When you first start needing to wear adult diapers all the time it can be tough to know when you should change.
You don’t want to wait so long that you get a rash or end up leaking, yet you don’t want to change too soon as these products cost money. You obviously want to try and get the most bang for your buck.
A good quality diaper will last on average anywhere from 6 to 8 hours. Sometimes they can last longer than this while other times they average in the 2 to 4 hour range. How often you should change your diaper depends heavily on the type of diaper you wear, your specific situation, and your lifestyle habits.
These days I wear a diaper and booster pad combination that makes it so I only change on average 3 times a day. There are of course days where I need to change more than this as I generally base my changes off of certain signs I recognize that tell me it’s time to change.
How to train yourself to recognize this awareness is one of the best ways to prevent and avoid getting diaper rashes as the amount of time you can wear any particular product will vary. It all just depends on the quality of the product, your fluid consumption, and your body’s output.
Let’s discuss some approaches you can take to develop this awareness yourself.
Recording Your Wear Times
While the amount of time you can wear any one particular product will vary you can start to get an idea of when you should change yourself simply by recording how long you wear each diaper for.
By keeping a journal or written recording of when you put a diaper on and when you take it off as well as how it felt before you took it off you can start to develop that awareness of what those signs are.
You will also start to get a good idea of whether or not you could have pushed that diaper further or worn it for longer.
Alternatively, when you do push it too far and you end up leaking or getting a rash, you will begin to develop an awareness of what those things feel like too. After a while of wearing diapers, you’ll start to be able to recognize a flow of urine that is leading to a leak.
Occasionally when I do recognize this I do my best to reposition myself before the leak occurs. Sometimes that works but it usually at the very least prevents the leak from being worse than it would have been if I had stayed in that same position.
Usually, the best thing to do when you notice this is to just stand up if that is at all an option.
Recording these details in a journal will gradually bring the signs into your awareness over time. Eventually, you won’t need to record it anymore and you will just know when it is time to change.
Until you develop that awareness the recorded times you wrote down can be averaged out so this way you have a general idea that your diapers last you and your body X amount of hours on average.
Signs and Sensations To Focus On Becoming Aware OF
There are a few particular sensations I become aware of when it’s getting close to that time.
First and foremost is the sensation of wetness. When your diaper becomes too saturated it doesn’t pull the fluid away from your skin as effectively.
This is when you will begin to start noticing the wetness on your skin. This is partially why when I polled my audience on this people were split between the options of “awareness of how wet I am” and “when I feel uncomfortable”.
Upon further reflection, these are basically the same thing. I become aware of how wet I am because I’m beginning to become uncomfortable from how wet I am. This leads me to notice how wet I am which in turn may lead to me noticing some other sensations as well.
When you’ve been sitting in an overly wet diaper for too long the fluid build up tends to first become noticeable around the leg holes. At least for me anyway. Perhaps for women due to anatomical differences, the experience may be slightly different.
That said, I notice the leg holes becoming particularly uncomfortable before anything else because this is where fluid is sitting the longest without being pulled away. This can cause you to fidget and pull at the diaper in an attempt to pull the wetness off your skin.
When you find yourself fidgeting and feeling a sense of relief at the diaper being pulled off your skin you may be developing a rash and need to change right away.
Another sensation that is the most reported as the first signs people notice is the swelling and weight of the diaper between your legs. Your diaper will swell and become thicker as it absorbs more fluid and of course as a result of containing that fluid becomes heavier.
So the thickness of the diaper between your legs as well as the weight of it are some of the best ways to train yourself how to know when it is time to change.
When all else fails you can simply dip into a bathroom and take a visual look. Many diapers have wetness indicators on them but you should also be able to see the wetness as well without them.
If you happen to be in a bathroom or stall without a mirror and can’t tell if your backside is still dry then use your hand to feel the surface of the diaper.
The stiffness or squishiness of the diaper are also good indicators. When a diaper is fresh and dry it will be a lot stiffer due to the way the materials are packed and shipped.
As it absorbs more fluid the absorbent polymers expand and become jelly like in consistency. Leading a wet diaper to be far more squishy to the touch. So if you’re unsure how used the diaper is run your hand along the surface of it, especially your backside, to see how much dry material is still left.
Another good rule of thumb I go by is that if I can smell myself then so can other people. Luckily, because I wear the plastic backed diapers, the smell of urine isn’t normally something that is noticeable.
The only time I really start to notice it myself is if I’ve been wearing a diaper for more than 8 hours and the urine is becoming stale smelling. If you wear diapers for bedwetting then you probably have a better idea of the sort of scent I’m talking about here.
On that now, how do you know when you should be wearing diapers to bed? For more insights on when you should start wearing diapers to bed check out this page here!
What Others Who Wear Diapers Are Aware Of First
I’ve been wearing diapers for so long that I can sometimes forget how naturally it comes to me these days. In attempting to create content on this topic that would be useful to you I had to really think about all the little things I pay attention to that tell me it’s that time.
Things that I didn’t even realize I was paying attention to until I sat down and asked myself how it was that I knew it was time for me to change my diaper.
In an effort to get you the best quality information I issued my various audiences a number of polls to see what hundreds of other diaper wearers thought they paid attention to the most.
Here are the results of roughly 100 people weighing in on which of these sensations they become aware of first.
Across my audiences, on both Twitter and YouTube, the most highly rated indication people become aware of is the thickness and wetness of the diaper.
Just to ensure that there wasn’t some flaw in my questioning or something I missed I ran this poll in two different ways with “noticing the weight/thickness” being the most used indication no matter which way I posed the question.
Twitter polls are obviously a very informal way to conduct polls but my audience knows a thing or two about wearing diapers.
I have a pretty diverse audience too when taken across all the platforms I operate on. The people in my audience wear adult diapers for a lot of different reasons.
To learn more about all the various different reasons adults wear diapers check out this page next!
There is certainly wisdom in the masses. At the time of publishing this it had only been a day or so with the poll running so be sure to add your vote if you are viewing this while the poll is still open on twitter.
If the embedded Twitter poll has closed you can always add your vote to the YouTube poll here! I do believe that will be available to vote on indefinitely.
I’m always throwing out polls these days on YouTube and Twitter so if You’re not already following me in those places you should! That is of course only if you want to. Any votes cast in these polls are done so anonymously.
So fear not if that is at all a concern. They have been incredibly helpful so far in collecting solid information that goes beyond any pre-conceived ideas I have personally. So a special thanks is owed to any of you reading this who have participated in any of them.