>Big Baby: The Interview

>As promised, here’s the complete interview from this week’s Nashville Scene edition of Suburban Turmoil. There’s been an interesting discussion in the comments of the Scene and I hope it continues.

Regardless of how you feel about Adult Babies, I thought Bella’s answers were fascinating, so here they are in their entirety.

How did all this come about? What made you seek out this community and participate in it?

When I was younger, maybe 4 or 5 years old, my 2 older sisters would be playing house and sometimes let me play. Being the smallest, and the youngest, I of course was given the role of “baby” in their game. They would dress me in their old clothing and even diapers on occasion. To my memory, this is the first instance in my life that it came about. Eventually they grew out of it, and I forgot it. Then it resurfaced again in my teenage years. For a long time I thought I was the only one with this strange desire. Then, with the entrance of the internet into my life, I found that I was not alone. For a while I just lurked the sites, reading what others thought. Eventually I became an active participant.

What exactly does being an adult baby entail for you? What do you do? How often? Who in your real life knows about it? How do you find people to participate with you? And how do they participate?

There are varying levels of activity for me depending on what is going on in my normal life. Generally, I play the role of a toddler age 2-3. I wear cute clothes, suck on a pacifier, drink from a bottle, cuddle with my stuffed animals and play with dolls. I wear a bib and eat with my hands. I love to play with crayons, and can draw some excellent stick people. To an extent it is a full-time thing for me. I wear diapers to bed every night, not because I need them, but because I want to. When I have adult things to do around my apartment, I often just go about them as normal but in my diapers and baby attire. Of course, being a student and a fairly social person does require I leave home. As I said, I play age 2-3. My “underwear” for when I am not playing “baby” are pull-ups. I have told a couple of my friends in real life about my baby life, they were all very accepting of it. One particular lady friend of mine has on occasion “babysat” me. She is not into the lifestyle, though she is very open-minded and interested in learning about it. When she does babysit she does not interact with me as adult to adult, but rather in the way that a babysitter would with a toddler. She makes me dinner and helps me eat, makes sure I get a bottle if I need one, plays with me, keeps an eye on me to make sure I behave, and generally just tends to my needs. While she visits my home for this type of activity, she becomes the authority figure. She makes the rules. Things like throwing food may result in a time out. All in all it is very innocent role playing.

Outside of the few real life experiences with my babysitter friend, I am blessed by the internet. I have a “mommy” who I interact with through instant messenger. We play over webcam. She sets up rules for me to follow such as bedtime, tells me when to have a bottle or take a nap, and often will pick what outfit she would like me to wear, though sometimes I surprise her with a new one. I also play Second Life, and have a cyber family there in which I am the family’s toddler. It provides me with a very solid and helpful family structure within my baby-world. In Second Life I have a firm and loving mother who helps to dictate my daily routine. I have a silly playful father. I have older sisters, aunts and uncles and friends. While many people have strict divides between their Second Lives and their real lives, my family knows that I play right along as I sit at my keyboard. They know about the adult me, but to them I am a toddler—not an adult pretending to be one. In fact, it was my Second Life mother who suggested that at “3” I should not be in diapers during the day, but rather pull-ups. This was both to give me a sense of being in the potty training age, and to help me hide my secret from the public world when I am out and about in it. If it weren’t for the internet, honestly, I would be a pretty lonely baby. It is very difficult to inform a real life friend of this lifestyle for me, and even more difficult to find a participant.

You say it isn’t sexual, but I would imagine it is for a lot of people who do it. Is that the case? If it’s not sexual for you, what need do you think it fulfills? Why do you think you enjoy it? I read about Adult Babies versus Diaper Lovers on Wikipedia. Are you an AB or an AB/DL?

For many people in the community this fetish is sexual in nature. This is predominantly the case in the Diaper Lovers (DL) side of the community, as they do not regress from their biological age. There are mental and physical reasons that people become aroused by diapers. In the fetish world, they are considered a form of “light bondage” due to their restricting nature. They also provide a sense of control versus lack of control in a scenario, be it sexual or just role playing. Also, consider human anatomy and the form of a diaper. To say it without being too graphic: the thick folds of a diaper can stimulate the body. Simply put, for some DLs diapers are merely another type of undergarment similar to lingerie. Though, for others the allure of diapers is in their comfortable fluffiness. Additionally, some DLs are people who are incontinent, and have embraced the community for support and company. There really is no blanket explanation, but rather innumerable personal ones.

Personally, I affiliate with AB/DL on the grounds that I still wear diapers for fun even when I am out of character. Regarding the sexual aspects, I would say that I have a healthy sex drive for a person my age. Wearing diapers does not inhibit, or facilitate this in any unexpected way. While I am pursuing this drive is one of the few occasions I will go without diapers. Obviously, that would be an awkward situation to explain to a potential partner. Then, on the flip side, is my Adult Baby nature. While I am playing, I regress myself. To the best of my ability, I function and think as a young child. My mind goes away from being focused on adult things like sex, money and responsibility. Rather, my thoughts are consumed by far more important choices such as: should I use the pink crayon or the green one? What is softer, my stuffed bunny or this pillow? Should I have milk or apple juice? My focus shifts from the horribly frustrating adult world to the simple and easy life of a child. My biggest concern is giving and receiving innocent love; my biggest fear is time out. My biggest joy is making “mommy” proud and knowing she is smiling because of something I did.

If you go by “Bella,” I’m assuming you play as a female baby. Why is that?

To be honest, I am not certain about why my youthful persona is female. I have personal theories and beliefs regarding that aspect of my lifestyle. I think it is a combination of two things: getting in touch with my inner child, and getting in touch with my feminine side. While I don’t actually consider myself a “split-personality” in the psychological sense, for the sake of role-playing I do have multiple personas. Much the same as I did not get to choose “who” the adult-me actually is, the little-me toddled into my life with her own personality. It was and is beyond my control in that sense. The divide between the preferences of adult-me and little-me are amazing. As an adult, I love earthy tones and dark colors. As a little girl I am magnetically drawn towards pinks and purples. Big-me loves reptiles ad birds of prey. Little-me loves bunnies and kittens. Despite the differences, it is a symbiotic relationship. Plus, girls have way more choices in clothes, and the available choices are way cuter. Girls also have more fun.

This is a personal question, but do you actually go to the bathroom in your diaper and have someone change you? Or do you just wear one?

This is another subject that does not have anything close to a blanket answer for the ABDL community as a whole. There are actually quite a few huge forum threads on community sites dedicated to this subject. I can only speak for myself here.

I use my diapers, and in fact very rarely use a toilet! For me it is part of the regression and part of the relationship between child and care giver (i.e. babysitter, mommy…). Toilet training is one of the first institutions of adulthood that is put into our minds. It is that first step in being able to take care of oneself. It is both a helpless and comforting feeling to me, using my diaper. It reinforces in my mindset what my concerns are. Again, crayon color, not getting to the bathroom. Initially, I was only comfortable wetting myself. Though once I found my online “mommy” it was established that the role I was playing involved both comfort and discomfort. It was not so much about pleasure as the role. So despite my aversions, I got used to going #2 as well as #1. Because aside from my babysitter friend, I have only interacted via the computer, I have sadly never achieved the goal of having someone else change my diaper, which is a fantasy among many in the community. However, to improve the realism of my role-play, I do depend on my online care-givers to decide when I can change. I go through a couple of pull-ups a day, and my caregivers always make sure I am in a nice dry diaper before I go to bed.

What do you think the people in your life who don’t know about your AB habit would do if they found out? Do you think that many of us know ABs and don’t even realize it?

Initially I think most of them would be shocked. My outward personality is quite a bit opposite from this part of my life. I am a very independent, thoughtful and intelligent being. I am strong willed, charismatic and fairly hard-headed. I think they would assume here was something wrong with me at first. Though, most of my friends would likely accept it as simply another part of my weird personality. I think my family would accept it too, but would likely think it was something that they did wrong that caused it. In reality, even if it is a product of things from growing up, it is a part of my self that I love. I would hope that they would see that. I have a wonderful family and good friends, and I am certain they would love me for me no matter what.

I do think that many people know someone who is secretly a part of the ABDL community. One of the dilemmas is that we are scattered all over the world, and it is a taboo subject. It is not something we just go around telling everyone about in everyday life. This makes it very hard for us to connect with each other. If it were not for the internet, I would probably still be closed up about it and thinking I was the only one. As it is, I only recently got the courage to tell a couple of my most trustworthy and dependable friends about it. In my honest opinion, I myself might even know other ABDLs without being aware of it. I never use my real name in the online communities, and I believe most of us are very protective of our real life identities for fear of social reprisal. When in reality, the majority of us are very normal and productive members of society. We go to school, we work, we socialize and we pay our taxes. We stand in line with you at the post office, the DMV, the grocery store and the movie theater.

What do you think the public perception is of AB/DLs? What would you like people to know?

Personally, I think that for the most part the public is either ignorant of us, or misunderstand us. There have been a few “cameos” of our lifestyle in some popular culture, which sadly has not done any sort of justice to us. I think most people immediately connect the diapers and “paraphernalia” like bottles and pacifiers to actual children. With that in mind, and the connecting word of “fetish” I can see how it gets misconstrued. But the truth is that it has nothing to do with actual biological children. The online communities that I participate in will ban a person who promotes pedophilia. For DLs it is about the comfort and pleasure of the diaper itself. For ABs it is about regressing back into childhood and finding comfort through giving up control. Adults try so hard to control the world they live in. Children just try to understand it.