All My Mother's Rules (Ch. 70 & Epilogue - 2/13/24)

[Arendeth]

Thanks for the chapter.

[littleTomás]

?

[Little Andrea]

I finally got caught up on this story, and I’ve really enjoyed it so far, keep up the good work!

[MinnesotaWriter]

Thanks for all the comments. Just an FYI, I'm on vacation so it will be about a week until the next chapter is posted

 

On 6/5/2020 at 6:59 AM, HelloIam said:

Nice that she had an accident without noticing. Love to see where this story is going. Keep the updates coming!

Thanks. Will do.

On 6/5/2020 at 11:49 AM, Sarah Penguin said:

?

On 6/5/2020 at 2:58 PM, spark said:

You have to wonder how mom will react to the wet pull-up.  I'm pretty sure it will be the same rules- along with a punishment for not telling mom the truth.

Just to clarify things, Sarah is still changing from the nighttime pullups mom had pulled out of storage for her and into her sisters pull-ups while she is at school. So the accident she had in this last chapter isn't one mom would likely be aware of.

On 6/5/2020 at 10:16 PM, Arendeth said:

Thanks for the chapter.

You're welcome

On 6/5/2020 at 11:52 PM, littleTomás said:

?

?

7 hours ago, Little Andrea said:

I finally got caught up on this story, and I’ve really enjoyed it so far, keep up the good work!

Thanks, I'm glad you're enjoying it.

[Night Rain]

Looking forward to what happens between Sarah and Lisa during their time together.

[Diaperingdaddy]

I hope she discovers what she seaks?

[MinnesotaWriter]

Chapter 21: Sleepyhead

“Wake up. Wake up.”

After receiving a hard poke to my shoulder, my head jerked upright from where it had been resting in my arms on my desk. My heart was pounding. My eyes were as wide open as they could be. My eyes darted at first to the front of the classroom, but the teacher was too busy writing on the whiteboard to have noticed my brief attempt at a nap.

After four nights in a row of being wakened by a wet pull-up and a wet bed, I was now running on fumes. This was the second time already today that I’d dozed off in class. Thankfully, Samantha and Desi had been quick to wake me before I got into trouble with any of our teachers. The clock said there were five minutes remaining in the class. I wasn’t sure I could make it.

Being tired plays tricks on your mind. I swear that these wooden desks at the high school had been intentionally designed to keep students uncomfortable, but now the hard surface looked more inviting than any bed I’d ever slept in. All I wanted to do was rest my head on it. Just one moment. I wouldn’t close my eyes. I’d lift my head back up in a couple of seconds.

As I lowered my head, I got another poke. This time, it was from Desi. She didn’t whisper anything to me, but the look of concern on her face told me enough. I forced myself to sit upright. The temptation to close my eyes for just a few brief seconds was so strong, but I knew that if I gave in, that could easily lead to me falling asleep again. How was I going to get through the rest of the day?

I didn’t know what I was going to do if the bedwetting kept up like this. I’d never felt so tired in my life. I could handle it if I was walking around, standing, and doing stuff, but sitting at a desk with someone droning on and on about some boring subject was the perfect recipe for me to fall asleep.

The past couple of nights had been so strange. I had hoped that Mom’s dislike of changing diapers would extend to her letting me change from a wet pull-up into a dry one, but the last two nights she had insisted on changing me herself. Awkward wasn’t close enough of a word to describe how uncomfortable that was, but I had been too tired to put up a fuss over it. Once I had replaced my sheets and had Mom change me into a dry pull-up, I was too awake to fall right back to sleep. I’d lost a couple hours of sleep each night just laying there in my bed staring at the ceiling.

I couldn’t wait for fourth period to come to an end. Lunch was next, and If I ate my lunch fast enough, maybe that would give me enough time for a short nap in the cafeteria. The bell rung, and I wearily stepped out of my desk and went off to grab my lunchbox from my locker while Desi and Samantha got in line for a hot meal in the cafeteria.

I didn’t get the peaceful lunch I had been hoping for. I’d barely been at the table I was saving for myself and my friends for a few minutes when Desi arrived with a mug on her tray.

“This was for you, sleepyhead,” she said, setting a coffee mug in front of me.

“I don’t like coffee.”

“I don’t care. You need to drink it, or you’ll be sleeping through the rest of your classes.”

I took a look down at the brown liquid in the mug.

“It’s disgusting.”

“Stop whining. I put like seven packets of sugar in there for you.”

Loads of caffeine and sugar. What could possibly go wrong? I shoved the mug away from my side of the table. The risk of offending Desi was not nearly as bad as whatever havoc that drink would cause to my bladder.

“Fine. I’ll drink it instead,” Desi said. She wasn’t one to let anything go to waste.

I tried to stifle a yawn, but I wasn’t successful. I couldn’t wait until I got home. A nap sounded like such a good idea right now. I wished today was Friday and not Thursday. At this point, I felt like I needed a whole weekend to completely recover.

“You really need to stop staying up so late playing video games,” Samantha said, as she arrived at the table.

Despite my protestations, she was convinced that this was the cause of my tiredness. In truth, I hadn’t tried too hard to dissuade her of that opinion. It was much better for her to think video games were the cause of my lack of sleep than what was really happening. I hated lying to my friends, but telling Samantha about the bedwetting was off the table – not with how she was treating her younger brother – and I couldn’t get away with telling Desi without Samantha finding out.

“Mom never lets me stay up late. I’ve just been waking up a lot. I don’t know why.”

I wasn’t sure if they believed me, but I was sure that they wouldn’t guess what was preventing me from getting a good night’s worth of sleep.

---

With cheerleading practice over, I sat in a bathroom stall in the locker room and removed a pull-up soaked with both sweat and pee. All the physical activity of the past hour-and-a-half had kept me awake, but now I was more exhausted than before.

With the pull-up off, that meant I’d have to go without a pull-up for about fifteen minutes while I showered and dressed, but it kept my secret safe from being found out by my teammates. I would stop in another bathroom on my way out to instead put on one of the pull-ups Mom had given me so that I could trick her into thinking that I’d kept it dry all through the school day.

I still hadn’t gotten used to showering at school. I didn’t care to show my body to other people. I did my best to focus straight ahead and only concentrate on washing myself. I knew I wasn’t the center of attention. Everyone else was minding their own businesses as well. But in the back of my mind it still felt as if everyone’s eyes were still secretly on me.

Once I’d finished rinsing off all the soap, I turned off the shower, wrapped a towel around my waist and chest, and walked back to my locker to get dressed. As I turned around the corner to the section where the cheerleading lockers were, Claire was standing next to my locker. My backpack was propped up on the bench, and it was clear that one of its sections had been unzipped. Claire was holding a couple of pull-ups in her hand. Her face held a triumphant, jubilant look as she smirked at me.

“Aww, the baby returns. Look who still wears diapers.”

Those were pull-ups, not diapers, but now wasn’t the time to argue that etymological distinction with her.

A few of the upperclassmen – the girls Claire often hung out with outside of cheerleading -- snickered at Claire’s childish insult. This was so not good. I tried my best to keep a look of panic from forming on my face. How could Claire have known that the pull-ups were in the backpack? Wait, she must have seen them when she had taken my backpack earlier this week.

“Catch,” Claire said, tossing one of the pull-ups at me.

I caught it one handed since I was still using my other hand to hold up my towel. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the pull-ups that Claire had pulled from the backpack were only my sister’s ones and not the other nighttime ones. I could use that to my advantage.

I rolled my eyes at Claire, trying to put on a show of being annoyed with her rather than showing how deathly embarrassed I was.

“Really, Claire? My little sister is still potty training. I have her pull-ups because if I take her out somewhere, I have to have something to carry them in case I need to change her.”

I was proud of myself for coming up with that alibi right on the spot. The calm delivery of it was spot on as well. I didn’t let up on Claire, who still had the other pull-up in her hand. From the look on her face, it was clear this confrontation hadn’t gone as she had planned.

“I doubt even a twig like you could fit into them, though if you’re curious, I’d certainly let you borrow one to try.”

That led to a cascade of laughter from the remaining girls in the room. I was skinny myself, but not nearly as much as Claire. Her face turned to an angry shade of red as she threw the pull-up onto the ground, shoved my backpack off the bench, and stormed away.

Normally, I’d keep my towel draped over my back for as long as I could while I got dressed to give myself a little bit of privacy. This time, I set the towel on the bench so that it would be completely clear to any of the remaining girls that I was putting on a pair of panties.

I knew what I needed to do. I should walk down the hallway to the coach’s office and tell her what Claire had just done. But that meant telling another person about the pull-ups in my backpack. That meant another chance that my lie might get exposed. As much as I wanted to get back at Claire, I couldn’t see tattling on her to Coach Addison as being worth the risk.

I grabbed my backpack – I’d put my sister’s pull-ups back inside – and left the locker room, relieved that Claire’s latest attempt to bully me had been so easily thwarted.

---

A large cardboard box was sitting right in front of the door when we arrived back home. Mom must have been doing some online shopping.

“Sarah, grab that box and take it to my bedroom, please.”

“OK.”

The box looked to be way heavier than I could manage to lift, but when I bent down to pick it up, I realized that it didn’t weigh nearly as much as I had anticipated. As I lifted the box up, the way its weight shifted with a thump suggested that it contained a slightly smaller package inside it. I propped the box up against my body with one hand while I used the other to open the door.

I didn’t put much thought as to what was in the box. Mom ordered a lot of stuff online, so it wasn’t uncommon to come back from school to see a package waiting for us on the doorstep. I set the box on her bed – I knew better than to open her packages – before returning to the entryway for another routine I had grown to hate.

“OK, girls, mommy needs to make sure you’ve kept your pull-ups dry.”

I stood silently next to my sister as Mom took my pants off and inspected the pull-up. The nighttime ones didn’t come with a wetness indicator, so Mom pulled the front of the pull-up forward so that she could look inside. Mom went through the same steps with my sister – Emilia’s pull-up was dry as well – before letting us get on our way.

I didn’t have too much homework on my plate. My biggest assignment at the moment was the group project I was supposed to be doing with Lisa, but we hadn’t talked about it since we had been given that assignment on Tuesday.

I filled a bowl with veggie chips – bland, but better than nothing – and sat down on the couch to munch on the snack while looking at my phone. Mom allowed me to take a little time to eat a healthy snack before getting started on homework. With my legs folded up to my chest, the pull-up was barely noticeable. Just three more days. Three more days of staying dry and I could put this whole potty-training charade behind me and focus on trying to figure out what was going wrong with my body.

Since Mom was having me follow the same potty-training rules as Emilia, that at least assured me that the times I’d wet myself at night wouldn’t count against the seven days I had to stay dry during the day to go back to wearing panties. That didn’t mean I’d stop wearing pull-ups, but secretly wearing my sister’s pull-ups was so much better than having Mom parade me around in the nighttime ones.

With thoughts of freedom in my mind, I let my eyes close for just a short second. That was a mistake. I woke up a short time later. Emilia was still watching the same TV show so it couldn’t have been too long, but the damage was already done. A small wet spot had formed at the crotch of the pull-up. It wasn’t a big accident by any means, but big or small didn’t make any difference when it comes to Mom. It wasn’t fair. I couldn’t help it since I had been asleep. The thought of having to go tell Mom about the accident filled me with dread. Just the thought of that humiliation was already making my cheeks burn.

Emilia was too focused on the cartoon playing on the TV to turn around and notice the obviously wet pull-up. I turned my head toward the hallway. I could hear Mom preparing dinner in the kitchen.

I left the empty bowl of chips on the book stand next to the couch. Mom would be unhappy with me for that, but if I carried the bowl into the kitchen to put it in the sink, there was no way Mom wouldn’t notice the wet pull-up.

I got up from the couch and walked casually through the hallway. I tried to keep my body slightly angled away from the kitchen as I passed it, but Mom was too pre-occupied with cooking to turn and look my way.

I shut the door behind me as soon as I got into my bedroom. I was in the clear. No one had noticed. I removed the wet pull-up and buried it as deep as I could in the diaper pail. Mom would have to deliberately go digging through it to find out that an extra pull-up had been thrown away. I retrieved another one of the nighttime pull-ups from the dresser. There were only about a dozen left, given how many I’d gone through already at night this week. I made sure to select one with the same design as the one that I’d tossed.

I sat down at my desk with a sigh of both anguish and relief. Three days had never felt like such a long time before.

[HelloIam]

Really like the pacing in this story. 

[BabySofia]

Somehow I have a feeling that her nighttime routine is about to get upended... then those new diapers are probably going to find their way around her waist at school now too... poor kid. I still despise her mother for not having considered how weird this is and taking her to the doctor!

[Lost Little Neppy]

The mother seems to have very little consideration for her children, which makes me wonder why she had them in the first place. Is she one of those parents who thinks they're entitled to respect without having to give any themselves? Does she have some sort of backstory explaining it? I'm also going off the assumption that she's divorced, given how quirky she is (although it's not uncommon for widows and widowers to develop eccentricities due to the death of a spouse).

I also love that the school that the protagonist goes to is not a horrible one. The little things, such as offering coffee and having a whiteboard instead of a blackboard (and a Fortnite club/tournament), really paints the picture that the school isn't a hellhole that is often depicted in these kinds of stories where everyone is a bully and teachers either turn a blind eye or join in. The realism is striking, showing that not everyone or everything is negative and most of the characters are three-dimensional. Kudos to the writer!

[Little Andrea]

Wow! I suspect that she’ll be going from pull ups to diapers very soon, especially when / if her mom realizes that the pull ups are disappearing faster than they should be.

[Sarah Penguin]

Hmm.

[WBDaddy]

17 hours ago, Little Andrea said:

Wow! I suspect that she’ll be going from pull ups to diapers very soon, especially when / if her mom realizes that the pull ups are disappearing faster than they should be.

Or if her Mom finds the same surprise Claire did.  That excuse won't work on her, I don't think. 

 

[spark]

18 hours ago, Lost Little Neppy said:

The mother seems to have very little consideration for her children, which makes me wonder why she had them in the first place. Is she one of those parents who thinks they're entitled to respect without having to give any themselves? Does she have some sort of backstory explaining it? I'm also going off the assumption that she's divorced, given how quirky she is (although it's not uncommon for widows and widowers to develop eccentricities due to the death of a spouse).

I also love that the school that the protagonist goes to is not a horrible one. The little things, such as offering coffee and having a whiteboard instead of a blackboard (and a Fortnite club/tournament), really paints the picture that the school isn't a hellhole that is often depicted in these kinds of stories where everyone is a bully and teachers either turn a blind eye or join in. The realism is striking, showing that not everyone or everything is negative and most of the characters are three-dimensional. Kudos to the writer!

I think the realism is the biggest reason I'm enjoying this story.  I'm very interested in how Sarah gets through this.

Mom is a narcissistic character, but based on how she behaves- I think mom believes she is doing the right thing.  She is raising her children to be obedient and responsible, and is demanding the best out of her children.   While the potty training method is questionable, spanking your high school daughter for getting a C on quiz is hugely questionable.  The credit is to make that one act believable with the mom character, but making mom more of a manipulative monster than a sadistic monster.

[MinnesotaWriter]

On 6/13/2020 at 3:15 PM, HelloIam said:

Really like the pacing in this story. 

Thanks. I'm hoping that the build-up will be worth it, especially in the next several chapters. There's a few coming up that I've been looking forward to writing for a while. 

On 6/13/2020 at 3:42 PM, BabySofia said:

Somehow I have a feeling that her nighttime routine is about to get upended... then those new diapers are probably going to find their way around her waist at school now too... poor kid. I still despise her mother for not having considered how weird this is and taking her to the doctor!

Thanks for the comment. We'll have to see what Sarah's mom has in store for her.

23 hours ago, Lost Little Neppy said:

The mother seems to have very little consideration for her children, which makes me wonder why she had them in the first place. Is she one of those parents who thinks they're entitled to respect without having to give any themselves? Does she have some sort of backstory explaining it? I'm also going off the assumption that she's divorced, given how quirky she is (although it's not uncommon for widows and widowers to develop eccentricities due to the death of a spouse).

I also love that the school that the protagonist goes to is not a horrible one. The little things, such as offering coffee and having a whiteboard instead of a blackboard (and a Fortnite club/tournament), really paints the picture that the school isn't a hellhole that is often depicted in these kinds of stories where everyone is a bully and teachers either turn a blind eye or join in. The realism is striking, showing that not everyone or everything is negative and most of the characters are three-dimensional. Kudos to the writer!

Thanks for the comment. I'm glad you like the school.

As far as the mother's backstory goes, that may be explored some later on, though I've dropped a couple hints along the way.

23 hours ago, Little Andrea said:

Wow! I suspect that she’ll be going from pull ups to diapers very soon, especially when / if her mom realizes that the pull ups are disappearing faster than they should be.

Thanks for the comment. We'll to see what Sarah's mom chooses to do.

11 hours ago, Sarah Penguin said:

Hmm.

Hmm ?

5 hours ago, WBDaddy said:

Or if her Mom finds the same surprise Claire did.  That excuse won't work on her, I don't think. 

 

Yeah, that wouldn't turn out well for Sarah. 

4 hours ago, spark said:

I think the realism is the biggest reason I'm enjoying this story.  I'm very interested in how Sarah gets through this.

Mom is a narcissistic character, but based on how she behaves- I think mom believes she is doing the right thing.  She is raising her children to be obedient and responsible, and is demanding the best out of her children.   While the potty training method is questionable, spanking your high school daughter for getting a C on quiz is hugely questionable.  The credit is to make that one act believable with the mom character, but making mom more of a manipulative monster than a sadistic monster.

Thanks, narcissist would probably be the best way to describe how Sarah's mom is behaving. She certainly believes she is in the right, but in a self-centered, I know what is best, type of way rather than from a perspective of focusing on what is actually best for her daughters.

[WBDaddy]

2 hours ago, MinnesotaWriter said:

She certainly believes she is in the right, but in a self-centered, I know what is best, type of way rather than from a perspective of focusing on what is actually best for her daughters.

As the survivor of an abusive, histrionic, self-obsessed mother, I can say I'm really not as appalled by Sarah's mother's behavior so far.  It's a bit erratic, which is disconcerting, because that hints at internal instability, which could REALLY be bad news later.  

And yes, my mother was always talking about how she was a good parent, and anything I did to rebel against her control issues was perceived (and regurgitated to me) as some sort of attempt to make her look like "a bad parent".  

For example:  I wanted to wear t-shirts and jeans, preferably ripped at the knees, to school.  It was 1985, and that was definitely the appropriate outfit for a metalhead during that time period.  My mother claimed that I wanted to wear these things "to look like a poor kid so everyone would feel sorry for you."  

Uh, yeah, no, presenting as "poor" never entered my thought process there, Ma....

[Nat]

Narcissists seem so delusional they all seem to think their kid is acting up to ruin their day or to terrorize them. They even all seem to think an infant cries all the time or wakes them up at night to manipulate them and to ruin their life. 

I don't know if I shall feel bad for them for feeling that way. It must be so hard thinking your own kid is out to get you. I can't imagine how frightening that must be. But I bet that is so much harder for the child because they have to grow up faster than normal kids and imagine their shock when they find out all their bad behaviors they did was actually normal kid behavior and they were basically punished harshly for being seven years old or for being three years old and they were told growing up how manipulative they were and how they enjoyed ruining their days and never letting them have a good time and sabotaging their days and their important dates and stuff. 

 

Being a parent, there is no such thing as a bad baby. 

 

Are there kids out there that truly manipulate and terrorize you, sure but those kids are rare and that is caused by trauma. It's called reactive Attachment Disorder. More common in foster and adoptive kids. 

[GQLF]

Maybe this box have baby-potty even diapers, I guess Sarah's mother found Emilia's Pull-ups in rapid reduction.

[Arendeth]

I guess the box is a diapers for nighttime (maybe even school :P) for Sarah. Thanks for the chapter.

[MinnesotaWriter]

Chapter 22: A Sudden Change

“Sarah,” Mom said sternly, as I lay on the couch reading, “you need to come with me to my bedroom.”

My heart skipped several beats at that announcement. To be brought to Mom’s room was only for the most serious of punishments or discussions. That’s where she had given me that whole discussion about the birds and the bees. That’s also where I’d received one of my most painful spankings ever after failing a test.

If Mom had any inkling that I had secretly changed myself out of a wet pull-up without her permission, she hadn’t let on at all so far this evening. Or had she only been waiting until after Emilia had been put to bed? That wouldn’t be like Mom though. If I went afoul of her rules, the punishment was dealt out the moment she became aware of the transgression. Mom wasn’t a believer in justice being delayed.

“I’m coming,” I told Mom as I got off the couch.

I was at a loss as to what this was about, but I knew better than to ask or – even worse – to delay at all in obeying her. I could feel my heart pounding as I followed behind her to the bedroom. What could I have done? Had she found out about how I’d changed myself? Had she discovered how I was taking Emilia’s pull-ups? Had I gotten a failing grade on an assignment that I hadn’t noticed yet?

My heart was beating faster and faster, and I could feel a bead of sweat beginning to trickle down from my forehead. I entered her bedroom to see that the box I had placed on her bed earlier in the day was now open. Inside it was a plastic-wrapped package with the image of a disposable diaper on it. The question as to what was in the box I had carried in from the front steps earlier today was now answered. The implications – unbelievable as they were – became readily apparent.

No. She couldn’t have. This had to be some kind of joke. It couldn’t be real.

“Sarah, sit down,” Mom said, patting the edge of the bed next to the right of where she had taken a seat herself. “We need to have a talk.”

What Mom meant wasn’t exactly the same as what she said. Having a talk meant me listening to her tell me about something I needed to do and then doing it without a word of complaint. It would be one of those one-way-road type of conversations.

I took a seat wordlessly next to her, my feet dangling a couple of inches off of the floor. Had she really done it? Had she really bought some diapers online for me? The look of distress on my face must have been evident as Mom tried to take on a comforting tone.

“Sarah, we need to find a better way to deal with... what had started happening again at night.”

Neither of us said anything for a while after that. The elephant in the room was too awkward to address head on. But there was no escaping it. Mom had brought the issue to a head by bringing out the package of diapers.

“The pull-ups aren’t working at night,” Mom said at last.

I didn’t look at her. I kept my eyes focused squarely on the door as I gave a simple nod in agreement. There was no arguing that point.

“You’re not getting enough sleep, and neither am I, with having to get everything cleaned up in the middle of the night.”

I wanted to interject to say that Mom could get all the sleep she wanted if she would only let me change myself, but I bit my tongue.

“I went online and found... something else for you to use at night,” Mom said, again not naming what was in the box. “The reviews are really good, better than all the options in your size, so it should work well enough so that you could sleep through the whole night without getting interrupted.”

Mom’s logic was infallible. I couldn’t deny that my bedwetting had resumed itself in full. I couldn’t deny that the nighttime pull-ups were now pretty much useless at keeping my bed dry. I couldn’t deny that waking up in the middle of the night to change the sheets and the pull-up was leaving me more and more exhausted each day.

Everything Mom had said was correct, but all the facts pointed to an outcome I wasn’t willing to accept. I’m fifteen. I shouldn’t need to wear diapers. I didn’t want to wear diapers. This was so not right. I could feel the tears beginning to form. I briefly clenched my eyes and blinked rapidly a couple of times in an attempt to hold the tears back. Now wasn’t the time to cry. If I didn’t want to be treated like a baby, then I needed to act like an adult.

“Go use the potty one last time. We’ll get you dressed for bed once you’ve done that.”

And that was it. No room for discussion. No asking if I’m feeling OK. No asking her fifteen-year-old daughter if she cared for the idea of having a diaper putting on her. The worst part was that I had no standing to argue against her decision. I’d already given her all the proof she needed to decide to put me back in diapers at night.

I sat on the toilet for as long as I dared. I had managed to release a decent trickle of pee shortly after sitting down, but as hard as I tried, I couldn’t get anything else to come out in the minutes afterward. As much as I didn’t want to return to the bedroom, there was little point in putting off the inevitable. Once Mom gets it into her head that she was going to do something, there was usually not much to be gained by arguing with her.

I returned to Mom’s bedroom to find that she had gotten everything setup to diaper me. The changing mat had been set up on the edge of her bed, and to the side of it was baby powder, wipes, pajamas, and a single diaper Mom had pulled out from the package.

I hated wearing pull-ups, but I wasn’t blind. I could admit that the designs on them did look cute. Even Emilia’s diapers came with a colorful assortment of animals on them. The diaper that was sitting on the bed was ugly as heck. There wasn’t any other way to describe it.

The outside of the diaper was almost completely white. Two thin, yellow strips ran vertically across the center of the diaper, with a random assortment of printed numbers and letters between the lines.

I didn’t wait for Mom to tell me to lie down on the bed. After I had gotten on the changing pad, she started by ripping the sides of the pull-up to take it off. Even though I’d been keeping the pull-ups dry during the day, she never let me wear the same one for longer than a day.

But now was the hard part. I watched as Mom unfolded the diaper. Oh, my goodness, it was big. I went from wondering whether the diaper would be big enough to fit me to thinking that Mom might have accidentally ordered a size too large. While the outside was white, the interior padding had a peach colored hue.

“Come on, lift your bottom up,” Mom said, as she laid the diaper on the changing pad in front of my bottom.

I pressed my feet against the bed and arched my waist up so that there was room beneath it. Mom slid the back end of the diaper underneath me, taking time to line it up correctly.

“Alright, down again,” Mom said.

As I eased my bottom onto the diaper, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The padding on the diaper was soft. It felt as though I had sat down on a cushion. And there was so much of the padding. This had to be four or five times as absorbent as the nighttime pull-ups I had been using.

Once Mom was done applying a more-than-healthy layer of baby powder to my posterior, she pulled the front of the diaper up to the top of my waist. As Mom fumbled with the tapes, I noticed something about that diaper that I hadn’t realized before. Instead of one tape on each side like a diaper normally would have, it had two of them on each side. Weird. Mom kept adjusting the tapes until at last the diaper felt snug around both my waist and my legs.

Mom grabbed me by both of my hands and pulled me off of the bed and onto my feet. That was when I noticed another effect of the diaper.

The padding in the pull-ups had felt odd between my legs, even though it probably wasn’t all that different from an extra-large sized pad. The diaper was something entirely else. The absorbent padding covered much more of my body and was noticeably thicker. As I tried to stand straight, I could feel the bulk of the padding pushing my legs apart.

With me back on my feet, Mom again checked each of the four tapes to make sure they were snug, then she ran her finger first around the waist of the diaper and then around the leg gatherings, making sure it was tight against my skin.

“I can’t do this,” I said, as a sobbed escaped.

The tears I’d managed to hold off throughout the ordeal let loose all at once. This was the worst moment of my life. I’m fifteen. I just started high school. I should be maturing and getting more responsibilities. Instead, I felt as if I had taken a few massive steps backward in the past several weeks, back to being the bedwetting child I had been in elementary school.

I reached down to the diaper to try to untape it, but Mom gently brushed my hand away. Before I could reach down to the diaper again, she wrapped her arms around me in a firm hug, and I let her sweater absorb my tears as I pressed my head against her neck.

“Please, could I take the diaper off? If I wet the bed again, I’ll take care of it all myself so that you won’t have to get up in the middle of the night.”

“Sarah, you’re fifteen. You need to stop whining. You need the diapers, so you are going to wear them. That’s all there was to it.”

All I wanted was for the diaper to be off. I tried to play off her emotions. Couldn’t she see how this was upsetting me?

“But you don’t understand how embarrassing this was.”

“Of course I do,” Mom interrupted tartly. “I wet the bed until my junior year of high school. I wore diapers every night until I stopped, and that was exactly what you were going to do as well.”

That statement actually put a stop to my sobbing. Wait? Mom had been a bedwetter herself? I could scarcely believe it.

“You’re lucky. They didn’t make diapers nearly as good back then as they do now,” Mom added.

I didn’t feel lucky. Lucky would be if I woke up to find that all of my bladder issues had miraculously gone away.

“You need to get off to bed,” Mom said. “You still have to get up for school tomorrow.

“And put these on as well,” Mom added, handing me a pair of pajama bottoms.

I was grateful Mom had let me dress myself for once again. I pulled the pajama pants on quickly. I’d take my minor victories when I get them.

Mom gave me a pat on the bottom as I turned to leave the room. I waddled across the hallway to my own bedroom, crinkling the entire way.

I didn’t want to fall asleep. To fall asleep meant that I would then need to wake up. Waking up would mean facing a reality that I wasn’t ready to accept. I had no hope whatsoever that the diaper would remain dry overnight, not with how the past week had gone. As long as I remained awake, that new reality was put on hold. But life didn’t have any pause buttons. Try as I might to keep my eyes open, sleep came as surely as it always did, racing me forward against my will to the start of a new day.

 

[BabySofia]

This is the first chapter where I haven't totally hated her mom. I still think she needs to find out why her daughter is suddenly having issues, but at least this puts into some perspective why her blinders are on. Looking forward to more soon!

[Arendeth]

Thanks for the chapter those diapers are likely to be ended up on her for school in no time.

[Bonsai]

Well, this solves part of the tension. I’m wondering if mom isn’t at least in part glad that her daughter is locked back in diapers at night, away from those no-sleep-sleepovers and the nasty influence of her “friends”.

Maybe mom knows more than she shows to know and is using the situation for her own purposes?

[GQLF]

The mother former once to be a bedwetting and diaper, so she have daughter back into diaper, I hope this is good develop. Sarah can understand her mother, find this balance point, instead of trying to hide the accident all the time

maybe mother have wear diaper to sleep now?

[Nat]

Just imagine her mom goes from evil to loving when she is back in diapers again. But I think she is still a lazy parent for having Sarah do all the work of taking care of Amelia.