What type of protection I find best?
That's easy enough to answer, but I've often wondered how difficult it can be to arrive there - for it's such a personal mix of facts, feelings, likes & dislikes, priorities, habits, understanding and sensitivity to shame and taboos.
I used to readily reconsider my own judgement when advise given by a professional would go against that, but I’ve become a lot more stubborn since then.
I’ve never cared much for discretion and visibility: I’m a very heavy wetter especially during the night, but then only my SO sees it. In the daytime it’s more manageable, and I always wear skirts and dresses anyhow. I especially love that wide 1950’s retro-style: under a petticoat even the most serious diehard cloth diapers go unnoticed.
I've grown somewhat weary of the word "breathable". Ok, I understand the bare essence: that it's nicer to give your skin some air than to seal it off.
However, you can’t have "letting in some air" without "allowing out some moisture". I feel that in practice it's just another marketing buzzword. I want whatever I wear for protection to be 100% waterproof.
At night I wear the same as what I was brought up in: plastic snap-button pants and (usually two adult sized) rectangular cotton diapers, folded so that they fit inside the front and back pouches of the plastic pant (that fixes them somewhat). I usually add an extra microfibre soaker.
When away from home I use a large shaped disposable pad - I mean like a regular disposable, but without the fastening tapes. They are available to about the same absorbency as regular disposable diapers. With some holes cut in the waterproof backing they work quite well.
Of course I have tried all sorts of other things, from snazzy disposables to huge complex reusable contraptions, but I found that neither can beat the old standards:
- Disposables give me more skin irritation and way more leak-prone because they tend to accumulate all the liquid in one place.
- the “all in one” reusable diapers have waterproof shells that render them stiff and uncomfortable, hard to clean and dry and extremely prone to ammonia buildup.
- PVC vs. PUL: I’ve never understood PUL. It’s not 100% waterproof, so why bother in the first place? It reminds me of those expensive Goretex raincoats that still aren’t really waterproof even if you’ve just washed them with that mandatory Tecwash stuff.
People sometimes almost freak out when I explain them what I wear for protection. The plastic snap pants that I prefer have large pouches at the front and the back, created by doubling the pvc foil there. The lower edges are elasticated, so that you can tuck the diaper behind it. This means that your belly and behind are in direct contact with the plastic foil, and that surely must be horribly sweaty and smothery?
No, it’s not: most days I wake up with my skin completely dry in those places. It will only work though if the pant has the right fit (not too tight) and if it's made of a suitable kind of plastic foil. Such plastic pants are hard to find. Last year I got lucky: a friend found some great snap pants for me quite by accident while who was on holiday in France, in a pharmacy somewhere in Normandy. I had never heard of the brand (‘Progyst’), but they were great. I have good experiences with French products anyhow: they used to have a superb kind of pvc foil that had a waxy feel to it and a very pronounced texture, so that it resembled satin or silk rather than plastic. It doesn’t cling to your skin, especially not when the cut allows for enough folds and creases so that it never stretches flat, sealing things off.
I find this infinitely better than having my belly and behind being in prolonged contact with a urine-soaked diaper.
I guess that whether this works or not for someone depends on many things. For one, it only works well with urinary incontinence. It may also help that I'm a peaceful sleeper: I hardly trash and turn around in bed and usually sleep on my back or face-down. I’ve wondered if it matters that I’m female - I hope I can explain this right - because sleeping on my back or face-down doesn’t make much difference for the location of the leaking faucet relative to the diaper / plastic pant. The only thing that I need to pay attention to is that the pouch doesn’t cover that part, because then I would be in trouble - but it does not extend that far down anyhow.
I must admit that I’m at a complete loss about how this works for guys, geometrically speaking
but it seems to me that the location of the business end can be more uncertain?
And lastly, I found that my skin will stay dry only if I don’t wear anything over the plastic pant, not even loose-fitting pyjama pants or a long night shirt, and certainly not a body (or romper, or onesie… not sure how it is called in the US?). They all tend to flatten the folds in the plastic foil that I think are essential for the air circulation that keeps the skin dry. They also aggravate small leaks by sucking up the liquid and spreading it much further.
The only real disadvantage of this set-up is that “a loose fit” and “keeping the diaper firmly in place” are mutually exclusive requirements. A pinned diaper (or a shaped one with velcro tapes) holds itself in place, so that a loose-fitting plastic pant over it isn’t a problem. In snap-button pants the diaper is held up by the pant, so that the looser the pant is, the looser the diaper will be. This doesn’t seem to be a problem in baby-sized diapers and pants (something with relative weight I think) but it is when you scale things up: a soaked adult-sized diaper is way too heavy for an adult-sized snap pant to hold up, while a baby-sized snap pant has no problem dealing with a soaked baby diaper. Welcome to the wonderful world of the
square-cube law in physics, where strength increases by the square of the size but weight by the cube
In practice I always found a kind of compromise between loose fit and ‘keeping the diaper in place’, and in bed it is not such an issue as it would be during daytime.
But still, I’ve been thinking if I could figure out some way to fix the diaper in such a snap pant … it would really be interesting because then the pant could be really comfortable while still securing the diaper firm enough.
OK, long story short, or tl;dr as the internet vernacular goes: I found that whether or not something works for you can depend on many (sometimes unexpected) factors. It can also pay to look critically at what passes as “generally accepted wisdom”.
I’ll add the daytime part later.
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