All My Mother's Rules

Chapter 56: Babysitting Duty

With the Christmas tree in front of the window now fully decorated, Mom left me at home to babysit my younger sister while she went out to run some more errands and bring back something to eat for dinner.

As much as I disliked unpaid babysitting duties, it was preferable to going out with Mom for an hour or two and risking an accident in my pull-up. And even though it was later in the afternoon on Black Friday, stores were still bound to be pretty busy at this point.

Whenever Mom left me at home with my three-year-old sister, I was supposed to stay in the same room as Emilia, to make sure she didn't get into any trouble, not that there was much she could do in our fairly child-proof house.

At least with Emilia being toilet trained, she was semi-self-sufficient. Yes, she did need reminders to wash her hands after going potty, but she was getting good and going to the toilet on her own without needing any prompting. However, if Mom or I noticed that she hadn't gone in a while, we would tell her to go to the bathroom, a command that was typically obeyed without any fuss.

All I needed to do was to make sure she was properly entertained and had access to any drinks or snacks that she might want.

The easiest option with Emilia now was to simply turn the TV on to her favorite show and give her a sippy cup and a bag of gummies. That was almost guaranteed to keep her full attention while I went and did what I pleased. If Mom wanted more active babysitting, then, well, she was getting exactly what she paid for.

What I really wanted to be doing was trying out my new mouse with a round of Fortnite. But for now, I was sitting next to her in the living room, working on the pelvic exercises that Lisa had demonstrated for me last week. I tried and failed to stifle a yawn as I worked to stretch my pelvic muscles. All the effects of the coffee from this morning were wearing off, and I was beginning to feel the impact of having gotten out of bed before five in the morning.

Lisa described the pelvic exercises as pretending that you needed to pee and then attempting to hold it in. It seemed a rather silly thing to practice, as I had plenty of real-life experiences attempting to do that.

If it hadn't been for Lisa telling me that these exercises were the number one reason she had been able to regain control of her bladder, I would have given up on them already. It didn't feel like it was making any kind of difference.

I thought back to all the different medical tests Lisa had mentioned undergoing to try to find the root cause of her own continence issues along with all the medications she had experimented with.

It left me wondering again what exactly the cause of my bladder issues was. The loss of control had been both gradual and all at once. Would those tests be able to tell me why? And would knowing make any kind of difference?

But there was no way I would be able to go to the doctor without first telling Mom about all the issues that I had been having, and doing so would mean both disclosing that I was having accidents again, and admitting to all the steps I had been taking to avoid them. Mom would go ballistic if she were to find out how I had been biking off on my own to purchase pull-ups.

The more likely outcome would be Mom putting me back in diapers, rather than any trip to the hospital.

After we had finished putting together the Christmas tree, Mom had made me re-stock the closet with the diapers. I counted all the diapers after stacking the new ones in the closet. There were now eighty-three diapers on the shelf. Almost enough for three months.

It was probably for the best that I was doing this task myself. It would make it less likely for Mom to notice the extra diaper I swiped this morning for the outing to the mall.