toddlergirl posted something about her origin on her  babystar account, so here is something about me.

I had a lovely childhood at first, with a father who was a professor and a mother who was a librarian.  They always found the best books to read to me.  I was adopted, but although they told me this, it was never a big deal.  They never pushed me into playing with toys that were "for boys" (or "for girls," for that matter), always focusing on things that emphasized creativity like Legos, Tinkertoys, paints and crayons, and musical instruments.  When I was almost five, two things happened: I got a new baby brother, and I started kindergarten.  A little over a year later, after I was six, Mom died of cancer, leaving Dad to work full-time and somehow raise a baby.  In a fairly short time I went from getting lots of parental attention to getting almost none and having to be the "grownup" in the family.  Meanwhile my little brother got lots of attention, and right about the same time my best friend got a new little sister, and one of my aunts had a baby girl too. Those little girls got lots of parental attention, and I remember wishing I could be them - I thought they were adorable and wished people would think of me like that.

Now, at the same time, I was wetting the bed frequently, which would continue until it abruptly stopped when I was about 14, and I remember having a few daytime wetting accidents now and then too.  I don't remember when I started doing this, but apparently when I was six or seven I got the idea to sneak into my brother's room and take plastic pants from a drawer in his dresser and wear them at night, under my pajamas and over my underwear.  I'd been in cloth diapers as a baby, but my brother was in Pampers; parents were just starting to use disposable diapers widely right about then (1974 or 1975).  I remember liking them because they felt good, but also because they felt safe; I felt protected.  I don't remember very well whether they actually helped with the bedwetting or not, but that wasn't really the point anyway, once I got started.  Dad never said anything about them, though he must have found them from time to time, under my pillow or inside my pillowcase.  He probably had enough to deal with at the time, and probably figured this was just a phase that would pass.  We moved to another state when I was nine, and I suppose those plastic pants got thrown away.

I didn't forget about plastic pants though, and of course I saw diapers in every grocery store, so later, when I was 10 or 11 and getting an allowance I bought diapers and plastic pants from a nearby store.  I would go on my bike, early in the morning so not many people would see.  I was very small for my age; that didn't change until a growth spurt that hit when I was 15 or 16, and I could still just barely fit into toddler-size diapers and plastic pants.  I'd hide them under my mattress or under the drawers in my dresser.

So that's how things got started. Now, I can't be sure that there weren't other causes, and I'm not sure how it helps me to know this, but maybe it will help others, and perhaps by looking at my origins I might learn something new about myself.