context.  It's in the wrong thread.  I was supposed to be replying to @BabyJilly_S's "Dear Diary" thread where the challenge of wedding attendance was raised.  Oops...  ?

On 8/19/2022 at 9:04 AM, oznl said:

It wouldn’t have taken a genius to work out that the family “event” I alluded to in my most recent update was indeed a kid’s wedding.  I just kept that detail out of the post itself as I’m aware that DD posts are discoverable by search engine and I wanted to protect the innocent.

I also was plagued by guilt.  I felt like I was contaminating “their” event.

The thing was, I’m in so deep with this now that I thought I’d be more a conversation piece by leaving for the bathroom with monotonous regularity (only to spend far too long in there trying to hurry up a pee that will no longer be hurried for anybody).

Thusly I rationalised that I was doing it out of a sense of benevolent pragmatism rather than hedonistic self-indulgence.

I was quite surprised I could still fit into my suit (from the “before” times before the world imploded).  I couldn’t say it was any looser and the jacket button was under tension but the pants were ok-ish, even over the Molicare.

 

7 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

There were three other lesser events of about the same description over the last seven or eight days. I woke up to an awareness that I was lying in a wet diaper, and the wetting was either coming to a halt, or had already stopped. 

Yes, that's a thing for me too.  Sometimes the sensation of wetting my diaper will wake me up it seems.

[BabyJilly_S]

17 minutes ago, oznl said:

So, in case you were struggling for context for my post below, it's because there is no context.  It's in the wrong thread.  I was supposed to be replying to @BabyJilly_S's "Dear Diary" thread where the challenge of wedding attendance was raised.  Oops...  ?

I suspected  it was a little specific hehe

As for the bedwetting I have the on/off thing too. Some days wake up very wet knowing some days not knowing. 

[Stroller]

Hey, I'm getting left behind here, by the looks of things.  Still no evidence of wetting in my sleep here, and no obvious reason why I don't, given my automatic wetting whenever I'm awake.  Maybe I'll catch you all up soon...

[oznl]

17 minutes ago, Stroller said:

Hey, I'm getting left behind here, by the looks of things.  Still no evidence of wetting in my sleep here, and no obvious reason why I don't, given my automatic wetting whenever I'm awake.  Maybe I'll catch you all up soon...

I know that my new little habit evolved out of peeing every time I stirred during the night.  Eventually I forgot to stir.  It's got nothing to do with having a full bladder as I've woken to find myself just a bit wet within 2 hours of falling asleep and my bladder isn't THAT bad.  If I was one of those people who just slept all the way through the night it would be a moot point as to whether I would have established the bad habits that got me to where I am today.

 

[Little Sherri]

Well, it's been an interesting few days. My younger brother has been staying at my place, which has been awesome, although not for my liver, which is lodging an "organ's rights" complaint. 

I went over to wearing almost entirely cloth-backed diapers, because although I've convinced myself that most of the world can't hear plastic diapers when I wear them, or, they don't know what they're hearing and filter it out, I still have a deep sensitivity to wearing diapers around him, and my sister, because they knew me back when I wore diapers the first time around. I shared a room with my brother for a significant portion of our early childhood, so he knew what the deal was; the box of Pampers in my closet was a box of Pampers in his closet, too, for several years. 

That said, he was always pretty good about it - I can only recall a few times when he teased me about being diapered. He used to whistle the jingle from the "Luvs" commercial on occasion, if we were at odds about something, but, depending on who was around, that might result in a good thrashing, so he tended to be circumspect about openly denigrating my absorbent nightwear. One time, when both of us were hanging around with one of his friends, and he became vexed about something I said, he started telling his buddy that I wore diapers to bed, which caused me to tackle him, and he later said he was joking and retracted his statement. While under duress, admittedly. 

It was different with my older sister; I couldn't beat the crap out of her. When she was young, she liked to be "mommy's little helper", and would do things like yelling across the house that I still had my diaper on, if it was a Saturday and I was watching cartoons until noon or whatever, and hadn't gotten dressed. Or I'd walk by her, parked on the couch, and she'd say "I can hear your diaper!" and swat my butt. 

Plus, both of them were there when my stepdad found my homemade diaper stash, a couple of years after I stopped needing to wear them, and he convened a family meeting to yell at me about it while waving a diaper around that I'd made out of a pillow case. Although I don't think that my siblings knew what that was about; I think they thought that I'd been caught still wetting the bed, essentially, not that I was caught living out DL fantasies after dark. I don't know that they know the meaning of AB or DL, or that, if they did, they'd apply that knowledge to me. Certainly, at the time, they didn't know of it - there was no internet. 

So, it's probably irrational that I worry about them hearing my diaper, but, then again, not everything we fear is rational, is it? 

I actually managed to end up in a conversation with him about my wearing diapers as a kid, despite deliberately avoiding the topic, because I didn't want to get him thinking about diapers, or me in diapers, in a general sense, and then have that suddenly add context to some randomly observed but dismissed sensory input, such as noting the bulk under my shorts or picking up a vague hint of baby powder in the air. Or the fact that I never get up to go to the bathroom when we drink together. 

He brought it up; his daughter and my daughter were negotiating over sleeping together, and he asked in passing if she'd outgrown needing pull-ups yet - the last time I was at his place, I'd asked him where he wanted them disposed of. Which, as an aside, helped me out as well, because I also had things to dispose of. But I digress. 

I quickly filled him in on the lay of the land, and then he pivoted the conversation, saying something like "Yeah, it's good that there are lots of options for that now. I remember when they made you wear diapers to bed - it was a different time. I was really glad it wasn't me!" 

It was a short comment, but interesting, because he and I have almost never spoken about that aspect of that era. My sister once commented that she thought it was "wrong" that our parents "made me wear diapers that long", but my brother had never before offered an opinion on the topic, as an adult. 

I asked him how much he remembered about it, and he said not much, just that I'd slept in diapers. That episode was drawing to a close by the time he was 7 or 8. I did NOT ask if he recalled the incident when I was 12 - he probably would remember that, and I didn't want to dredge up any material that might now get reprocessed from an adult perspective, like old evidence from a crime scene getting another look. 

He asked me a question that startled me, though - he asked if I remembered when I got in trouble because I'd been stuffing diapers under my bed. I thought for a moment he was referring to THE incident, the one mentioned above, because although those diapers were found under my dresser, the similarity was too close to dismiss. My eyes kind of went wide, but then he added that it was when my cousin was staying over with us, and I squinted, because that detail didn't fit, and he said "You were taking your diapers off as soon as you got up, because you didn't want to wear them downstairs, and throwing them under your bed, and I guess you forgot about them and then mom found them at some point."

That last detail brought both relief, and the resurrection of a vague memory. I did recall when she stayed with us, but the most prominent memory related to that few days, 35 years or more ago, relates to day 1 of their visit, when I didn't realize they'd gotten in late the previous evening, and I went downstairs in the morning, still in my diaper, and ended up locking myself in the bathroom when my aunt and cousin came down the stairs shortly after I did. 

After that, I promptly removed my diaper as soon as I got up... and apparently I was shoving them under my bed, lest I run into anyone while carrying it to the trash can. Fast forward a couple of weeks, and mom begins investigating the lingering olfactory malaise that has taken over our room. You can guess the rest. 

[Little Sherri]

I'm solidly back in plastic this week, even wearing a Rearz Alpaca out to the pub under cargo shorts, after spending most of last week wearing "breathable" products because my brother was staying with us. While he and my niece were living in the house, things went back to the "old ways" on the privacy front - my wife didn't leave the bedroom door open while I was lying on the bed in a diaper, or while I was in the bathroom dressed thusly, if she decided she needed something from the kitchen at 11 PM or 1 AM. My kids knocked before opening the bedroom door. I rather liked going back to the old protocol. 

But, alas, it was all a show for our guests. Last night I came home from a social engagement in a soaked Select, closed the bedroom door, got undressed, pulled a Skooldoodle out of my diaper drawer, and went into the bathroom to shower and brush my teeth holding the new diaper, and one of my sleeping shirts. My wife sat on the bed watching TV and knitting. We exchanged pleasantries. I emerged 20 minutes later, wearing the new diaper and the shirt, and holding the old diaper... and my room had turned into a transit hub. The door to the hall was wide open. My younger daughter was lying in my spot on our bed. My eldest was digging through a laundry basket. 

For some reason, I felt the most embarrassing aspect of the situation was the old diaper, so I stuffed it under the sink for later disposal, then walked over to my dresser, and pulled a pair of shorts on. I gave my wife a quizzical look, however she is a champion at ignoring my facial expressions if they don't suit her mood, so she looked down at her knitting with a blank expression. 

I was reminded of another episode from the distant past while my brother was here: the great bed swap. The narrative went thusly: 

As previously noted, my brother and I shared a bedroom for a long time as kids. When he was really little, he slept in a crib, and I had some kind of single bed. Later, when he graduated from requiring bars around his bed, my parents bought us bunk beds. My brother got the bottom bunk, while I got the top, for a couple of reasons: first and foremost, so that he wouldn't have to climb a ladder to get into bed, nor be in danger of falling out of bed, as a toddler. Second, my parents could administer diaper changes on the lower bed. I didn't need diaper changes, per se, but rather, a switch over to diapers at some point prior to bedtime, so often both of us would be dealt with on the lower bunk, and then I'd climb up into my bed. 

However, when he was around 3 or so, my brother stopped wearing diapers entirely - not to bed, and not during the day. I would have been around 6. The sleeping arrangements stayed as they were for a while, but my brother became quite good at climbing up into the top bunk for us to pretend we were driving a ship, and such, and at some point my parents noticed that he scrambled up the ladder like a monkey and didn't accidently tumble off the bed with any frequency. 

SO, at some juncture - my brother thinks it was when I got Star Wars bedding for Christmas, and he got a railroad theme, and our bedtimes were changed - my parents decided to swap things around, because of course my brother no longer needed diapering, and I did. I started going to bed later than he did - I'd negotiated a half-hour later bedtime in compensation for my 3 years of seniority. So with him already in bed, using the bottom bunk to put a diaper on me was disruptive, and my mom didn't like doing it on the floor, because it was hard on her knees and back. I didn't like doing it on the couch in the living room because it was an afront to my dignity, and my sister might be there. Hence, I was promoted, in terms of bedtime allowance, and demoted, in terms of bed preferences, the top bunk clearly being the superior slot. Thus, my brother could clamber up into bed at 7:30, and I could follow at 8:00, without him being disturbed. The exception was Friday nights, when we were allowed to stay up until 9:00 to watch Knight Rider or The A-Team, however we had to have brushed our teeth and gotten dressed for bed before the show started. 

[Little Sherri]

As has been the pattern lately, I was awakened last night by the sensations associated with being toward the end of wetting my diaper. I'm starting to become more convinced that this is happening unconsciously, at least some of the time. I used to wake up, drowsy, at the start of a transfer event, and then drift back to sleep while things played out, which suggested to me that on the way up from the depths of sleep, I had perhaps authorized the event. Whereas when I wake up as things peter out, it means that they've been underway for a while, particularly if my nappy is notably wetter than it was when I called it a night. Which means that it's happening "by itself", exactly the phenomenon that plagued me for years of my childhood. I could never get ahold of nighttime control - my recollection is dim, but I believe that most of the time, I slept blissfully through them, or, I'd end up being woken up by the sensation of wearing a wet diaper, and then I'd roll over and try to fall back to sleep. I don't recall requesting or attempting a diaper change overnight, until I was close to "graduating" from diapers, when the overstretched toddler products I was wearing wouldn't accommodate more than one event, but by then I could just walk over to my closet, grab a diaper, and tape it on myself. Even then, it wasn't common. 

My parents told me on occasion that if I felt I "needed to go", I should just get up and go, even if I wasn't sure, but that was the rub; I always hauled down the front of my diaper and went pee one last time before I went to bed, so both the need, and the solution, developed while I was out of office. 

These days I don't do that. On the occasion when I find myself needing to go before bed, I let it happen while I'm awake, because then at least I don't have to worry about peeing over the front of my diaper or doing it while I'm on my side. 

[Little Sherri]

Oh, forget to mention that I had a diaper fire on the weekend. No, not a catastrophic loss of my diaper inventory, and nor did I attempt to burn garbage containing diapers. Both kids were out for the night, my wife was asleep, it was a relatively dark night, so I went out into the depths of the yard, put on a little fire, and sat in front of it in a diaper and a t-shirt. It's a black hole out there if the lights aren't on, and there's lots of trees between us and our neighbours in all directions, so I knew for sure that unless someone had night vision goggles or a spotlight, they were not going to know I was there, let alone what I had on. This time of year, the bugs die off, and it's pretty nice out there under the stars. It was liberating. 

Small steps,@diaperedboilerman, small steps!

[oznl]

10 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

As has been the pattern lately, I was awakened last night by the sensations associated with being toward the end of wetting my diaper. I'm starting to become more convinced that this is happening unconsciously, at least some of the time.

The onset of bedwetting for me was similarly ambiguous.  It took an awful lot of evidence to defeat the highly resilient rationalisation engine in my brain that kept finding alternate explanations as to why I was now occasionally waking up in wet nappies that I couldn't remember making.  By the time I accepted that I'd started wetting the bed, I'd probably been doing it off and on for months and months.

If your experience in any way resembles mine (and clearly it has done to a large extent in the past), don’t get down if you find yourself suddenly reverting to being dry at night again.

I’ve found the ebb and flow (pun unintentional) of this to be quite frustrating.  Whilst bedwetting is nowhere near as fragile a thing for me as it was a year ago, it still tends to retreat if I start dragging it to front of mind.  I wake up instead of wet.

It always (well so far) comes back and the underlying trend line is getting wetter.

I’ve been wet at night more nights than not for a few weeks now but of course now that I’ve said that…

[le Hollandais]

7 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

Oh, forget to mention that I had a diaper fire on the weekend. No, not a catastrophic loss of my diaper inventory, and nor did I attempt to burn garbage containing diapers. Both kids were out for the night, my wife was asleep, it was a relatively dark night, so I went out into the depths of the yard, put on a little fire, and sat in front of it in a diaper and a t-shirt. It's a black hole out there if the lights aren't on, and there's lots of trees between us and our neighbours in all directions, so I knew for sure that unless someone had night vision goggles or a spotlight, they were not going to know I was there, let alone what I had on. This time of year, the bugs die off, and it's pretty nice out there under the stars. It was liberating. 

Small steps,@diaperedboilerman, small steps!

Sounds heavenly.

[Little Sherri]

On 8/26/2022 at 8:40 PM, oznl said:

don’t get down if you find yourself suddenly reverting to being dry at night again.

To your point, last night for whatever reason, I was awakened a couple of hours after I went to bed, by a need to pee. I'm not sure why it didn't take care of itself - it wasn't one of those situations where positioning was obviously the issue. I climbed up out of the clouds of slumber, did a sweep of my instruments, found the water tank high level switch was indicating, stabbed in annoyance at the release button, and then descended back into the mists. Other than that, I slept like a rock.

Speaking of sleep-wetting (if not bed-wetting)...

I was at a barbecue on a farm yesterday, a newly-purchased small (for a farm) property a couple of hours from the city, that friends of ours traded their thoroughly urban downtown townhouse for. Quite the switch. It was kind of fun to watch them have fun noting the potential of the strange collection of buildings and land they'd purchased. They went from having a backyard the size of an average single-car driveway, to requiring a quad bike to survey over the distant hills. They aren't farming anything right now, just trying to get a handle on the maintenance required by such a property, and getting to know their neighbours, and the coyotes and deer that call the area home. 

THAT place has some real potential for diaper hiking, for those so inclined. I'd bet you could walk for 30 minutes out and 30 minutes back, surrounded by tall grasses and stands of trees. And ticks, one imagines. I did walk their trails, and I was wearing a diaper, but, alas, I had a onesie and bulky cargo shorts overtop. I wore an InControl Elite Hybrid diaper, and I was impressed by its performance, as usual. I put it on before we left on the 2+ hour drive out there, I wore it all day while hiking, drinking beer at a relaxed pace and examining dilapidated structures that smelled like straw and horses. The sun dropped toward the Western horizon, a fire was started, chitchat continued, and eventually, it was time to leave. I had a Bambino Skooldoodle lined up in my diaper bag for a swap, if one was required, but I realized that from where we were situated, it made more sense to walk to the car and head out, than it did to walk to the car, get a bag, walk to the house, fiddle in the bathroom for a few minutes, and then walk back out of the house with a heavier bag. 

As I sat in a Muskoka (AKA Adirondack) chair around the fire, I realized that none of the feedback I was getting from below was providing any useful information. It was humid, I felt a bit sticky, my diaper felt uniformly damp, it had swelled up but no absurdly so. I couldn't even tell if I was peeing or not; there was just a damp numbness down below. When we got up, I lagged a couple of steps behind the group just so I could do a tactile sweep of my rear; my diaper was puffy back there in a way that might have been notable were I to bend over in front of someone at high noon, but in the fading light, standing, it didn't concern me. I made a game-time decision to just get in the car and go. 

My wife was driving, and after a bit, I drifted off to sleep, which is not something I often do in cars these days, although as a kid I almost always did, on rare occasions leading to embarrassing days spent with a diaper on under my shorts, when we were driving cross-country and such. In retrospect, I wish I'd just learned to enjoy it, as I do now, but I digress. Anyway, I feel asleep and slept for the better part of an hour... and woke up to the alarming sensation of rising wetness just below my navel. I was apparently in the midst of flooding my diaper. I actually put a hand on my tummy and pressed my diaper against my skin, because I was worried about a possible spill-over. I sensed a small dripple tracing a path down my right hip under the wings of the diaper, but when I felt around, I couldn't detect any damp spots on my shorts. The front of my diaper felt very swollen. The middle of it was being forced over to one side a bit by the seam up the center of my shorts. We still had an hour to go. Surly, I couldn't produce much additional output? It seemed like I had discharged all the fluid I'd consumed in the last 24 hours. 

I was in a car that belonged to us and I was headed home, so I wasn't terribly worried, but then my wife indicated that she wanted to stop at a store on the way home... and she needed cases of water for an event the following morning, IE necessitating my participation in the stopover. I sighed. We pulled into the grocery store parking lot, which was emptying out because they were just about to close. I stepped out of the car. Everything below me felt pendulous. I felt like I had a waddle to me. I suddenly wished my shorts were two sizes larger. They remained the same size. 

I squelched across the store, tossed cases of water bottles into the cart, squelched back. Waited in line while a guy with four kids stood behind us. Waddled back to the car. Felt myself reflexively start to pee, briefly tried to call it back, then realized I was better off letting it happen while standing, then sitting down. I actually squatted momentarily behind the car, as though examining the rear wheel well, in an effort to give anything that wanted to move a chance to settle further back, but that enormous diaper seemed to want to keep everything up front and in the middle - there would be no redistribution that I could detect. 

I sat down in the car.... waited.... didn't feel like anything was amiss. We drove the last 20 minutes home. Once inside, I headed straight up to our room, dropped my shorts, and unsnapped my onesie, peeling it up over my head. The crotch of it was a bit damp, but the uniform dampness of something worn on a humid day, not the saturated wetness of a garment that had been violated.

My wife walked in while I waddled back and forth, putting clothing into the laundry and digging up an overnight diaper. She raised her eyebrows at me when I made eye contact, but said nothing. I cowboy-walked into the washroom, closed the door, dropped my diaper, and felt like saluting it - it was soaked from bow to 4/5ths of the way back to the stern, but as far as I could tell, it hadn't failed me. I was in it for about 14 hours, but 14 hours of sitting, then hiking and drinking beer on a humid day, then sitting again, blissfully draining all the while, evidence suggested.