Queen's Square Bladder Stimulator

I had never heard of such devices being produced before today, but aparently the Queen's Square Bladder Stimulator is a vibrating device that, when held against the skin over the bladder, just above the pubic region and activated, assists the bladder in emptying. Usually this is for people with serious neurological conditions such as multiple sclerosis, to make sure the bladder empties fully, but ... hmm, I wonder how hard it would be to keep from "letting go" if somebody tried one of these things on you. Or if there were some way to fix one in place with a belt or something and activate it by remote control -- Mommy pushes the button and it's time for Baby to wet now!

Wetting Alarms

Conversation continues on the munch Yahoo group about RSVPing for the monthly AB/DL munches, but the two people who have responded so far think it wouldn't be amiss at all for me to make sure someone's coming before heading to the munch myself.

Meanwhile, about diaper and wetting alarms. There were at one time musical diaper alarms available -- a little clip-on device would attach to the waistband of the plastic panties or anywhere on the clothing, a sensor connected with a wire went inside the diaper, and when the diaper got wet, the device would play a little tune, sounding like the tune played by musical greeting cards. This would work for both real babies and adult babies, of course. It detects moisture by measuring electrical resistance, but the mixture of moisture and electricity isn't dangerous, because the amount of current used is so small. I saw one in use at an AB party I went to in New York City. But I haven't been able to actually find such a thing for sale so I can have one of my own.

A famous African-American inventor named Lonnie Johnson, also known as the inventor of the Super Soaker water gun, also invented and patented a wet diaper detector, in 1980. I don't know whether the device he invented was incorporated into the musical diaper alarm that I saw, but I do keep running into this inventor when I search the Web.

Today I found an intriguing device: the Malem Bed-Side Bed Wetting Alarm. This very adaptible system actually has a short-range transmitter in its battery-operated detector, which sends a signal to the receiver box in another room. This receiver can be programmed to signal a caregiver in one of a number of ways: an alarm tone, a recorded message, or a musical alert. The transmitter doesn't make any noise, vibrate, or anything. They have three kinds of sensors: the kind that goes inside a diaper, the kind that clips to underwear, and the kind that you put under the bedsheet. Just imagine -- in another room, Mommy already knows you've wet your diaper, but you don't know that she knows! All this is very interesting, but the $170 price tag is rather scary. Maybe they'll become less expensive with time.