Tigger9 : My True Story – Part 5 (f/f)

[Fordman]

My True Story part 5
By: Tigger9

Note: This story was recovered from the old site and edited for spelling and format to improve the reader’s experience.

Our family had been to Orlando on major family holidays three times since I was born. We first went when I was five although as must be the case for so many kids of that age, I barely remember it at all. Our second trip was a couple of years later and I had far more lucid memories of everything we did that year; the parks, dinner shows and shopping, all of which were so spectacular and over the top.

We then went again the following year shortly after I turned eight and amongst the numerous outlet shopping trips was a day of clothes shopping for my elder sisters to stock up on shoes and dresses and for mum to stock up on kids' clothes for my sister and I. She certainly did that and as usual, we had to buy another suitcase to get everything home. While my sister was quite happy standing around in the outlet mall shops as mum held things up to her to check sizes and made her try things on, I was not interested in clothes at all so got very bored very quickly and became a bit fractious.

I asked if I could go and look around by myself but was told, as usual, that they didn't trust me not to get lost. I lagged around behind my mum and sister for what seemed like hours until we got to the sleepwear section of whichever store it was we were in. My staring into space was eventually interrupted by the sound of my sister pleading for something, celebrating as my mum relented and agreed and then rushing toward me to show me her new acquisition.

"Look at this! How cool is this?" she said, waving a clothes hanger at me. I looked at the garment hanging from it and realized that it was an enormous Babygrow with feet. All-in-one pajamas were nothing particularly new to either of us; we had both had the odd pair over the years and so had our friends. But these had built-in feet and looked exactly like a scaled-up version of a baby's sleepsuit. It was pink and had a zip-up front.

"Mum said I can get it!" said my sister excitedly.

"You need to try it on though to make sure it fits you" added mum. My sister walked back over to her, picked up a small pile of other things she needed to try on and headed for the fitting room.

"There are some bits for you to try on here as well, honey. Go and get started, and I want you to come out after you've changed into each one so that I can see how it all fits you."

It clearly wasn't worth arguing so I picked up the pile of things she had picked out and went to follow my sister. I went into the dressing booth, put down the clothes and closed the curtain. Deciding to start with the new pair of jeans, I started taking off the ones I was wearing but noticed something else on the pile. My mum had picked out a pink Babygrow for me as well.

I put down the jeans and picked up the sleepsuit. It was so soft and snuggly, more than I had realized when my sister had shown me hers. My first thought was to try it on but I hesitated, as I tended to when something like this came up. This was a very babyish piece of clothing and I was almost embarrassed to want to try it on. But eventually I overcame what embarrassment there might have been and started unzipping the suit.

Sitting on the bench seat in the changing booth, I slid my legs into the Babygrow and then stood up, slipping my arms into the sleeves and pulling the suit up over my T-shirt. I reached down to fasten the zip but was surprised to find that it started not at my crotch but right down near my ankle. I drew the long zip all the way up to my neck and then dropped my arms down by my side. This felt really bizarre. I looked at myself in the full length mirror on the booth wall and saw an overgrown toddler wearing baby clothes that left only her head and hands showing.

I felt as torn as I have ever felt in my life - this Babygrow made me feel so comfortable, cozy and snuggly but at the same time, I was horrified to see what little "big girl" credibility I had amassed in my eight years destroyed by the sight of myself looking two years old, with almost my entire body covered up.

Interrupting my minor struggle, my mum stuck her head around the curtain to see how I was getting on. I spun around in surprise and found her looking down at me and my Babygrow.

"That looks fine," she said dispassionately, "now try on the other pajamas".

She was talking about the two pairs of regular cotton pajamas on the pile, and because I had been caught in such a "compromising" position, I promptly removed the Babygrow and obliged her by trying on all the other stuff in the pile.

The Babygrow came back with us from Florida and after being worn a few times, it found its way to the back of one of my drawers and fell into disuse. It was never really that nice to wear in bed because it got very hot, and I had lots of other pairs of much more comfortable pajamas.

My sister, on the other hand, adored hers and wore it very frequently indeed. She had outgrown it very recently and it became a hand-me-down, which means that it ended up in a pile of hand-me-downs on the toy box in my room.

I threw the reins on my bed, flung the pile off the toy box with my usual care and attention and pulled the pink Babygrow up off the floor, shaking it open and holding it up against myself to see how big it looked. It did look a bit big but that wasn't going to put me off, so I threw it onto my bed and opened the drawer containing all my other pairs of pajamas. I pulled out a pair of regular cotton ones and put them on before heading back downstairs, dragging the Babygrow with me.

"Look what I've got!" I said, holding the Babygrow up so that S could see it.

"Oh my god!" she said, clearly never having seen one as big as this before. "It's enormous! Where did you get that?"

"In Florida. It used to be my sister's and I had a smaller one but now she's outgrown this one, so it's mine."

"It's adorable", said S, taking the Babygrow from me and holding it up to see it clearly, "but I've never seen anything like this for a kid of your age."

"I don't like them, they get really hot and you have to take them off when you want to go to the loo. My sister loves them though, she was really sad when she got too big for this one", I said.

"It looks like it would get hot. It's basically a blanket, isn't it?" she said, running her fingers over the pink fleece. It is cute though. It's a shame you can't get them in cotton instead of fleece. You might like it better if it was a lighter material."

"I don't think I would," I replied, "it's a pain having to get undressed to go to the loo."

"It must stop draughts getting in though".

"Draughts?" I asked.

"Yeah, you know, like happens when your normal pajamas ride up around your middle, or the legs ride up and you end up with a bare leg sticking out from under the covers!"

"I suppose" I concurred. That was one of the things that my sister always liked about Babygrows - they meant that you could roll around a lot while you were in bed without your pajamas bunching up. It never bothered me, but she did fidget a lot during the night and hated waking up uncomfortable. She also did not mind the heat caused by being covered from neck to toe in fleece.

"So you don't wear these then?" asked S.

I replied that I didn't wear the old ones, but that these had only just been handed down a few days beforehand.

"I have to see what you look like in it - would you put it on for me?" she asked.

I happily agreed because I suspected that I knew what was coming next and as long as it was only for a short time and on my terms, I could cope with the babyishness of it all. I took the Babygrow from S and unzipped it right down to the ankle. Sitting down on my bed, I slid both legs into the suit before standing up and poking my arms through the sleeves. I reached down and in one smooth motion, I zipped it up to my neck. I dropped my arms to my sides and looked at S, who clearly thought this was all very sweet.

"Oh, it's a perfect fit! Look at you! You just look so cuddly!" she said, picking me up in a big hug as you would a teddy bear. She put me back down on the floor and rotated me by my shoulders so that she could see my back. "It looks so funny on you. You look like a little Teletubby!"

"Shut up! I am not fat and I do not have a stupid bendy thing on my head!" I said, trying to suppress a grin.

"That's true," she said, "and there isn't a pink Teletubby. Oh, that's the funniest thing I've seen all day! You really do look like a scaled-up toddler! All you would need is a dummy and the look would be complete!"

"Well," pretending to have only just had the idea, "I could have the reins put on me. That would make me look like a toddler!"

"Oh I see, that's why you got these out" she said, having rumbled my cunning plan. "Why are you so fascinated with those baby reins?"

"I don't know" I said, bright red-faced at having been caught out.

"I think it's because you like pretending to be a baby."

"No, it's not that" I said, timidly. "It's hard to explain. It makes me feel really safe being strapped into baby stuff like the car seat, or the reins or whatever."

"And it's the safe feeling you like?"

"Well," I answered, "yes, but I wouldn't want anyone to see me strapped in."

"That makes sense. This is baby equipment so it's fair to say that if you're strapped into it, you look a bit like a baby, particularly if you've got the reins on because you can't get out of them."

"Yeah" I answered, half convinced. "Yeah. But can I still have them on over the top of this?" I asked, grasping some of the fleece in each hand.

"If you really want to, you strange girl! Where are they?" she said, glancing around the room before noticing the reins on my bed near the pillow.

She picked them up and shook them out, turning them around ready to slip them onto me. I walked up to her, turned around and stuck my arms out in front of me. She drew them over my hands and up along the fluffy sleeves of my Babygrow, pulling the harness up slightly to get a snug fit over my shoulders. The feeling of the harness tightening as she fastened it was the most overwhelming feeling. After a couple of seconds, the harness was secure and S picked up the reins.

"There we go, a toddler again!" she said as she took up the slack and held me at short range as she had done half an hour earlier.

"So then," said S, "what now? Shall I just leave you in them for a while or have you had enough already?"

As my fingers explored the reins that were keeping me in this Babygrow, I replied that I wanted to keep them on, to which she agreed but reminded me that dinner was almost ready.

"You can have dinner with them on if you like - we could probably tie you to one of the chairs in the dining room!"

"No," I said decisively as I tried to open the zip, "I don't want to do that."

"Okay, well whatever you're going to do, don't do it for more than a few minutes."

I muttered my agreement as I tried to wriggle my way out of the Babygrow. The harness was very snug without being too tight, which made it impossible to do much except lower the long zip, which I had already done. The suit itself was still doing a good job of making me look like a toddler and it must have been obvious to S that there was no way that I could get out.

"I'll leave you up here for a few minutes. See if you can get out of your reins or the Babygrow," she said as she walked out of the room, but then turned back at the last minute. "Do you want to be tied to something to see if you can escape?" she asked, which I presumed meant the pushchair again.

I explained that I didn't really like being strapped into the pushchair, but that was not what she meant.

"Look," she said gently tugging my reins, pulling me toward the head of my bed, "I could tie you to the bed head! How about that?"

"How?" I asked, not meaning to go along with it.

"Like this" she said, reaching for the spring clip on the right hand side of my harness. I tried to look behind me as she unfastened the rein and went to thread it through the metal bars of the bed head. She pulled plenty of slack through the bars and reattached the rein to my harness with a secure click.

"There! Now try walking forward", she said and as I did so, I was stopped almost instantly by the tension in the reins. The bed head did not move an inch as I strained against it and S looked as amused as ever by the sight of me testing my restraints.

"Okay, you've got about sixty seconds and then you've got to come down for dinner" she said as she left the room.

With the gauntlet thrown down, I really went for it. I reached my left arm as far behind me as I could, bending it back with the other arm so that my hand was right on top of the clasp. With it there, I tried to turn my hand around to release it but no matter which angle I came at it from, I just did not have the strength in my hand to do anything. It was made even worse by the fact that I didn't know what I was reaching for because these reins, unlike most of the others, had a metal clasp with a Mothercare logo on them which needed both hands to operate it and there was certainly no way that I could do that.

I wondered if it would help for me to be laying down while I tried so in the absence of anything else, I jumped onto my bed so that I was face down on the duvet, which was difficult because I had so little slack in my reins. My fingers wrestled with the clasp but it was still no good. I stood up again and after looking down at the harness for a couple of seconds, I strained and shrugged like mad to get my shoulders free of the shoulder straps.

There was some give but very little and I was not even close to getting free. I squirmed and wriggled but no matter how much I tried to contort, the reins just would not budge. After really tiring myself out, I looked down at the harness and the feeling of helplessness swept over me more strongly than it had ever done before. I was a nine-year-old girl but I was as in control as a naughty two-year-old. It was so overwhelming and I felt so helpless that for a second, I could have burst into tears.

Instead, I waited for S to come back into the room. I must have looked a bit perturbed because when she saw my face, she looked worried. "Are you alright?" she asked.

"I've had enough of this. I want to get out now." I stood up with my arms draped down at my sides, not even bothering to try to escape anymore.

"Yeah of course," she said, reaching for the clasp. "Are you sure you're okay? You look shaken."

"Yeah, I'm fine" I said, but the truth was that I was shaken. This had all started as fun but the feeling of being dressed like an infant, locked up and left on my own had rattled me. While there was still a small part of it that was exciting, it mostly just upset and scared me. My heart was racing.

"Are you going to keep your Babygrow on for dinner?" S asked me as she removed the harness and unfastened the reins from the bed head.

"No, I'm not" I answered, trying to hold back tears as I pulled off the Babygrow, the zip still open from my escape attempt earlier. It dropped down around my feet, which I pulled out of the elasticated feet and stepped out of it. S could see that I was frustrated so she knelt down and took hold of me in a big hug.

"Hey, don't be upset sweetheart. We were only playing and all you had to do was tell me if you wanted to stop. I thought you were having fun" she said, patting my back. "Why the sad face now?"

"I didn't like being tied up and left by myself, it felt horrible" I said, choking very slightly, trying desperately not to make this ridiculous baby girl look any more complete by bursting into wailing sobs.

"Okay okay, I understand" she said, squeezing me in her arms. "It's okay though - it was only playing and you will never have to be tied up like that again if you don't want to."

"I don't want to!" I said, in case there was any doubt.

"Okay now, feeling better?" S asked me, looking at me to see if I looked pacified. She used her sleeve to wipe away the few tears that had streaked down my face, despite my attempts to hold it all in. We then headed downstairs for dinner and never spoke about car seats, baby reins or any of the other toddler paraphernalia again.

---

That was the end of my cluster of experiences with baby reins, car seats and pushchairs. The embarrassment, which seemed so much greater at the time than it does now on reflection, was enough to put me off the idea of being restrained like a small child. But I did think about it on a number of times over the years, notably on one occasion when I visited a friend's house when I was twelve. Her brother, who must have been about nine or ten at the time, had cerebral palsy and rode in a very large car seat and this was, of course, absolutely fascinating to me.

I was dropped home that night by my friend's mum and we came back via the petrol station which meant that I had the opportunity to have a good look at the car seat while she was filling and paying. Like all of these things, I remember it very clearly indeed; it was a Britax Traveller seat with black and white checked fabric, a grey harness and a second, smaller buckle about half way up the shoulder straps. I felt so curious about the seat and while part of me longed to sit in it and see if I could do up the straps, the almost-teenage part of me dismissed the idea so I did nothing, my friend's mum returned and we drove off.

I do still look twice when I see what looks like an older child wearing something that resembles a baby harness or restraint device. On a more recent Florida trip, I was amazed to see so many bigger kids wearing the animal backpacks that now seem to have replaced baby harnesses. I think the eldest one I recall seeing must have been about nine or ten; ironically slightly older than I was when I first started rediscovering the mystique of baby equipment. It is amazing to think that I fitted so easily into all the stuff when I was that age; eleven years later, I am now driving my own car rather than riding in the back of someone else's in a baby seat.

Thank you all for reading this. It is very cathartic to put it all down in writing, far more so than I thought it would be.