The enduring need for “little” space and what it means to this girl

A glimpse into the world of an “adult baby”

Disclaimer: some people conflate the world of the adult baby with the involvement of actual children. Apart from being a crime to sexualise people under the age of consent (which will vary according to where you are), it is morally reprehensible. Sex with, or the sexualisation of children is a cardinal sin, and is a horrific act. There is no room in this world for predators of the innocent. Infantilism and adult babies have nothing to do with actual children, but are practices that involve consensual adults in play-acting, make believe. If this isn’t your kink and you don’t want to read about it, don’t read this post. If you are curious about it, and can have an open mind about what the folks next door might be doing behind their drawn curtains, read on.

I am wondering whether now that I am a grown woman, that being a baby, or wanting to be treated like one, is more socially acceptable than it was when I was a man.  It certainly feels like that.

Adult babies seem to be in the social lexicon, on a step below the submissive male, who are unfairly painted as bottom of the barrel.  Both of these tropes, mostly reserved for the male of our species, are so looked down upon for all the reasons that the patriarchy is toxic.  We invest so much in our expectations of gender roles, what a man is, what a man isn’t, and social value is inextricably bound up in that.

I participated in a discussion with a group of Dommes recently, professionals, who were lamenting that although they were face out, and some of them very much so, they were disappointed that more men were not.  After all, they noted, being a sex worker carries enormous stigma.

At least it did.  I feel like it is changing though, but that could just be a reflection of the changing composition of my friend group.  I get their point, but found it hard to agree with the assessment, as a kind of either-or thing.

First, the dominatrix, leaving me out of the equation, is seen in many circles as cool, empowering, and hot.  So much so that we see more and more sex positive TV shows and cultural events that celebrate this archetype of the female.  For a pro-Domme, which is the form that occupies the popular imagination, the pluses seem to outweigh the negatives.

But she can be revered, kind of like a Neapolitan would refer to someone in a complimentary way as furbo…a kind of “bad boy” clever…cheating and getting away with it.  The flip of furbo is a fesso…a kind of limp-wristed-taken-advantage-of-sucker.  I can’t help but think that many people in our society regard the submissive male as just such a person, head-shakingly hard to understand.  As in, to even try is to create space for them.  Such is the social approbation.

Why?

Because it upends the power dynamics that underpins the patriarchy.

D’you know what?  That’s why the only way I could live, exist, as a man, was as a submissive.  I had a giant apology for all women on behalf of all men.  I am not overstating my feelings of that era as an either/or with the “either I find my way to submission or I will die.”

We all need love.  Deep love.  I couldn’t find my way to love unless I was seen by someone, understand, and loved as me.  I think this is part of the reason my marriage was so toxic for me, as it involved a colossal sublimation of the self, even if it allowed for submission, it was conditional on not being seen as either submissive or as female/trans.  Well, I’ve fixed all of that.

My lesson to everyone is that there can be no successful path in life that doesn’t include a full embrace of the self.  It is impossible to love anyone if you don’t give yourself that space.  Please don’t misunderstand.  I haven’t fixed it all yet.  Not by a long measure.  I still am relentlessly hard on myself, not giving myself credit or slack…and I am called out on this thankfully by friends, therapists, my family, even strangers.  These little reminders are gifts from the universe.

Society doesn’t have the same problems with a submissive female.  It is what is expected of her.  All the better if she is turned on by aligning herself with the power dynamics of patriarchy.  And an infantilised woman is even better.  We think she’s sexy.  A look at a lingerie catalogue will underline the point.  Get your pink baby doll.

So my opening question resonates with me…now that I am a woman, and am leaning into it with everything, and people are processing me as a woman, all the other cultural baggage is coming with it.  At least it should.

It amazes me how easily I am sliding into a range of emotional expression, existence, and pleasure that is highly gendered, if not inappropriately so, but comforting to me, whilst at the same time, just being the flipside of the toxic box that men are shoved into.  I can be kinky now without being a pervert.  I can be submissive now without being ashamed.  Of course I’m submissive, I’m a girl.

Only, as a woman I have nothing to apologize for.  Actually, I want to fight.  And this means that at minimum I have become a switch, but I find myself increasingly inhabiting a space that is reserved for the dominatrix.  I will write more and more about this because it is becoming a cornerstone of my new life.  But while all this is happening, something is going on too.

I really am a baby.  Let me say it again.  I’m a baby.  Sometimes I feel that this adult persona that I wear is just some elaborate ruse, and that inside of me is a baby guiding me like a puppet master.  It is delirious.

This has come up recently, pouring out of me in a tumble, on the therapists “couch”.  Only the therapy was not talk, but touch.  Sometimes the stuff we can’t understand hides in the body.  When I got on her table, my mind was empty.  I was thinking about silly things that I needed to do.  My day.  But within a few minutes, I was to a place that I guess that my rational mind had been circling for a while, but not quite getting to.

When I think back over my life, the times when I most wanted to be a baby, to express this aspect of me, was when I was experiencing intense stress.  The book the 5 Personality Patterns refers to the root cause personality growing out of when we first experience a state of “overwhelm”…when our psychic pinball machine screams “tilt”.  How we process this state depends on the age at which it occurs.

I don’t know terribly much about infantilism, which is now popularly called ABDL (adult baby diaper lover) despite a lifetime of being an infantilist.  One thing I have understood is that “littles”, a term which resonates with me, have different ages that they regress to…and I suspect that this has to do with the age when we experience this state of overwhelm.  How this state becomes sexualised is beyond my level of understanding, but it does, as happens with anything that becomes a fetish.

I have been asked by various providers and others who have sought to understand, and who knew this much about “littles”, what age am I…and the answers can be anything from 0 to adult, with the latter typically liking the humiliation of being put back in diapers.  Humiliation is not my kink, and I have never had any desire to use diapers.  I am too fastidious!  I’d say anal, but the double entendre would be misleading…

I could never answer the question about what age.  I used to just think that this was a feature of my feelings, that it wasn’t specific enough, or age related.  It felt like a needless complication.  But interestingly, the age that one self-identifies with often dictates the kind of play that one seeks.

I have been diapered by 4 women in my life.  The first two were one-offs in London.  One was a dominatrix who was contemptuous and barely interacted with me, leaving me to jerk off (which I didn’t do…I just got up and left).  Incidentally, as I did leave, I noticed two police officers casing her in-call, ready to move in.  She had surmised that her phone was tapped, which explained her cryptic phone manner and the questions she posed to me…all key insights for her to realise I was not a goon, but a baby.  Glad I left when I did.

The second time was very nice and nurturing, with a woman who was a professional nurse, and it was in her tiny apartment just off Oxford Circus.  She was strong, matronly, very warm, and knew how diaper me…she told me that next time I would come to her without pubes.  I was startled and excited by that…and would have done had I ever gone back.  She fed me a bottle, or rather prepared me one and left me to drink it…and again left me to “take care of myself”.  But that was never what I wanted.

I mean, of course it was sexual, but for me, for it to be sexual was a problem.  I didn’t want it to be.  It was existential.

There may have been a third time that I am forgetting, and I know I did go to a place in Kent that was quite famous years ago as a house that was run by a mommy and was frequented by adult babies.  I met several when I was there to pick up some clothes she had made for me, but I can’t remember whether she diapered me or not.  Probably not.  I remember not liking being there, being uncomfortable around “grown men who were acting like babies.”

I can’t help but feel like a hypocrite.  What was different about me?  Well, for one, a part of me really, really believes that I am a baby.  A real baby.  A case of arrested development.  This part of me never grew up.

And I understand where it came from.  I have written about attachment and attunement before, and also the dynamic with my mother that fed this, possibly caused this, and certainly sexualised this.  Bad mama.

What is it about it for me?  I realised that my baby self is pre-verbal.  This aligns with my experience of the 5 Personality Patterns.  It also explains why I don’t have any desire to engage sexually when I am really and truly in little space.  What do I do?  Want to do?  I want to be held.  That’s it.  Read to.  Fed a bottle, a warm bottle, be swaddled as tightly as possible, and held…to hear her breath, to feel it on my skin, to hear her body, the sounds of fluids moving around…those cues that come to a nursing baby.

The third person who babied me was not a provider.  She was a woman I nearly married.  Our timing was off.  But holy crap, the sex was great.  And she was as into me being a baby, her baby, as I was.  Even more.  And she tuned into what turned me on and kept me in a state of heightened arousal.  She loved it.  And I would not call our relationship a BDSM relationship, but in truth, it was.  She was a Goddess to me and liked to be treated like one.

Her kink was body worship.  And she loved being called Mommy.  She planted that seed and encouraged it and gave me other names to use for her which were all very baby-Mommy.  Her biggest fantasy was to collar me and walk me on a leash publicly.  At the time, probably even now, I would have struggled outside of kink-friendly spaces.  But the feeling of submission to her was total and flipping awesome.

Our relationship cratered for many reasons, and amusingly, she became the second woman to empty my closet of women’s clothes that she fancied for herself when she moved out.  She was very supportive of me as a trans woman.  

The fourth person was ex-Mistress.  In truth, one of the two reasons that I approached her in the first place was that she had experience with babies, but it took me six months of seeing her on the regular to be comfortable to play this way.  When we finally did, it changed my life.  I can pin to the exact moment when I found the courage inside of me to come out.

She came to visit me in my hotel and had brought with her diapers and a bottle.  She pinned them—they were those old-fashioned cloth ones—and apart from feeling insanely good, her competence at this was a kind of reassuring that helps one slip into role…I was silenced…and I don’t mean verbally, but that too.  No.  My soul quiets down.  My whole system goes into a trance.  It is sub space of sorts, but it is little space, baby space.  And she held me and fed me the bottle.  And it was so freaking delicious and reminded me of things that we can’t remember.

I go back to Greek myth and the drinking of magic potions.  There was magic in this potion, in this moment.  My outrageous joy that erupted was unstoppable.  And the cascade of my life that followed has flowed from that moment, tumbling over everything in its way like some swollen mountain torrent rushing its way to rejoin the great collective, the sea.  Later that day I put on a skirt and a blouse and looked at myself in the mirror, and the person I saw reflected was hot.  She was cute.  She looked good.  And she was me.  And dammit, that was it.

And that day, I went outside for the first time in my life and just owned it…and it hasn’t stopped since.  All the decisions and changes that came were born from that moment. 

I am a baby.  And as Popeye found Herculean strength from a can of spinach, I find the same in a bottle.

Some time ago, I boasted about leaving fetishism behind forever.  And I meant this.  That I would never return to little space, that I didn’t need it anymore.  And that is certainly true from a pathology standpoint.  And it was never so strong as to interfere with my ability to have an adult and loving relationship with a woman.  And somewhat amusingly, when a woman would complain about how all men are babies or want a woman to mommy them, it was never my literal need that I felt was being singled out…but rather a kind of emotional immaturity that has never been me since I hit my tens.  I grew up in every way…only I’m still a baby.

And my time on the therapist’s couch has showed me profoundly that I am still a baby.  That I am never going to leave this behind…and I don’t want to anymore.  My bed has two stuffed animals on it, one that I have had that was bought for me by the woman I didn’t marry, because she wanted me to have it with me when I travelled on business to be a “pretend adult” and to hold it while she talked dirty to me on the telephone.  The other was one that a dominatrix introduced to my life…a domme who said I reminded her of her mother!  She may read this [hi beautiful!].

But when these words came tumbling out of me, that I wanted to be a baby, it resonated with me very powerfully.  As is the way with body work, it can play out really slowly over days, weeks.  Even more, I was not judged.  Not the therapist or an observer who was there.  She repeated my words, “you want to a baby.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Yeah,” she echoed.  And the observer also made positive noises.  And I wonder is it because I’m a girl now?  Is it because it’s okay for a girl to have those feelings?  Or is it because I have just had a sex change, am going through a nasty divorce, and have no job and no job prospects that meant they could understand—an acceptable response to intense stress is a need to regress?  Does it even matter?

Probably not.  What matters is that I expressed it, and it felt really good to say it, and to be seen and heard saying it, and to not be judged.

As I was on the internet doing something somewhat unrelated, I came across the profile of a dominatrix who specialises in working with adult babies.  I have often wondered about seeing someone whose entire practice is dedicated to this…There are not so many of them.  And to build an entire practice out of what is a rather rare fetish, well, you need to be good, a lot of “equipment”, and a pretty awesome space.  There is one who I have wanted to see for years, but circumstances never allowed for it.

And here is one just a few blocks from my apartment.  At any other time in my life, this proximity would be the end of me.  Every dominatrix I have ever cultivated, I have made sure she was in another city, one so far away that the only to get there was by flight.  I’ve even gone so far as to ensure there are several countries separating us!  But even that is only so much of a check on me…

Sometimes I jones so badly for subspace, one that can only be delivered by the hand of “The One” that I just break down and write to her and ask her to give me a date, any date, and I just fly to be with her…a three-day trip for a three play…I know.  But there is lot’s of getting into the zone, doing my nails, getting my hair done, and very, very extensive after care…or sometimes pre-care as we share joy in some of the same vanilla things…

Anyway, the presence of a domme with decades of experience of being a Mommy domme just a few streets from me inserted itself into my consciousness, and finally, I thought, “why not?” and so I booked.  She is achingly strict.  I already know that.  I don’t do so well with strict.  I am not a brat, not at all, but I do like to be spoiled…

Now, I am just waiting.  Once the booking was confirmed, her last sentence is bouncing around inside of me like a bumble in a beer can, “I can’t wait to diaper you.”  My whole is thrumming at the thought.  Suddenly I don’t care if she is a disciplinarian.  My kink is obedience.  I mean it.  We’re going to get on like a house on fire.

Will I go around telling others about my predilections?  I don’t think so.  I had lunch with a sex worker friend who was complaining about how slow business is for her now.  

“I’m doing my bit for the sex work economy,” I said, “I booked somebody.”  I probably shouldn’t have said anything.  Because now she wanted to know what for.  I politely declined to answer.  She’s a friend not a provider to me, though I have provided to her.  She is going to introduce me to a game she plays with her own clients about a sexy-steamy way for couples to discover and explore kink, boundaries, consent, and to do so in a non-threatening, sex-positive way.  As is the way in the modern world, she has booked a slot in my diary to play this game with me.

Who knows why we need what we need.  Why it becomes so fulfilling, cathartic, spiritual, arousing.  In the meantime, I count the days until I will be in this woman’s embrace.  For the first time with a provider I told her exactly what I wanted.  Shall I say?

I asked her to treat me like a baby, to diaper me, to feed me a bottle, to tuck me in, and to read to me.  I’ll bring the books.  I’m still debating whether they will be adult versions of children’s stories (there are some insanely hot ones out there) or will be some of my favourites from my dating life where certain children’s books that were never a part of my children’s lives but were instead flirtation fodder between me and any number of girlfriends…this was an “acceptable” way to play baby and to be intimate with so many women.

I do know that what this woman will give to me by seeing me in this way is something I can’t easily get from anywhere else…and yes, I do understand why I need it, and where it comes from…and now believe that indulging it is a form of healing it.

I might write about it…probably will.

More importantly, this is my last corner of kink that may have some aspects of shame attached to it.  I only say that now, because I don’t feel the shame, but I also don’t want to share with people in my life that I do this, like this.  It isn’t quite the same as shame, but in a way, why not share it?  Why is being a little seen as shameful. Why can’t I let go of that thought.

I know what it feels like in my body to be held in this way…a state of rapturous bliss.  That can only be good.