PCS
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- Diaper Lover
Well, where do I begin? I am a DL. I’m in my 30s, heterosexual and live in the UK. I have a partner, a responsible job and a fair number of friends. My interests are all fairly normal and nothing about me screams “odd” or “weird”. No one other than my partner knows. The following is my story and is all true.
I know from the limited evidence available when I was a baby/toddler in the 1980s the nappies I wore were a mixture of Cosifits (made by Paddi, the original UK disposable nappy manufacturer), Peaudouce and some supermarket own brands.
I was toilet trained around the age of two and a half by day and at night around the age of three and three-quarters. I wet the bed only very occasionally after this.
The potty training method was simple and relaxed in the late 1980s. The potty was around from the beginning, so it wasn’t a strange new thing. No pressure to use it. No Pull-Ups were available in the UK market at that time. Toilet training was done ‘trial and error’, usually during the Summer, using real underwear at home and nappies back on for outings.
Night training relied on the advice of child specialists such as Penelope Leach and Miriam Stoppard, who advocated waiting for a week of early mornings of dry nappies, then doing without, albeit with a plastic or rubber sheet. One book from the time emphasised that “many children need nappies at night well past their third birthday”. There were no DryNites or the like for bedwetters.
I do have a few memories of wearing nappies as a small child before the DL thing struck, and a few other nappy related memories. This is in the context of having quite extensive memories from time which are mostly non-nappy related.
The earliest memory is a very blurred recollection of being changed. The second is from around the age of two, in which I was filling my nappy in the garden whilst fully clothed, holding onto a tree branch for support. I remember I was wearing grey corduroy trousers.
I also have some clearer memories from around the age of three.
The first is of me waking up, getting out of bed and taking off my pyjamas. I let my heavy, soaked nappy fall slowly down my legs and kicked it off, discarding it on the bedroom floor. The nappy was a unisex white plastic disposable with no taping panel, leading me to believe it was either a Cosifit or a Supermarket own brand.
I remember once having a nappy put on before leaving a relative’s home in preparation for a long evening car journey home during which I would probably fall asleep. I don’t remember what the nappy was but remember feeling very “cosy” in my car seat wearing it and knowing that I didn’t need to ask to stop if I needed a wee.
The final pre-DL memory of me wearing was from the morning of the day my sister was born, so I know I was three and a half years old. I was not wearing pyjamas that morning as it was the summer. I had on only a Peaudouce Child Size nappy, which had a shiny plastic taping panel with a blue bird motif.
I was quite tall for my age but I remember that the nappy was huge on me even then. I know now from a magazine advert for Peaudouce Child Size (that can be found on Google), that although the weight range for
those nappies (up to 55lb or 25kg) is the same as a modern Size 5, the nappies were actually advertised as being suitable for children aged 3-5 years.
One thing that I particularly remember about nappies from the late 80s and early 90s was that the padding seemed to cover almost the entire plastic shell including the wings. They were elasticated in the legs but not the waistband and they were quite thick.
I did not have a particular attraction to or fixation with nappies at the time I was still wearing them, and the ages at which I trained were quite normal for the era, I think.
It is correct that in the late 1980s you would sometimes see children aged around three wearing nappies who would now be thought of as too old for “proper” nappies, but that was because Pull-Ups were not yet available in the UK and potty trainers would either wear proper nappies, proper pants or plastic reusable training pants that were useless (my sister had some that were only used once as they leaked terribly when she had an accident in them).
I had no childhood traumas (toilet-related or otherwise) and was neither neglected nor privileged. There was no ‘new-baby’ or sibling rivalry issues that caused it either. My sister and I still get on very well.
I went to nursery for a few days a week from the age of three, the year before starting school. It’s a myth that nurseries used to require all children to be toilet trained before admission, as there were a few children in my class (for children aged 3-4 years), both boys and girls, who wore nappies during the day. The majority (including me) did not, however.
I remember nursery vividly. There was one girl who was sent to nursery in nappies but who always asked for and used the toilet properly. I remember that her nappy always had a pink strip on the waistband and were therefore probably Ultra Pampers for Girls. Presumably her nappies were for “just in case” as there were no Pull-Ups. I remember wondering why she wore them if she was able to use the toilet but I never asked her or said anything about them.
There was also a boy in my class who was not in nappies but clearly needed to be as he wet himself every single day. I do not remember having any accidents at nursery and very few at all after training.
Another nappy related memory from
was when I was three stands out clearly. I was playing with a girl in our local park. I hadn’t met her before. I asked her name and she told me. I asked how old she was and she said three. I was thrilled because we were the same age.
While we were playing, at one point she stopped running because she needed to “do a wee”. She stood still, did her wee (which must have been in a nappy but we were wearing winter clothes so I couldn’t see), and then carried on playing. She came round to my home to play once, and I remember that and we played camp-fires using a musical light-up globe. I could see that she had a nappy on and asked why she was wearing it. She just shrugged and said “I don’t know”. I think her family moved away as she did not go to my nursery or school and I never saw her again.
I have a couple of bed wetting memories too from the rare occasions that it happened. I can’t remember ever being scolded for it.
In the earliest I remember groggily waking up in the night realising that I was in the middle of having a wee. I was sleeping on my side. I may have actually still been wearing nappies to bed at this point because I do not remember anything about what happened afterwards or any sensation of the sheets or pyjamas being wet. I remember I was wearing purple pyjamas, which (from photos of around the time) suggests I was either 3 or 4 when this happened.
Another bed wetting memory from when I was about five involved me waking up one Saturday morning having clearly wet my bed, sniffing the sheets and my pyjamas (which were a blue terry material) and not being able to smell anything. It could have been that I had drunk lots of water so the wee was quite dilute but I convinced myself that I hadn’t wet the bed and the water must have come from somewhere else. There was no telling off or punishment that I remember.
My sister also wet the bed on a few isolated occasions between the ages of 3 and 7 but this was rare.
Believe it or not, I actually remember the very moment I became a DL. It happened when I was about four and half.
My sister was about a year old. She usually wore Ultra Pampers for Girls, which were being marketed heavily at that time, but she sometimes wore Peaudouce or Togs instead.
There would often be childcare literature around our home, whether magazine inserts or leaflets picked up at the chemists, GP or left by the health visitor.
We were at home one day and I have a very clear and vivid memory of looking at some kind of leaflet. In it was a picture, probably a stock-image, of a smiling girl who I thought looked about my age. She was white with dark hair in bunches. She held a teddy bear by its arm in one hand. She was wearing only what looked like a large pair of white knickers.
I studied the picture closely and could see that what I thought were knickers in fact had tabs and she was actually wearing a nappy.
For some inexplicable reason, I suddenly felt a surge of the most intense jealousy that one could imagine. I suddenly wanted to wear a nappy too, like the girl.
I went straight upstairs to my sister’s room, got one of her Ultra Pampers for Girls and took it to my bedroom. I opened it, laid it on my bed, undressed myself and taped it on. I remember that those nappies were unusual in that they had a taping panel with a bear motif, that was matte rather than shiny. I felt safe, secure and tingly.
I did a wee in the nappy and felt a surge of deep satisfaction and relaxation. I was hooked.
Of course, I had to be quick and soon pulled the nappy off, got dressed again and threw the nappy away in the bin in my sister’s room.
If anyone recognises the description of that leaflet or picture and is able to post it or link it, I would be interested to see if it matches my memory of it.
My sister toilet trained by day around the age of two and was dry at night by three, but until that time, between the ages of four and six, I would occasionally take one of her nappies, wear it, wet it and hide it. I pooed in one once but got found out and told off.
I remember the intense thrill that I got from wearing nappies at that early age. It sent magic tingles throughout my whole body. I had no desire to be babied or anything like that, I just loved wearing nappies and weeing in them.
Although I have no Sissy/ Trans/ Crossdressing tendencies whatsoever, I have never been averse to wearing girl nappies as a result of these early experiences.
I remember the last time I wore one of my sister’s nappies. I was aged six. It was the last one in a leftover pack of Ultra Pampers for Girls that she was no longer using. I put it on in the bathroom and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. I remember thinking to myself “why are you doing this?” I did a wee in the nappy, which felt wonderful. I undid one tab and took it off. I kept the nappy in a box in my room.
I put it on again the next day and I remember liking the feeling of putting on the cool, already wet nappy. I wet it again and it didn’t leak. I then put it back in the box.
On the third day I went to do the same but it smelled very bad and I managed to dispose of it somehow without being found out.
After that, I was only able to get the occasional nappy that was ‘borrowed’ from friends’ siblings when visiting their houses. At that age I thought that taking a single nappy from a mostly full pack wasn’t really stealing as it was something that was going to end up thrown away anyway and wouldn’t be missed. That’s six to seven year old logic! I will come back to that later.
School had some interesting moments.
In reception class accidents were quite common amongst the boys, though there was no-one in my class that wore nappies. Boys would usually get very upset if they wet themselves. I remember one boy howling and crying his eyes out as he stood there with wee gushing out of his shorts. The teacher quickly picked him up and stood him on a large blue plastic tray until he was finished to avoid damaging the carpet any further. No-one was ever told off for having accidents. They were usually put into their PE kit for the rest of the day.
It was rarer for girls to have accidents but they seemed less traumatised by the experience when it did happen. I remember sitting next to one female classmate when she suddenly wet herself. She just put her hand over her mouth and started giggling. I remember the smell of hot, fresh wee as it soaked her skirt and being completely intrigued by the whole experience.
I only ever once saw a nappy being worn at school. I was in reception still and I remember someone telling me that a girl in what is now Year 2 (6-7 year olds) wore a nappy. I didn’t believe it until one day I saw her sitting against a wall in the playground with her knees up. I couldn’t help but see up her skirt and noticed that the knickers she was wearing were quite bulky. I could also see the ruffle of the elastic leg gathers. I did not say anything to her but seeing her made
me feel tingly and a tad jealous. Looking back, she may have had an illness or developmental delay, but at the time seeing a child older than me wearing a nappy was both confusing and thrilling.
Often I would be invited round to play at classmates houses. Sometimes it was obvious that they were bedwetters as the bed crackled with the sound of a plastic sheet and the room smelled faintly of wee.
Around the age of five I had one friend who was not a bedwetter but who had a brother one year older who was. My friend took great glee in showing me his brother’s wet bed, which had a blue terry sheet with a fleece blanket underneath and finally a rubber sheet covering the mattress. He invited me to smell the bed, which smelled strongly of wee. We teased the elder brother but were told off by his Mum for doing so.
There were also a few occasions in which I found packs of nappies in friend’s bedrooms. All but one were boys. The funny thing was that the explanation for these was always that they had been ‘left over’ from when the friend was a baby.
Given I now know that the nappy types were ‘current’ for the time in which I saw them, I suspect that some parents were still content to use nappies for bedwetting beyond what was then the “normal” age to be out of night nappies (three), but chose not to say anything.
I wonder if this unspoken use of nappies for bed wetting in older children was common in the UK before Pull-Ups came along?
From these visits and also from sneaking off to the nappy aisle for a look on supermarket trips I remember some of the variety of nappies that were available in the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In the late 80s, gender specific Ultra Pampers were coming in and Cosifits were on their way out. Peaudouce was the main competitor. Togs appeared briefly too. I also seem to remember seeing Fitti around occasionally.
By the early 1990s Cosifits had disappeared and I think Togs went about that time too. Huggies didn’t put in an appearance in the UK (as “Huggies Ultra Thin from Kleenex”) until about 1993 or 1994.
I remember two specific occasions on which I swiped a nappy from the supply of a friend with a three year old brother who still wore them to bed. I was about six or seven at the time.
The first time the brand was called “Stay Dry” (not to be confused with the the Boots incontinence brand), which was a plain white unisex nappy with no markings and no tape landing strip. It came in a white bag with the image of a teddy bear on the front. I smuggled it home under my coat and put it on while in bed that night. I remember weeing in it and feeling the warm wee running down my bottom and pooling in the seat of the nappy.
The second time it was Sainsbury’s brand. These were unisex with sturdier shiny plastic, were thicker and had a blue waistband. I think they came in an orange bag with pin stripes and a teddy motif. I remember being amazed at how big they were and how they fit me even though I was tall for my age.
I also remember handling (but not wearing) a Boots own brand nappy belonging to the younger sister of another friend. The plastic was thin and smooth but the nappy was quite thick.
On one other occasion another friend, who was a bit crazy, pulled out a pack of nappies from under the bed of his little brother (who had just turned four), put one on and danced around the house in it in front of his Mum. I didn’t have the courage to join him. Those nappies came in a dark purple pack with baby symbols on them but I can’t remember the brand. They were plain white with no taping panel.
I pause at this moment to note that most of the branded nappies packaging of this era can be found by searching images online, but the generic or supermarket brands seem to be lost to history. I have never seen any of the following online that I can remember from the time.
- Asda own brand nappies from the early 1990s. These were in a dark magenta/maroon bag with a black and white picture of a torso shot of the nappy being worn.
- Sainsbury’s own brand nappies from the early 1990s with different coloured bags for each size and a pinstripe and teddy motif on the bag.
- Sainsbury’s Night Time nappies, which came in a pale purple bag with a photo of a sleeping older child on it.
- An unknown brand seen in a chemists shop with a white bag showing a drawn colour picture of a boy and girl wearing nappies and holding hands.
If anyone has any pictures of these or any other UK nappy packages or nappies from the late 80s and early 90s, I would be very grateful for the memory jog!
Things moved quite quickly in the UK nappy market in the 1990s and I was always transfixed by nappy adverts that appeared on TV, usually during CITV.
[On that topic, does anyone remember or have a link to the 1991 CITV Thames Television dramatisation of Ruth Thomas’ book “The Secret” which had numerous bedwetting references?]
Disposable training pants arrived around about the time I was seven or eight. The first I saw advertised were Pampers Trainers, then Huggies Pull-Ups, then Peaudouce Up and Go. All gender-specific. I remember all three brands being stocked by our local Sainsbury’s at one point.
I was very interested and longed to wear them. I thought it would be great to slip on a pair of pants that would let me wet myself with no-one knowing.
Sadly, I never managed to get my hands on any of them. The closest I came was when I was about eight and went to the house of a friend who had a three year old sister who wore them, but we were forbidden to go in her bedroom so I had no opportunity to swipe one.
For a few years I had to use the makeshift nappy method to try and get anything like a substitute nappy experience as I had no way of getting hold of any real ones. This included doing such things as lining my swimming trunks with a pad of toilet paper and covering a towel with a plastic bag and fixing it in place with a belt. Not ideal!
Things then started to move even quicker. Up to this point I had assumed that all nappies and training pants were designed to be used by children up to the age of three. All that soon changed, to my delight and frustration.
I can’t be precise on the years but I think some time around the mid 1990s the following occurred:
Whilst perusing the nappy aisle at Boots the Chemist, I noticed that their gender specific training pants now had ages on them.
The first I noticed was the girl’s type, which were in a pink and white package with a photo of a blonde girl wearing a white t-shirt and a pair of training pants walking away from the camera on the front. It said ‘age 2-4 years’. The feelings of jealousy came flooding back. How I wished that I could have had them at four, and now they were actually making a nappy type product specifically aimed at four year olds!
Next time I visited I noticed that there was also an ‘age 4-5 years’ size. A training pant for five year olds. As I was nearly in double digits age-wise, it never occurred to me that they might fit me, but I was extremely jealous on behalf of my five year old DL self.
Then came a trip to Asda. They had training pants. Spot the Dog themed training pants. In two sizes: 2-3 years and 4-7 years. My jealous-o-meter was going bezerk. It was as though the nappy manufacturers were increasing the age at which it was acceptable to wear protection but stopped just short of whatever age I was. For some reason I thought products like that wouldn’t fit me anyway as I was tall for my age.
I only saw a Pull-Up once in real life near to the time they first came out. I was about eight or nine and it was being worn by a girl of about 3 in the changing room of our local swimming pool. How I wanted to wear one too. I remember thinking how wonderful it must have been to be that girl and not to have to worry about making it to the toilet because she could wee herself whenever and wherever she wanted to.
DryNites appeared in the UK shortly after this, so mid-1990s again, I think, though they did not have an age range on them. They were unisex and came in a blue pack with a boy and a girl asleep in bed on the front. The pack simply said Dry Nites “for older children”. I liked to imagine that I was one of the children on the pack, cosily wetting myself as I slept. I haven’t been able to find a snap of this early packaging online either. The first Drynites TV adverts came much later.
Holidays as a DL child were interesting. We usually went abroad to Spanish or Greek islands when I was between the ages of five and eleven. Poolside I would often see foreign children of both genders in nappies who looked older than what would usually be deemed ‘acceptable’ in the UK. When I was five or six I felt extremely jealous because they looked to me to be a similar age me and I wanted to ‘be’ one of them. Looking back, they may have just been big for their ages, of course.
I would look out for foreign nappies and their interesting packaging. It was on one such occasion when I was about eleven that I noticed adult nappies for the first time in a Spanish supermarket. They were in a package that mentioned something like “Adult Hygiene” with a line drawing of a four-tab brief. I was over the moon to see that they existed and decided that when I was grown up I would wear them all the time for convenience. I remember seeing similar packages in a Greek pharmacy the following year.
I decided to investigate British pharmacies as I had a bit more freedom and money by now. I discovered that Boots had their own range- StayDry. I got a leaflet about them and found that they had range of pads. There it was: Boots StayDry Maxi- a real adult nappy! I saw from the leaflet that sample packs were available.
Now, twelve years old and starved of real nappies for so long, I saved my pocket money, went on the bus on
my own to the furthest town I could get away with, and took a rucksack with me.
The Boots had sample packs of the StayDry Maxi. I bought two, one medium and one large. The strength of the desire overcame my nerves. I took them to the counter, handed them over without saying anything, paid and left.
By now I had been allowed a lock on my bedroom door for privacy, and had discovered a loose floorboard in my wardrobe that made an ideal hiding place. I stashed them there. Then, one Summer evening while my parents dined outside, I opened the pack with the size large brief in it.
In those days, Boots StayDry products came in dark blue packaging. I pulled out the brief and unfolded it. It was a huge plastic backed nappy. It was quite thin but had an elastic waistband, four tabs with no taping zone and interesting padding with diamond shaped quilting. It was all white with a yellow indicator strip.
By now I was so excited I was shaking. I laid it out on the bed and lay down on top of it. I don’t want to be too graphic but I remember vividly that as I pulled up the front of the nappy in order to tape it on, the excitement became so intense that I had what I now know to be my first orgasm.
Before that point, nappies had always caused a physically pleasurable tingling feeling throughout my whole body, but the experience had not been “sexual”.
I eventually calmed down and taped the nappy on. It was huge on me, very crinkly and quite thin, but it was the best feeling ever. I was unable to wet it lying down, but standing up was not a problem. I wore it overnight but didn’t sleep much because of the excitement. It felt so ‘right’ to be wearing a nappy in bed again. In the morning I wet it again and it held the lot but felt like it was reaching its limit so I took it off and hid it under the floorboard. I eventually bagged it up and disposed of it later that day when everyone else went out.
After this, nappies became an intensely sexual thing for me about the next ten years. Fortunately I also had a strong vanilla attraction to girls of my own age so was able to “park” the nappy desires for months at a time and pursue other interests, so to speak. But they always came back. I would sometimes combine the two and fantasise about girls I knew wearing nappies, but I knew this would never happen for real. I thought I was the only person in the world who enjoyed wearing nappies.
The next memory that springs to mind was around the age of 12 or 13. By now DryNites had repackaged themselves and had “age 4-7” on the package. Too small for me, I thought, and harder to explain away if caught.
They also did not come in sample pack sizes.
I was in a supermarket and did my usual detour down the nappy aisle. I saw that DryNites now came in a new size. ‘Age 7-10+’ in a dark green package with a picture of even older children, a boy and a girl who looked not that much younger than me, sleeping in their beds and, (to my mind), wetting themselves peacefully as they slept.
The excitement was just too much to bear and I had to rush straight to the toilet to deal with it.
I never mustered the courage to buy a pack of DryNites for some reason. I think I believed that they wouldn’t fit me due to the age range, though looking back they probably would have done.
It was around the age of 13 that I discovered that I was not the only person on the planet who got a thrill from wearing nappies. I was reading “The Daily Express” in the school library and I came to “Dear Deardrie”, the Agony Aunt. Quite unexpectedly, there was a letter from a man who said that he had been “attracted to wearing nappies and being treated as a baby”. He also had other kinks and was concerned about how they affected his relationships. I remember that the advice included the line “the nappy bit is about feeling loved and cared for”. This was a revelation.
A second problem page item I read on the topic, in a different paper contained a letter which began “I long to wear nappies and dream of one day finding a woman who doesn’t think me a sick pervert”. The advice was short shrift; something along the lines of “Have a chat with a psychiatrist- you obviously need help”. After reading that I was concerned that I might be a bit sick in the head.
The internet led to a number of discoveries. Firstly that other adult nappies were available from specialist medical supply stores, though I had no means of buying online. I also stumbled upon a number of websites that freaked me out as they were rather creepy and a far cry from the innocent warm thrill that nappy wearing had been to me. I eventually discovered TBDL, the forerunner to ADISC and have been a lurker ever since as the site has always struck me as “safe”.
I bought Boots StayDry more than once, but the sample packs disappeared so I had to buy whole packs, find a public toilet, decant three or four nappies into my rucksack (as that was all I had space to hide at home) and leave the rest in the cubicle. A bit wasteful but hopefully someone found the other ones useful!
As I became a teenager I developed an occasional routine whereby I would buy a pack and take it on a train. The trains in my part of the country were quite old and it was easy for me to slip into a train toilet, put a nappy on and find an empty compartment to enjoy the journey and the nappy. Wetting myself sitting down on a moving train was just bliss.
Sadly, around the time of the Millenium, Boots StayDry changed from being a plastic backed product that worked to possibly the worst ever cloth backed adult nappy. Those had two plastic tape landing pads that were uncomfortable, leaked easily and smelled awful. They stayed this way for some time. I bought some Boots PVC pants to wear with them, but it was a poor substitute for the originals.
I was quite gutted as I thought that plastic backed adult nappies were now a thing of the past. How wrong I was! Boots also launched an adult Pull-Up but this what we would now consider a standard “granny panty” and did not feel as secure as a real nappy.
The final DryNites thrill came around about the time I left school. A third size was launched “Age 10+”.
This dark blue package featured the same kids who had featured on the earlier ‘age 7-10+’ size, vindicating my thoughts that they had been around about my age when I first saw them.
This version was soon relabelled as being for “Age 10-15”.
I finally bought some DryNites 10-15 during the first year of University. I was living in my own halls room far from home and thought “why not?”. As it turned out, they fitted me perfectly. The Pull-Ups fantasy of many years earlier was fulfilled at last. They were plain white and quiet enough to wear on campus.They only held a single wetting but I loved how they felt (firm but squishy) when wet.
I met my partner while at University.
I did not reveal anything about my DL side to her until an unbelievable series of events that read like fiction but are really not.
My partner is highly intelligent and high functioning mildly autistic. She had to learn all her social cues as she was growing up and it was hard for her, but she is very outgoing and managed University well.
In our second year she and a group of friends from a particular society had to dress up as babies for an event. As such, when I met up with her later that evening, she was wearing, amongst other things, a plastic backed medical adult nappy. Seeing her in it was a dream come true and caused a spontaneous orgasm. The nappy was white, plastic backed with a taping zone and had different coloured spots on the taping zone.
We giggled a bit about and I tried to play it cool. Later back at my halls room I said, as a joke, “do you want to see if it works?” She just said “OK” and wet it there and then in front of me. I could not believe my luck.
I took a chance and admitted that this really turned me on. She told me she was OK with that as “everyone has funny things that they like”. She also told me that it felt nice to wear and use but did not turn her on sexually.
My partner does not actually identify as a DL but has no problem wearing and wetting nappies. She likes the way they feel when she does it but has no particular urge to wear them. She has memories of wearing as a child as she was day trained at nearly four, and wore them at night until the age of five. She was a late trainer because although she is highly intelligent, her autism means that she does not like change. She always wore Peaudouce and told me that towards the end of her wearing a night, she would sometimes use them out of sheer laziness and missed no longer having them.
I later bought her some Drynites, which had now become gender-specific. The sizes were now just 4-7 and 8-15. I thought that the 8-15 size was a little smaller than the old unisex 10-15 had been. She thought they were cute but preferred to wear nappies made specifically for adults. I found a chemist that stocked Tender Night plastic backed nappies which were our go-to nappies for quite a while, but they leaked from time to time.
Whilst at university I did my first online orders and got hold of some Abena X-Plus (now L4), Tena Slip Maxi and Molicare Super Plus (now Maxi) nappies. These were a real step-up in quality and really brought back those early memories of wearing.
After University we got jobs and moved in together. Rather than a constant obsession, the nappies became something interesting to spice things up. We would spend hours cuddling in nappies and it would be exciting for me to discover that she had wet it without saying anything as we cuddled.
Over the years we have obtained and experimented with all different sorts of adult nappies. I will not do an in depth review for them all but will observe the following:
Abena L4 plastic are my all time favourite. They’re not the most absorbent on the market but they are thick, fit me perfectly and are the most evocative (to me) of the nappies I wore when small. Feels most like the Peaudouce Child Size that I remember wearing.
Tena Slip Maxi. Always a safe option.
Molicare. Beautifully puffy and smooth. Remind be of the Boots own brand type.
Betterdry. Excellent performance all round and will be my favourite when my stockpile of L4’s has gone.
Drylife. The nappy I trust on the rare occasion I want to wear one “out” eg for a cinema trip. They are quiet but have very strong plastic, hold loads and never leak.
Original Bambino Bianco. No longer available, these ones with the blue waistband were extremely evocative and reminded me of the huge Sainsbury’s nappy I swiped from a friend’s little brother’s stock when I was six or seven.
ABU lavender. My partner’s favourite as they are feminine without being too childish and smell lovely.
ABU Simple. Feels very safe and is evocative of many of the generic unisex nappies of the 80s and 90s. Reminds me of Togs.
Tranquility ATN and Attends (US) Waistband style. Imported both of these as a treat. The Attends performed poorly but reminded me most of the original Boots StayDry. The ATN performed better and the loud crinkly plastic reminds me most of Ultra Pampers from the late 80s and early 90s.
My wearing is now no longer a sexual thrill for me. It is a strong urge that makes me feel relaxed and fulfilled (rather like right at the beginning). I wear a nappy to bed about 50% of the time, usually an Abena L4 plastic backed, a Betterdry or a Drylife. For some reason I usually wake up wet with no memory of having done it if I am wearing an Abena. Maybe it’s to do with subconscious early associations. The others I can simply wake up, wee and go back to sleep.
Seeing my partner wear and wet herself in a nappy is still a huge turn on, however it does not dominate our intimate life.
No-one else knows and we are not involved in any ‘scene’. In some ways it’s quite nice to have a ‘naughty little secret’ that doesn’t harm anyone, isn’t illegal and isn’t particularly expensive but brings such comfort.
So there you have it. The true story of a British DL.
I hope I have jogged a few memories from the period and would be interested to to hear from anyone else in the who developed their “DL-ism” during that time.
If anyone has pictures of the nappy packaging of the era mentioned above, or even a snap of the leaflet that started it all for me, I would be very interested to see how accurate my memory was.
Likewise if anyone has any questions about life in the UK (whether nappy or non-nappy related!) please ask.
I know from the limited evidence available when I was a baby/toddler in the 1980s the nappies I wore were a mixture of Cosifits (made by Paddi, the original UK disposable nappy manufacturer), Peaudouce and some supermarket own brands.
I was toilet trained around the age of two and a half by day and at night around the age of three and three-quarters. I wet the bed only very occasionally after this.
The potty training method was simple and relaxed in the late 1980s. The potty was around from the beginning, so it wasn’t a strange new thing. No pressure to use it. No Pull-Ups were available in the UK market at that time. Toilet training was done ‘trial and error’, usually during the Summer, using real underwear at home and nappies back on for outings.
Night training relied on the advice of child specialists such as Penelope Leach and Miriam Stoppard, who advocated waiting for a week of early mornings of dry nappies, then doing without, albeit with a plastic or rubber sheet. One book from the time emphasised that “many children need nappies at night well past their third birthday”. There were no DryNites or the like for bedwetters.
I do have a few memories of wearing nappies as a small child before the DL thing struck, and a few other nappy related memories. This is in the context of having quite extensive memories from time which are mostly non-nappy related.
The earliest memory is a very blurred recollection of being changed. The second is from around the age of two, in which I was filling my nappy in the garden whilst fully clothed, holding onto a tree branch for support. I remember I was wearing grey corduroy trousers.
I also have some clearer memories from around the age of three.
The first is of me waking up, getting out of bed and taking off my pyjamas. I let my heavy, soaked nappy fall slowly down my legs and kicked it off, discarding it on the bedroom floor. The nappy was a unisex white plastic disposable with no taping panel, leading me to believe it was either a Cosifit or a Supermarket own brand.
I remember once having a nappy put on before leaving a relative’s home in preparation for a long evening car journey home during which I would probably fall asleep. I don’t remember what the nappy was but remember feeling very “cosy” in my car seat wearing it and knowing that I didn’t need to ask to stop if I needed a wee.
The final pre-DL memory of me wearing was from the morning of the day my sister was born, so I know I was three and a half years old. I was not wearing pyjamas that morning as it was the summer. I had on only a Peaudouce Child Size nappy, which had a shiny plastic taping panel with a blue bird motif.
I was quite tall for my age but I remember that the nappy was huge on me even then. I know now from a magazine advert for Peaudouce Child Size (that can be found on Google), that although the weight range for
those nappies (up to 55lb or 25kg) is the same as a modern Size 5, the nappies were actually advertised as being suitable for children aged 3-5 years.
One thing that I particularly remember about nappies from the late 80s and early 90s was that the padding seemed to cover almost the entire plastic shell including the wings. They were elasticated in the legs but not the waistband and they were quite thick.
I did not have a particular attraction to or fixation with nappies at the time I was still wearing them, and the ages at which I trained were quite normal for the era, I think.
It is correct that in the late 1980s you would sometimes see children aged around three wearing nappies who would now be thought of as too old for “proper” nappies, but that was because Pull-Ups were not yet available in the UK and potty trainers would either wear proper nappies, proper pants or plastic reusable training pants that were useless (my sister had some that were only used once as they leaked terribly when she had an accident in them).
I had no childhood traumas (toilet-related or otherwise) and was neither neglected nor privileged. There was no ‘new-baby’ or sibling rivalry issues that caused it either. My sister and I still get on very well.
I went to nursery for a few days a week from the age of three, the year before starting school. It’s a myth that nurseries used to require all children to be toilet trained before admission, as there were a few children in my class (for children aged 3-4 years), both boys and girls, who wore nappies during the day. The majority (including me) did not, however.
I remember nursery vividly. There was one girl who was sent to nursery in nappies but who always asked for and used the toilet properly. I remember that her nappy always had a pink strip on the waistband and were therefore probably Ultra Pampers for Girls. Presumably her nappies were for “just in case” as there were no Pull-Ups. I remember wondering why she wore them if she was able to use the toilet but I never asked her or said anything about them.
There was also a boy in my class who was not in nappies but clearly needed to be as he wet himself every single day. I do not remember having any accidents at nursery and very few at all after training.
Another nappy related memory from
was when I was three stands out clearly. I was playing with a girl in our local park. I hadn’t met her before. I asked her name and she told me. I asked how old she was and she said three. I was thrilled because we were the same age.
While we were playing, at one point she stopped running because she needed to “do a wee”. She stood still, did her wee (which must have been in a nappy but we were wearing winter clothes so I couldn’t see), and then carried on playing. She came round to my home to play once, and I remember that and we played camp-fires using a musical light-up globe. I could see that she had a nappy on and asked why she was wearing it. She just shrugged and said “I don’t know”. I think her family moved away as she did not go to my nursery or school and I never saw her again.
I have a couple of bed wetting memories too from the rare occasions that it happened. I can’t remember ever being scolded for it.
In the earliest I remember groggily waking up in the night realising that I was in the middle of having a wee. I was sleeping on my side. I may have actually still been wearing nappies to bed at this point because I do not remember anything about what happened afterwards or any sensation of the sheets or pyjamas being wet. I remember I was wearing purple pyjamas, which (from photos of around the time) suggests I was either 3 or 4 when this happened.
Another bed wetting memory from when I was about five involved me waking up one Saturday morning having clearly wet my bed, sniffing the sheets and my pyjamas (which were a blue terry material) and not being able to smell anything. It could have been that I had drunk lots of water so the wee was quite dilute but I convinced myself that I hadn’t wet the bed and the water must have come from somewhere else. There was no telling off or punishment that I remember.
My sister also wet the bed on a few isolated occasions between the ages of 3 and 7 but this was rare.
Believe it or not, I actually remember the very moment I became a DL. It happened when I was about four and half.
My sister was about a year old. She usually wore Ultra Pampers for Girls, which were being marketed heavily at that time, but she sometimes wore Peaudouce or Togs instead.
There would often be childcare literature around our home, whether magazine inserts or leaflets picked up at the chemists, GP or left by the health visitor.
We were at home one day and I have a very clear and vivid memory of looking at some kind of leaflet. In it was a picture, probably a stock-image, of a smiling girl who I thought looked about my age. She was white with dark hair in bunches. She held a teddy bear by its arm in one hand. She was wearing only what looked like a large pair of white knickers.
I studied the picture closely and could see that what I thought were knickers in fact had tabs and she was actually wearing a nappy.
For some inexplicable reason, I suddenly felt a surge of the most intense jealousy that one could imagine. I suddenly wanted to wear a nappy too, like the girl.
I went straight upstairs to my sister’s room, got one of her Ultra Pampers for Girls and took it to my bedroom. I opened it, laid it on my bed, undressed myself and taped it on. I remember that those nappies were unusual in that they had a taping panel with a bear motif, that was matte rather than shiny. I felt safe, secure and tingly.
I did a wee in the nappy and felt a surge of deep satisfaction and relaxation. I was hooked.
Of course, I had to be quick and soon pulled the nappy off, got dressed again and threw the nappy away in the bin in my sister’s room.
If anyone recognises the description of that leaflet or picture and is able to post it or link it, I would be interested to see if it matches my memory of it.
My sister toilet trained by day around the age of two and was dry at night by three, but until that time, between the ages of four and six, I would occasionally take one of her nappies, wear it, wet it and hide it. I pooed in one once but got found out and told off.
I remember the intense thrill that I got from wearing nappies at that early age. It sent magic tingles throughout my whole body. I had no desire to be babied or anything like that, I just loved wearing nappies and weeing in them.
Although I have no Sissy/ Trans/ Crossdressing tendencies whatsoever, I have never been averse to wearing girl nappies as a result of these early experiences.
I remember the last time I wore one of my sister’s nappies. I was aged six. It was the last one in a leftover pack of Ultra Pampers for Girls that she was no longer using. I put it on in the bathroom and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. I remember thinking to myself “why are you doing this?” I did a wee in the nappy, which felt wonderful. I undid one tab and took it off. I kept the nappy in a box in my room.
I put it on again the next day and I remember liking the feeling of putting on the cool, already wet nappy. I wet it again and it didn’t leak. I then put it back in the box.
On the third day I went to do the same but it smelled very bad and I managed to dispose of it somehow without being found out.
After that, I was only able to get the occasional nappy that was ‘borrowed’ from friends’ siblings when visiting their houses. At that age I thought that taking a single nappy from a mostly full pack wasn’t really stealing as it was something that was going to end up thrown away anyway and wouldn’t be missed. That’s six to seven year old logic! I will come back to that later.
School had some interesting moments.
In reception class accidents were quite common amongst the boys, though there was no-one in my class that wore nappies. Boys would usually get very upset if they wet themselves. I remember one boy howling and crying his eyes out as he stood there with wee gushing out of his shorts. The teacher quickly picked him up and stood him on a large blue plastic tray until he was finished to avoid damaging the carpet any further. No-one was ever told off for having accidents. They were usually put into their PE kit for the rest of the day.
It was rarer for girls to have accidents but they seemed less traumatised by the experience when it did happen. I remember sitting next to one female classmate when she suddenly wet herself. She just put her hand over her mouth and started giggling. I remember the smell of hot, fresh wee as it soaked her skirt and being completely intrigued by the whole experience.
I only ever once saw a nappy being worn at school. I was in reception still and I remember someone telling me that a girl in what is now Year 2 (6-7 year olds) wore a nappy. I didn’t believe it until one day I saw her sitting against a wall in the playground with her knees up. I couldn’t help but see up her skirt and noticed that the knickers she was wearing were quite bulky. I could also see the ruffle of the elastic leg gathers. I did not say anything to her but seeing her made
me feel tingly and a tad jealous. Looking back, she may have had an illness or developmental delay, but at the time seeing a child older than me wearing a nappy was both confusing and thrilling.
Often I would be invited round to play at classmates houses. Sometimes it was obvious that they were bedwetters as the bed crackled with the sound of a plastic sheet and the room smelled faintly of wee.
Around the age of five I had one friend who was not a bedwetter but who had a brother one year older who was. My friend took great glee in showing me his brother’s wet bed, which had a blue terry sheet with a fleece blanket underneath and finally a rubber sheet covering the mattress. He invited me to smell the bed, which smelled strongly of wee. We teased the elder brother but were told off by his Mum for doing so.
There were also a few occasions in which I found packs of nappies in friend’s bedrooms. All but one were boys. The funny thing was that the explanation for these was always that they had been ‘left over’ from when the friend was a baby.
Given I now know that the nappy types were ‘current’ for the time in which I saw them, I suspect that some parents were still content to use nappies for bedwetting beyond what was then the “normal” age to be out of night nappies (three), but chose not to say anything.
I wonder if this unspoken use of nappies for bed wetting in older children was common in the UK before Pull-Ups came along?
From these visits and also from sneaking off to the nappy aisle for a look on supermarket trips I remember some of the variety of nappies that were available in the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In the late 80s, gender specific Ultra Pampers were coming in and Cosifits were on their way out. Peaudouce was the main competitor. Togs appeared briefly too. I also seem to remember seeing Fitti around occasionally.
By the early 1990s Cosifits had disappeared and I think Togs went about that time too. Huggies didn’t put in an appearance in the UK (as “Huggies Ultra Thin from Kleenex”) until about 1993 or 1994.
I remember two specific occasions on which I swiped a nappy from the supply of a friend with a three year old brother who still wore them to bed. I was about six or seven at the time.
The first time the brand was called “Stay Dry” (not to be confused with the the Boots incontinence brand), which was a plain white unisex nappy with no markings and no tape landing strip. It came in a white bag with the image of a teddy bear on the front. I smuggled it home under my coat and put it on while in bed that night. I remember weeing in it and feeling the warm wee running down my bottom and pooling in the seat of the nappy.
The second time it was Sainsbury’s brand. These were unisex with sturdier shiny plastic, were thicker and had a blue waistband. I think they came in an orange bag with pin stripes and a teddy motif. I remember being amazed at how big they were and how they fit me even though I was tall for my age.
I also remember handling (but not wearing) a Boots own brand nappy belonging to the younger sister of another friend. The plastic was thin and smooth but the nappy was quite thick.
On one other occasion another friend, who was a bit crazy, pulled out a pack of nappies from under the bed of his little brother (who had just turned four), put one on and danced around the house in it in front of his Mum. I didn’t have the courage to join him. Those nappies came in a dark purple pack with baby symbols on them but I can’t remember the brand. They were plain white with no taping panel.
I pause at this moment to note that most of the branded nappies packaging of this era can be found by searching images online, but the generic or supermarket brands seem to be lost to history. I have never seen any of the following online that I can remember from the time.
- Asda own brand nappies from the early 1990s. These were in a dark magenta/maroon bag with a black and white picture of a torso shot of the nappy being worn.
- Sainsbury’s own brand nappies from the early 1990s with different coloured bags for each size and a pinstripe and teddy motif on the bag.
- Sainsbury’s Night Time nappies, which came in a pale purple bag with a photo of a sleeping older child on it.
- An unknown brand seen in a chemists shop with a white bag showing a drawn colour picture of a boy and girl wearing nappies and holding hands.
If anyone has any pictures of these or any other UK nappy packages or nappies from the late 80s and early 90s, I would be very grateful for the memory jog!
Things moved quite quickly in the UK nappy market in the 1990s and I was always transfixed by nappy adverts that appeared on TV, usually during CITV.
[On that topic, does anyone remember or have a link to the 1991 CITV Thames Television dramatisation of Ruth Thomas’ book “The Secret” which had numerous bedwetting references?]
Disposable training pants arrived around about the time I was seven or eight. The first I saw advertised were Pampers Trainers, then Huggies Pull-Ups, then Peaudouce Up and Go. All gender-specific. I remember all three brands being stocked by our local Sainsbury’s at one point.
I was very interested and longed to wear them. I thought it would be great to slip on a pair of pants that would let me wet myself with no-one knowing.
Sadly, I never managed to get my hands on any of them. The closest I came was when I was about eight and went to the house of a friend who had a three year old sister who wore them, but we were forbidden to go in her bedroom so I had no opportunity to swipe one.
For a few years I had to use the makeshift nappy method to try and get anything like a substitute nappy experience as I had no way of getting hold of any real ones. This included doing such things as lining my swimming trunks with a pad of toilet paper and covering a towel with a plastic bag and fixing it in place with a belt. Not ideal!
Things then started to move even quicker. Up to this point I had assumed that all nappies and training pants were designed to be used by children up to the age of three. All that soon changed, to my delight and frustration.
I can’t be precise on the years but I think some time around the mid 1990s the following occurred:
Whilst perusing the nappy aisle at Boots the Chemist, I noticed that their gender specific training pants now had ages on them.
The first I noticed was the girl’s type, which were in a pink and white package with a photo of a blonde girl wearing a white t-shirt and a pair of training pants walking away from the camera on the front. It said ‘age 2-4 years’. The feelings of jealousy came flooding back. How I wished that I could have had them at four, and now they were actually making a nappy type product specifically aimed at four year olds!
Next time I visited I noticed that there was also an ‘age 4-5 years’ size. A training pant for five year olds. As I was nearly in double digits age-wise, it never occurred to me that they might fit me, but I was extremely jealous on behalf of my five year old DL self.
Then came a trip to Asda. They had training pants. Spot the Dog themed training pants. In two sizes: 2-3 years and 4-7 years. My jealous-o-meter was going bezerk. It was as though the nappy manufacturers were increasing the age at which it was acceptable to wear protection but stopped just short of whatever age I was. For some reason I thought products like that wouldn’t fit me anyway as I was tall for my age.
I only saw a Pull-Up once in real life near to the time they first came out. I was about eight or nine and it was being worn by a girl of about 3 in the changing room of our local swimming pool. How I wanted to wear one too. I remember thinking how wonderful it must have been to be that girl and not to have to worry about making it to the toilet because she could wee herself whenever and wherever she wanted to.
DryNites appeared in the UK shortly after this, so mid-1990s again, I think, though they did not have an age range on them. They were unisex and came in a blue pack with a boy and a girl asleep in bed on the front. The pack simply said Dry Nites “for older children”. I liked to imagine that I was one of the children on the pack, cosily wetting myself as I slept. I haven’t been able to find a snap of this early packaging online either. The first Drynites TV adverts came much later.
Holidays as a DL child were interesting. We usually went abroad to Spanish or Greek islands when I was between the ages of five and eleven. Poolside I would often see foreign children of both genders in nappies who looked older than what would usually be deemed ‘acceptable’ in the UK. When I was five or six I felt extremely jealous because they looked to me to be a similar age me and I wanted to ‘be’ one of them. Looking back, they may have just been big for their ages, of course.
I would look out for foreign nappies and their interesting packaging. It was on one such occasion when I was about eleven that I noticed adult nappies for the first time in a Spanish supermarket. They were in a package that mentioned something like “Adult Hygiene” with a line drawing of a four-tab brief. I was over the moon to see that they existed and decided that when I was grown up I would wear them all the time for convenience. I remember seeing similar packages in a Greek pharmacy the following year.
I decided to investigate British pharmacies as I had a bit more freedom and money by now. I discovered that Boots had their own range- StayDry. I got a leaflet about them and found that they had range of pads. There it was: Boots StayDry Maxi- a real adult nappy! I saw from the leaflet that sample packs were available.
Now, twelve years old and starved of real nappies for so long, I saved my pocket money, went on the bus on
my own to the furthest town I could get away with, and took a rucksack with me.
The Boots had sample packs of the StayDry Maxi. I bought two, one medium and one large. The strength of the desire overcame my nerves. I took them to the counter, handed them over without saying anything, paid and left.
By now I had been allowed a lock on my bedroom door for privacy, and had discovered a loose floorboard in my wardrobe that made an ideal hiding place. I stashed them there. Then, one Summer evening while my parents dined outside, I opened the pack with the size large brief in it.
In those days, Boots StayDry products came in dark blue packaging. I pulled out the brief and unfolded it. It was a huge plastic backed nappy. It was quite thin but had an elastic waistband, four tabs with no taping zone and interesting padding with diamond shaped quilting. It was all white with a yellow indicator strip.
By now I was so excited I was shaking. I laid it out on the bed and lay down on top of it. I don’t want to be too graphic but I remember vividly that as I pulled up the front of the nappy in order to tape it on, the excitement became so intense that I had what I now know to be my first orgasm.
Before that point, nappies had always caused a physically pleasurable tingling feeling throughout my whole body, but the experience had not been “sexual”.
I eventually calmed down and taped the nappy on. It was huge on me, very crinkly and quite thin, but it was the best feeling ever. I was unable to wet it lying down, but standing up was not a problem. I wore it overnight but didn’t sleep much because of the excitement. It felt so ‘right’ to be wearing a nappy in bed again. In the morning I wet it again and it held the lot but felt like it was reaching its limit so I took it off and hid it under the floorboard. I eventually bagged it up and disposed of it later that day when everyone else went out.
After this, nappies became an intensely sexual thing for me about the next ten years. Fortunately I also had a strong vanilla attraction to girls of my own age so was able to “park” the nappy desires for months at a time and pursue other interests, so to speak. But they always came back. I would sometimes combine the two and fantasise about girls I knew wearing nappies, but I knew this would never happen for real. I thought I was the only person in the world who enjoyed wearing nappies.
The next memory that springs to mind was around the age of 12 or 13. By now DryNites had repackaged themselves and had “age 4-7” on the package. Too small for me, I thought, and harder to explain away if caught.
They also did not come in sample pack sizes.
I was in a supermarket and did my usual detour down the nappy aisle. I saw that DryNites now came in a new size. ‘Age 7-10+’ in a dark green package with a picture of even older children, a boy and a girl who looked not that much younger than me, sleeping in their beds and, (to my mind), wetting themselves peacefully as they slept.
The excitement was just too much to bear and I had to rush straight to the toilet to deal with it.
I never mustered the courage to buy a pack of DryNites for some reason. I think I believed that they wouldn’t fit me due to the age range, though looking back they probably would have done.
It was around the age of 13 that I discovered that I was not the only person on the planet who got a thrill from wearing nappies. I was reading “The Daily Express” in the school library and I came to “Dear Deardrie”, the Agony Aunt. Quite unexpectedly, there was a letter from a man who said that he had been “attracted to wearing nappies and being treated as a baby”. He also had other kinks and was concerned about how they affected his relationships. I remember that the advice included the line “the nappy bit is about feeling loved and cared for”. This was a revelation.
A second problem page item I read on the topic, in a different paper contained a letter which began “I long to wear nappies and dream of one day finding a woman who doesn’t think me a sick pervert”. The advice was short shrift; something along the lines of “Have a chat with a psychiatrist- you obviously need help”. After reading that I was concerned that I might be a bit sick in the head.
The internet led to a number of discoveries. Firstly that other adult nappies were available from specialist medical supply stores, though I had no means of buying online. I also stumbled upon a number of websites that freaked me out as they were rather creepy and a far cry from the innocent warm thrill that nappy wearing had been to me. I eventually discovered TBDL, the forerunner to ADISC and have been a lurker ever since as the site has always struck me as “safe”.
I bought Boots StayDry more than once, but the sample packs disappeared so I had to buy whole packs, find a public toilet, decant three or four nappies into my rucksack (as that was all I had space to hide at home) and leave the rest in the cubicle. A bit wasteful but hopefully someone found the other ones useful!
As I became a teenager I developed an occasional routine whereby I would buy a pack and take it on a train. The trains in my part of the country were quite old and it was easy for me to slip into a train toilet, put a nappy on and find an empty compartment to enjoy the journey and the nappy. Wetting myself sitting down on a moving train was just bliss.
Sadly, around the time of the Millenium, Boots StayDry changed from being a plastic backed product that worked to possibly the worst ever cloth backed adult nappy. Those had two plastic tape landing pads that were uncomfortable, leaked easily and smelled awful. They stayed this way for some time. I bought some Boots PVC pants to wear with them, but it was a poor substitute for the originals.
I was quite gutted as I thought that plastic backed adult nappies were now a thing of the past. How wrong I was! Boots also launched an adult Pull-Up but this what we would now consider a standard “granny panty” and did not feel as secure as a real nappy.
The final DryNites thrill came around about the time I left school. A third size was launched “Age 10+”.
This dark blue package featured the same kids who had featured on the earlier ‘age 7-10+’ size, vindicating my thoughts that they had been around about my age when I first saw them.
This version was soon relabelled as being for “Age 10-15”.
I finally bought some DryNites 10-15 during the first year of University. I was living in my own halls room far from home and thought “why not?”. As it turned out, they fitted me perfectly. The Pull-Ups fantasy of many years earlier was fulfilled at last. They were plain white and quiet enough to wear on campus.They only held a single wetting but I loved how they felt (firm but squishy) when wet.
I met my partner while at University.
I did not reveal anything about my DL side to her until an unbelievable series of events that read like fiction but are really not.
My partner is highly intelligent and high functioning mildly autistic. She had to learn all her social cues as she was growing up and it was hard for her, but she is very outgoing and managed University well.
In our second year she and a group of friends from a particular society had to dress up as babies for an event. As such, when I met up with her later that evening, she was wearing, amongst other things, a plastic backed medical adult nappy. Seeing her in it was a dream come true and caused a spontaneous orgasm. The nappy was white, plastic backed with a taping zone and had different coloured spots on the taping zone.
We giggled a bit about and I tried to play it cool. Later back at my halls room I said, as a joke, “do you want to see if it works?” She just said “OK” and wet it there and then in front of me. I could not believe my luck.
I took a chance and admitted that this really turned me on. She told me she was OK with that as “everyone has funny things that they like”. She also told me that it felt nice to wear and use but did not turn her on sexually.
My partner does not actually identify as a DL but has no problem wearing and wetting nappies. She likes the way they feel when she does it but has no particular urge to wear them. She has memories of wearing as a child as she was day trained at nearly four, and wore them at night until the age of five. She was a late trainer because although she is highly intelligent, her autism means that she does not like change. She always wore Peaudouce and told me that towards the end of her wearing a night, she would sometimes use them out of sheer laziness and missed no longer having them.
I later bought her some Drynites, which had now become gender-specific. The sizes were now just 4-7 and 8-15. I thought that the 8-15 size was a little smaller than the old unisex 10-15 had been. She thought they were cute but preferred to wear nappies made specifically for adults. I found a chemist that stocked Tender Night plastic backed nappies which were our go-to nappies for quite a while, but they leaked from time to time.
Whilst at university I did my first online orders and got hold of some Abena X-Plus (now L4), Tena Slip Maxi and Molicare Super Plus (now Maxi) nappies. These were a real step-up in quality and really brought back those early memories of wearing.
After University we got jobs and moved in together. Rather than a constant obsession, the nappies became something interesting to spice things up. We would spend hours cuddling in nappies and it would be exciting for me to discover that she had wet it without saying anything as we cuddled.
Over the years we have obtained and experimented with all different sorts of adult nappies. I will not do an in depth review for them all but will observe the following:
Abena L4 plastic are my all time favourite. They’re not the most absorbent on the market but they are thick, fit me perfectly and are the most evocative (to me) of the nappies I wore when small. Feels most like the Peaudouce Child Size that I remember wearing.
Tena Slip Maxi. Always a safe option.
Molicare. Beautifully puffy and smooth. Remind be of the Boots own brand type.
Betterdry. Excellent performance all round and will be my favourite when my stockpile of L4’s has gone.
Drylife. The nappy I trust on the rare occasion I want to wear one “out” eg for a cinema trip. They are quiet but have very strong plastic, hold loads and never leak.
Original Bambino Bianco. No longer available, these ones with the blue waistband were extremely evocative and reminded me of the huge Sainsbury’s nappy I swiped from a friend’s little brother’s stock when I was six or seven.
ABU lavender. My partner’s favourite as they are feminine without being too childish and smell lovely.
ABU Simple. Feels very safe and is evocative of many of the generic unisex nappies of the 80s and 90s. Reminds me of Togs.
Tranquility ATN and Attends (US) Waistband style. Imported both of these as a treat. The Attends performed poorly but reminded me most of the original Boots StayDry. The ATN performed better and the loud crinkly plastic reminds me most of Ultra Pampers from the late 80s and early 90s.
My wearing is now no longer a sexual thrill for me. It is a strong urge that makes me feel relaxed and fulfilled (rather like right at the beginning). I wear a nappy to bed about 50% of the time, usually an Abena L4 plastic backed, a Betterdry or a Drylife. For some reason I usually wake up wet with no memory of having done it if I am wearing an Abena. Maybe it’s to do with subconscious early associations. The others I can simply wake up, wee and go back to sleep.
Seeing my partner wear and wet herself in a nappy is still a huge turn on, however it does not dominate our intimate life.
No-one else knows and we are not involved in any ‘scene’. In some ways it’s quite nice to have a ‘naughty little secret’ that doesn’t harm anyone, isn’t illegal and isn’t particularly expensive but brings such comfort.
So there you have it. The true story of a British DL.
I hope I have jogged a few memories from the period and would be interested to to hear from anyone else in the who developed their “DL-ism” during that time.
If anyone has pictures of the nappy packaging of the era mentioned above, or even a snap of the leaflet that started it all for me, I would be very interested to see how accurate my memory was.
Likewise if anyone has any questions about life in the UK (whether nappy or non-nappy related!) please ask.
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