Okay, so the title of this post sounds super dramatic, but I’m not gonna “go off” on this diaper. I get why it was made and that there are probably a small number of fans of it. So, this is just a calm account of the worst diaper I ever used: Always Discreet Underwear.
I vaguely remember why I bought a pack. I was in high school, and still buying exclusively from drugstores. I’d tried most drugstore diapers already, at least all the ones that seemed like they might be good. So, I was looking to expand my experience to diapers that looked bad but might be hidden gems. Also, I was always looking for cheap diapers, and this fit the bill (I think it was actually on sale). If it were a hidden gem and inexpensive, that would be awesome. My third reason was because it’s marketed for females, and when buying a pack I wouldn’t be suspected as the user. I wasn’t in the mood for a stressful diaper-buying experience.
I won’t lie. I was genuinely excited when I got out to my car with the pack of Always Discreet. I think I always get excited, no matter what diaper I’ve bought in store or ordered online. And this time, for some reason, my excitement led me to open the pack and put one on right then and there, in my car.
When I pulled one out of the pack, I remember being surprised by a couple things. One was how thin it was. If it was as absorbent as a Depend pull-up (which, how could it not be?) but this thin, I thought, how could I not use one regularly? The other thing that surprised me was that it had a pattern printed on it. I think the pattern involved a butterfly and some flowers. Until then, I’d never seen a diaper with anything on it other than a printed tag or a wetness indicator (at that point, I hadn’t tried Goodnites and the DG Kids were plain white). Yeah, there was a pattern like it on the box art diaper, but I thought that was just for marketing.
Anyway, I moved as quickly as I could and took off my shoes, pants, and underwear, then slid the diaper on, felt it, and pulled my pants back on. I didn’t really have to worry about people seeing me naked, because I’d chosen a fairly secluded area of the Walgreens parking lot, but I wanted to be safe.
I had to pee a medium amount, so I let it out in the diaper with my butt off the seat. Depend pull-ups had taught me to do that to avoid leaks. I waited a bit and then sat down.
Then I drove to the nearby barbershop (less than a minute away), because what I was supposed to be doing was getting a haircut. When I got there, I looked at my seat and noticed two little crescents on the seat–small leaks. Well, I thought, that’s probably better than how a Depend would have held up, but still not ideal.
It gets worse.
After I got my hair cut, I noticed that almost the entire seat of the chair I’d sat in was wet. I couldn’t believe it. The diaper had continued to leak during the entire haircut! And I hadn’t wet any more! It definitely was not as absorbent as a Depend.
I was so worried that the barber would notice the wet spot, especially because she knew my mom, so I tried to turn the chair away from her. I proceeded to pay for my haircut and leave. She didn’t notice the spot before I left, which saved me a lot of embarrassment, but she probably noticed it later. I can only hope that either the wetness evaporated enough by the time she looked at the chair again that she never noticed, or that she wiped it up but never figured out it was pee (it was a very hot day, so she may have thought I had a sweaty butt).
I’m pretty sure I tore the diaper off once I got in the car so that I wouldn’t make a noticeable wet spot on the seat. Somehow, I got rid of the evidence, and everything was fine. But I wouldn’t waste diapers, especially back then, so I went through the entire pack. Luckily, it was a small pack.
I only used them in my room after the above incident. I remember wearing them while watching movies. I always put a towel on my seat to absorb potential leakage. (I feel like I may have done this with another diaper as well.) It was a very stressful experience, because I still didn’t want leaks, and stress is the opposite of what I want from diapers. Also, I felt super confined to my room when I wore one, because it could leak at any time for all I knew. I don’t like feeling confined due to my diapers.
One good thing I can say about the Always Discreet is that it mostly held up once I ‘mastered’ it; I learned tricks to keep it from leaking (some of them adapted from Depend tricks, no doubt) and leaked less often as time went on. One trick was probably peeing in it really slowly. Another was probably only peeing in it once or twice before changing. Honestly, though, I don’t remember the tricks. And they weren’t nearly enough to trick me into buying another pack ever again.
To me, Always Discreet Underwear is worse than useless. Therefore, even though it’s cheap (at least, I remember it being cheap), it’s a huge waste of money.
So, that was my worst-diaper-ever story/review. What’s yours? Please leave me a comment on this post to let me know. I look forward to reading all the stories!
Diaper Demigod 