(I was still having trouble getting served in pubs until I was well over twenty.) I have brown hair, that is now about shoulder length, but used to be longer when I was younger. I liked to claim my figure was 34-20-34, but in fact it was really 32 (& a bit)-21-34. I trained as a teacher, specialising in infants and juniors and worked in the Midlands until I divorced when I was 38, ten years ago. Since then I have not re-married, but I moved back to the London suburbs, where I was brought up.
I was first diagnosed as having a weak bladder when I was about 8 or 9. I was still having the occasional 'accident' and wetting my pants, so my mother took me to the doctor. He said there was nothing actually wrong with me, except that I had a small and weak bladder and it would get better as I got older. In the meantime, he suggested that I should try to go to the toilet whenever I had the chance and not wait until I needed to go. The fact that I had already worked this out for myself did not occur to him.
However, I was given a note to take to school saying that when I asked to go to the toilet I should be allowed to go. This helped at school, but as I was also shy about asking to go, I still used to get caught outside. Often when visiting a friend's house I would want to go but be too shy to ask if there were any strangers present. Naturally, with my bladder, I'd soon be desperate and as I felt the point of lost control approaching I would make some excuse and leave. Most times I would not be able to make it home, but would wet my pants in the street. I was still doing this at 13 or 14, but gradually I became more worried about wetting myself and less shy about asking to go. By 15 or 16, when boys started to feature in my life, I had lost most of my inhibitions about other people knowing that I needed a toilet, though my bladder capacity had not improved very much.
My parents were fairly prudish, so my complaint was never really discussed at home, though my mother knew that I still had an embarrassingly small bladder capacity. She would have been horrified to know that I was openly discussing my bladder problems with my first real boyfriend, who was incredibly sympathetic about it and would do almost anything to find me somewhere to go as soon as I asked. My trouble was that once I wanted to go, I would soon want to go very urgently and would need some assistance to hold it back if I had to wait very long. My favourite way was to sit with one foot tucked under me, my heel pressing into my pussy and keeping my wee hole tightly shut. I found this far more effective than just crossing my legs and less noticeable as well. If I could sit on my foot like this, I could hold out for quite a long time, but if I had to stand, or sit with my legs apart, then I would soon be reaching panic level, frantic to find somewhere to pee before I wet myself. As a child I had always been told very firmly that putting my hand between my legs was 'dirty', so holding between my legs was something I only did in real emergencies as I made the last frantic dash to the toilet. Mind you, the sympathetic boyfriend mentioned above was very good at holding between my legs for me and this soon became my second favourite way of controlling my bladder. This was a great way of helping me drive when I was desperate and saved the car seat on several occasions coming home from the pub.
Looking back, I seem to have had frequent desperate or frantic situations, but hardly ever actually wet my pants after I was 16 or 17. For several years I managed to get by with nothing worse that an occasional last minute squirt as I dashed into the loo, but no major wetting events. This continued even when I was regularly visiting pubs and drinking cider and lager, though I did have to squat behind bushes or dustbins sometimes. When I left school and went to training college, I was considered an adult and therefore expected to have infinite bladder capacity. Unfortunately, my bladder was not aware of this and still had the capacity of a 12 year old. I had two incredibly close calls in my last year at school, a couple of absolutely frantic incidents during my first year at college, before reaching new limits of desperation during a holiday in Greece.
However, it wasn't until I started teaching that I was finally taken right to my limit and seriously wet my pants in public. Some of these events have been described already and I will be telling more. Once I was a fully trained teacher, I was expected to be above such human failing as needing a loo and was often in the difficult situation of wanting to go more urgently than my class of juniors. This seems to happen more often these days, when it seems to me that children these days have far better bladder control than when I was at school.
I have now reached the age of 48 and I am still waiting for my bladder to get better as the doctor promised. Up to now, I have had no choice but to do my best to cope with my bladder as it is and it has given me many uncomfortable and even embarrassing times. More worrying, it seems that as I reach middle age, so my bladder capacity is reducing again and my control, once I really need to go, is increasingly difficult. If this is the case, I am in for some hard times, so I had better make sure that I have a spare pair of panties and a large cork in my handbag when I go out anywhere. I am still teaching, but the reduced education budget has stopped end of term coach trips, some of which have caused me much anguish in the past, so my reducing bladder capacity may not cause me any more problems. My second husband, who I met about 3 years ago, introduced me to Cascade and was the first person I have met who told me how wonderful my bladder was. Not since my very first boyfriend, who was probably also a watersports fan, have I felt so comfortable about revealing my bladder problems to someone. I started recalling these early bursting incidents to excite my husband and it was he who persuaded me to write them down and share them with other Cascade readers.
Nicola.