Incontinence Cloth

Starting Out

I used to feel like this!

How I started with reusable incontinence products

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I suffer from mixed urinary incontinence to some extent. The stress leakage is usually fairly light and more of an annoyance than anything else. It tends to happen when I’m bending, squatting etc. but is usually only a few drops, only enough to leave a bit of patch on pants every now and then and most annoyingly and embarrassingly for me, if I’m not careful I’ll end up smelling of wee by the end of the day, if I leak a few times and am not in something protective, and or can’t change. The urgency I get is a different kettle of fish entirely and it is the dam bursting. It is quick in build up and relentless. If I can’t get to a loo right away when I first get the feeling, then I am dancing like a toddler (knowing how obvious a sign this is to any parent!) which is embarrassing enough, but then I will have to quickly apologise for whatever I am interrupting and leave to go straight to the toilet, or there will be a puddle, unless I have absorbent protection. This is the other end of the scale. Now, it is not quite at the level of whole bladder voids in one go, but what I often find is that once I’ve gone for a wee, voluntarily or not, I can end up needing it again very quickly shortly after and it will be a decent-sized void again. I have my working theories as to why this is and I’ll mention that elsewhere when I talk about the basics of incontinence and my general incontinence journey, rather than just the cloth aspect of it.

As you might imagine, finding a product to control the few dribbles is not terribly difficult, as pretty much anything will help, as long as it is waterproof and has even the slightest absorbency! So when it has come to looking for products to look after the leaks, I have mainly concentrated on the larger volume, urge incontinence as this tends to be the more difficult one to contain and I have certainly seen many a leak in my time. over the years I have realised that I need something with the highest absorbency levels to cope with this, especially for overnight or when I am not able to get to a toilet reliably for a prolonged period of time.

One of the reasons that delayed my switch over to reusable products was that if you look at most high quality washable protection for men, you are looking at quoted absorbency of maybe 250ml, at most! And we all know that this is a highly theoretical maximum, not a working capacity, meaning that about half this is more like a reasonable estimate. My general use disposables, that I talk about in greater detail elsewhere, have tested absorbency of about 4000ml, which means that even at half this they can hold a few times the capacity of my whole bladder. This means that they are generally reliable, unless I have been necking energy drinks to power through the day, or drinking a skin full of beer to party the night away. Now these days, I am known to drink way too much caffeine (I blame the ADHD stimulant cravings!) but I don’t drink, so the second issue doesn’t tend to cause a problem. Despite this, no mainstream reusable brief or pad can even get close to what would be needed for overnight use. In fact most places you can go to look for advice will tell you that while reusables are good for light, occasional loss; for heavier loss disposables might be better.

My wife is very eco-conscious and really thinks and worries about how to do the right thing. She has worked incredibly hard to whip the rest of us into shape and make it our habit to reduce, reuse and recycle. One of the things that drove her a bit crazy in some ways and greatly conflicted her in others, was the fact that we would spend all this time working hard to stop using and throwing away plastic and still end up with a small and smelly mountain of disposable incontinence wear in the bin. This was especially galling when the kids were younger and we were managing to find all sorts of washable cloth alternatives to disposable nappies.

I ended up buying some relatively cheap and cheerful washable pants with built in pads. I will be honest, they are next to useless. They have a fairly thick, but not thick enough, pad with a waterproof backing, and don’t really do much to lock away the moisture when wet. They can just about cope with my stress incontinence leaks, if I know I can reliably get to the loo for bigger leaks, but even then, are not that comfortable after a while, because they don’t do enough to lock the moisture away. Since then I have bought some newer versions: Tena Washable Pants for Men, Confitex Dry Pants for Men and Zorbies. All of these are streets ahead, as they have similar or much better absorbency. Apart from the Zorbies, they are all much thinner too, despite handling the same leaks in a more comfortable manner, and the Zorbies are way more absorbent and comfortable and get the closest to being able to handle things if I start to get caught out from an urgency perspective. Despite the improvement though they are still not where I could count the start of my reusable cloth incontinence journey, but they do fulfil a regular and useful niche that reduces my need for disposables. There were 2 products that really made a change for me when I found out they existed and one of these is still in daily (or mainly nightly) use to this day and I truly couldn’t live without them unless I switched back to disposable pads.

The first item I found was the BumGenius Bigger Pocket Nappy. This is designed exactly like a bigger version of a baby/toddler pocket nappy. It can be stuffed with whatever insert you require. Now, as with all of the products I use/have used, I am going to write a dedicated article/review about each, so you can know all the pros and cons I have found, but a brief summary here might be useful. Firstly, they are waterproof and have some flexibility in the absorbency. For daytime use they are pretty good, as they can be fitted with enough absorbency to be able to cope until I can change them and if I am not having a bad night for leaks, then they might make it through a night too, but I am not sure I would trust them that well. As with all pocket nappies, they can’t take too much stuffing and they are limited by their size. They will quite happily sit around my 32-33” waist, and would go a bit bigger without stretching, but they are fairly trim and won’t really accommodate a lot of absorbency and keep their shape, which is integral to staying waterproof. So, a good start when I found them, but not a full solution.

After yet another search of the web looking for solutions I came across the Snuggleblanks website and after a lot of saving and soul-searching regarding investing the best part of £200 in adult nappies, I decided to take the plunge and my goodness I am glad I did! Again, this is only a tiny portion of what I am going to include in the main article/review, but these are sized, fitted bamboo nappies, with a stay dry micro fleece inner lining and an internal pocket for stuffing. They come with big trifold inserts, which are cotton I think, and can be combined for extra absorbency if needed. They need a waterproof cover and come with covers, if you order the sets, that are sturdy waterproof PUL, covered with a fleece outer layer. For me, I didn’t find the covers great and I will explain in more detail later, but when I managed to work out a good option for this, I have never looked back, never had a leak and never regretted the purchase. They are well worth the price!

So are they perfect and is that the end of my cloth journey, well no. They are wonderfully, flexibly absorbent, but they are also incredibly bulky. This is fine when I am in bed at night and there is only my wife to notice the bulkiness, but they really are too thick for regular daily wear if you need that level of absorbency. They are also brilliantly flexible as you can combine lots of elements to create what you need at a given time, so brilliant when I can size down a bit for daytime use at home, but a bit complicated etc. for taking out and about. I have discovered some other nice solutions, a really good one being Nappynex, by Bambinex. They are an all-in-one nappy-style brief, great quality and absorbency. I love the simplicity of an all-in-one for ease of use, especially out and about, but I am still looking for the perfect product. I’ve, just had a new one delivered and another one is on its way, so I’ll keep you posted.

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