Conversations with Mom

[Little Sherri]

I was over at my parents' place the other day, and they were watching one of the TLC shows following the lives of people who have multiple babies, and in the show, the camera panned across a shelf in their garage with about 10 boxes of various diapers on it. I hadn't intended to start a conversation with my parents about diapers, but the show kind of lead into it, so I thought, why not? Now, understand that I haven't and would not speak to my mom about my own diaper status - what I asked about was my diaper history. 

Background: I was out of diapers during the day when I was around age 3, which is a pretty common timeline for potty training. However, I was a prolific bed wetter until I was about 9 years old, and this was in the pre-pull up era, so I wore diapers to bed, and when we went on long car rides - anytime I might fall asleep, basically. I think that had a lot to do with my life-long fascination with diapers. 

My question for my mom was, what kind of diapers did I usually wear? For disposables, I had always vaguely assumed they must have been Pampers, since this was in the late 70's and early 80's, and there were not hundreds of brands of diaper brands around yet. But I also recalled wearing cloth diapers on occasion, and I actually thought that I had worn cloth diapers at least 50% of the time, or maybe more, SO, I was curious as to why they went with cloth sometimes - was it because of the cost of disposables, or because I eventually outgrew even the largest Pampers?

However, to my surprise, my mom said that she much preferred disposables, and that she did indeed have a few cloth diapers, but she only really ever used them if she couldn't get disposables big enough, and they were in a pinch for a day or two here and there. She said that I wore disposables overnight- and confirmed they were mostly Pampers - probably 95% of the time, which is interesting to me, because evidently the cloth diapers made a big impression on me - enough so that I recalled wearing them much more often than I did. 

History is repeating itself, because currently, while I have a couple of cloth diapers and some plastic pants, and while I like the way they feel, I wear still wear disposables most of the time - they are WAY easier to hide under clothing, and vastly more convenient if one is going to be away from the house, and even around the house, who likes washing diapers...?

I also asked my mom how she fit me into Pampers in the later years, when I was 7 - 9, and she said the answer was "barely" - that by the time I stopped wetting every night, the tapes were only reaching the outside edges of the wings, and that sometimes she put Scotch tape over the diaper tapes to make sure that they held. As soon as she said that, I immediately remembered her using the Scotch tape, but up until that moment, I had completely forgotten about it. Childhood memories are a funny thing.

Has anyone else ever had a conversation with their parents about the diapers they used as kids? Do you think your childhood diaper experiences influenced your current diaper preferences, and/or paved the way for your current fascination with them?  

[Cruiser 03]

Sadly my birth mother was murdered just after I turned 12 ,so we never spoke about it ,I can say what I do know ,as the youngest of three we where all two years apart so as one grew out one grew in, i was born in 67 and its realy weird  that i was born because my mom had miscarriage between my older sister and me so allegedly ,i was the miracle baby they werent actually trying for (ultimately it was a dark day in the universe , neither of my actual parents lived to se what hath god wrought ,it all was things my adopted mom had to come to terms with )during L & D my mother was so sick ,we both almost died ,she was the first woman in Catholic hospital ro be ever taken directly to surgery so that I was guaranteed last child .

'Our diapers and Gerber pants say on a shelf behind the bathroom door until child protective took me away .

Coming full circle between 05 & 10 i was paralyzed on my right side , getting a diaper with velcro was next to impossible ,velcro then was considered a premium option insurance wouldnt pay for disposable with velcro so i tried reusable this is hideous they would pay 26 cents towards a new cloth diaper! I said screw them and spent 20K on cloth diapers,custom pants and Onesies , to this day I am wearing the same diapers pants and Onesies, insurance supplies me with more disposables then I can possibly use so the bulk of them go to Needy IC ABDL because I wear them when I go to doctors appointments or out in the summer ,obviously disposables weren't common when I was kid ,so as an adult it seemed perfectly natural to wear cloth diapers obviously I regained some limited use of my right arm,so i can change myself if needed but much the time I save my energy and have my aide do it when he's here , he also gets the bulk of the messy ones ,my bowels move usually 4 times a day so he does those I usually have one more in the evening and about once a week I will go in my sleep ,so he will start the day with a change and make sure I am squared away before he goes home . I don't have the confidence in disposables I have in cloth ,the only time I have blown out a cloth was when my doctors changed me to new medication my bowels were are a parking lot ,so in taking the reccomended amount for the medication to take control ,i had no idea just how much i was not eliminating until I murdered a diaper ,i have really rope shelf cloth with elastic waist and leg openings and it was all of maybe 15 seconds before I was filling my pants,it not only forces movements they are " soft formed "to translate that to diaper I would say Splat .    

[skizics]

I was able to have that conversation with my mother before she died in 1980 from breast cancer. I had a lot of anger to work out and once we started to talk we just kept talking for weeks and I'm glad we did because I never would have understood 'Who I Am' today if I hadn't had her input as to 'Who I Was' growing up. That said...

I was a bedwetter and, for the most part, had to wear diapers every night to keep my bed dry. That part of the story is complicated, mainly because I was confused as to What Potty Training really was and no one, including my mother, was willing or able to explain it to me. I can remember my mother explaining to her friends the I had been potty trained at eighteen months and I always thought that was weird because she would be changing my diaper, while she said this, and I had heard that same line over and over until I was nearly twelve years old.

Mother and I covered Everything from birth to present and the thing that surprised me the most was how many time she had been told by my doctor that I would be dead by morning or next weekend or...  It didn't take her very long to get Very Over Protective ! Mother also used to make comments about 'how cute my diapered butt looked' and I, at the time, thought my diapers were a Family Secret that no one else knew about. When I found that out, it was almost like a betrayal of trust... but we worked all of that out too.