Seems Too Good to be True (Diaper Dimension)

Chapter 19
'Daycare'

I WOKE UP and yawned as I felt my body being picked up by Ivy. “What time is it?” I asked as she placed me on the changing table to begin what was starting to feel routine.

“It’s six in the morning,” she told me. “I have to get you ready and checked into daycare before checking in myself to scrub in.”

I nodded but winced when she used a cold wipe on my groin. “Brrr…” I complained

She laughed, “Okay Princess, I’ll get you a wipe warmer later so you can stop complaining about the cold wipees.”

I smiled at that, “That would probably be really nice…”

She smiled back at me as she taped the diaper closed, “So what are we wearing today to daycare?”

I looked at her and realized she was being serious. Thinking back to my research from yesterday I suggested, “Can I wear that dress with those bloomers?”

She looked at the cute yellow dress I was pointing at that came with matching yellow bloomers she had clipped to it. “Sure, that will be cute!”

I nodded, ‘hopefully it’ll work too…’

After we got home Ivy and I had spent a couple hours just talking. That led me to understand I nearly got myself in deep trouble multiple times on Sunday! Yesterday I went into my playhouse with my tablet and researched everything I could find on how to fit in with regressed littles. I had actually found a handy guide that seemed to imply that as an adopted little I should avoid going to daycare at all costs! Unfortunately, there was no avoiding it in this case! I guessed I was safer at the hospital than with Katie at least… I figured at Katie’s daycare that Kelly would have been able to do whatever she wanted with me. I would have been calling her Aunty as she beat me up or something.

Having dealt with her Sunday, I was almost nervous enough to change my mind and tell Ivy to leave me with the crawlers instead of the toddlers. ‘Hopefully they’re not as bad as Kelly…’

I spent hours online trying to learn how to blend in with the other littles and babies. The last thing I wanted to do was get tortured day after day by some big toddler with a chip on their shoulder! I read about hundreds of horror stories yesterday – and I nearly cried as too many of them could have been about Julie and Desmond – or Janice. I researched her situation for a while too. It seemed that it would be perfectly legal for them to continue to act like they were, or Jonah could easily file a simple form and change the marriage to an adoption. Divorce wouldn’t even be an option at this point for her because he’d already started to show evidence of her having ‘maturosis,’ and needing him to be her guardian for her own good. Jonah would then be free to find a new wife if he wanted to, and she could become her new mommy. It seemed that happened sixty percent of the time once a betweener started being treated like that by their spouse.

Occasionally the big and regressed tweener would go ahead and have kids, and the big would let the mid grow up in order to care for the baby. Other times they were ‘re-raised’ alongside their own babies… It seemed truly messed up on so many levels to me. I’d been cursing my decision to come to this dimension almost non-stop yesterday with each sickening account I had read.

A spoonful of oatmeal in my face brought me back to the present. I opened my mouth and swallowed, repeating the step over and over. When I was done with the oatmeal, she gave me a piece of bacon to munch on while she ate her own breakfast.

“Done with that?” She asked me when I had made the bacon disappear.

I nodded, knowing what was next. Sure enough, I was removed from the high chair and placed at her boob while she continued eating. I was still tired, so the effects of her milk were nearly instantaneous that morning.

IVY LOOKED DOWN at Holly and sighed. ‘I wish I could just go back to sleep like her!’ She managed to coerce her to keep sucking long enough to finish her other breast before cleaning them both up. She placed Holly down for a moment in her swing while she did the few dishes. ‘Nothing worse than caked on oatmeal,’ she thought to herself as she washed out Holly’s bowl before it set.

She went to her room and donned the scrubs she wore on surgery days. ‘It feels nice to be back in them after the last few weeks,’ she thought to herself. ‘I wonder if I can find some in Holly’s size?’ she thought. ‘Normally we just keep patients her size in onesies or gowns…’

She shrugged and gathered up the extra pump she was taking to her office in case she wasn’t able to pick up Holly and have her nurse. She filled Holly’s diaper bag with three thawed bottles of breast milk, as well as a few frozen bags to leave for her just in case they were needed. ‘We already agreed it would be better if she just has my milk to eat there… I’d better remind her of that before we leave. Hopefully I’m done by one or so with everything.’

Holly had been right on the money with her diagnosis, which meant this surgery was actually really unusual for the hospital. They did a lot of replacement heart valves, which was a simple surgery with the nanites to bypass the heart to an external machine. They then reconstructed the tissue of the valve, before reattaching the heart to the patients circulatory system. This particular issue though was a one in ten-million case in their world. She’d have to ask just how common it was back in her dimension that she picked up on it so quickly. ‘Of course, it may be rare there too… She's so damn smart!’

Ivy triple checked that there were about three days of diapers in the diaper bag, two spare sets of clothes, several pacifiers, wipees, bottles, and a bib… ‘That should be way more than what she needs…’

Nervously she shouldered her briefcase and the diaper bag before gathering her sleeping bundle of joy. A quick sniff said she needed changed, but a look at the time meant she had to get moving. ‘I’ll change her in the car before we go in…’

Buckling her into her car seat she was happy the little girl stayed sleeping. ‘Less time for her to be stressed…’

I WOKE UP with my legs lifted in the air and was startled to see I wasn’t at home. “Where are we?” I asked Ivy.

“In the parking lot of the hospital.”

“The parking lot?!?” I blushed.

“Sweetie you needed changed. I figured you would prefer if I changed you one last time before taking you in?”

I winced but nodded. Blushing as a doctor walked by and said ‘Good morning Ivy!’ to her while her hand pulled away a brown wipe from my bottom.

She was quick and efficient in changing my apparently poopy diaper. ‘I hate having no control anymore…’ I grumbled to myself.

When she was done, she balled up the diaper and put it in a plastic bag to the side. I was redressed and she handed me the bag, “Here help Mommy, hold this,” she said.

I made a face, “eew…”

“It’s your own mess.”

“Your boobs are the reason for the mess…” I told her.

She actually had the nerve to giggle at that, “I guess you’re right there.”

I stuck my tongue out at her!

As she carried me inside, we passed by a trash can that I threw it into like a championship basketball player. “Nice shot,” she told me with a squeeze. As she walked, she whispered, “Now remember I’m leaving instructions that you’re only to drink my expressed milk for snacks or lunch.” I made a face at that and she responded, “Unless you want to risk mind-altering food?”

I shook my head, “No, your milk should be enough. When are you starting the procedure and how long does it take for you all?”

“She’s supposed to be under anesthesia and in the OR by nine. It’s not a real common procedure here… I’m guessing two hours.”

“Are you the lead?”

“Yes, but I’ll hand off the post care after I make sure she wakes up. I’m guessing it’ll be a few hours after lunch before I get back here. I might be able to sneak back for lunch if we’re just waiting for her to wake up.”

I nodded, “Good luck, she seemed like a sweet girl. I strived to stay objective with my patients like you’re supposed to most of the time, but kids like her were the ones that always tore at my heart the most.”

I received a squeeze in reward for that, “Me too.”

We arrived at the front of the brightly colored daycare check-in a moment later and the girl at the front said, “Can I help you?”

“Yes, I’m Doctor Nickerson, and this is Holly, I came by and filled out the paperwork last week to enroll her?”

We watched as the receptionist interacted with a touch screen and soon another lit up on the counter next to us, “If you’ll just sign her in on this screen please?” She asked Ivy. “You said you want her in the toddler room, correct?”

“Yes, unless she ends up needing to be placed into the crawler room because of problems with other kids.”

‘Other kids?’ I grumbled to myself.

“I’m sure she’ll be fine. I know mothers are worried about their littles getting bullied, but here we’re really good about keeping that from happening.”

“I hope you’re right,” Ivy said to her, still hanging onto me.

“If you’ll just pass her over to me, I’ll get her where she’s supposed to go,” the girl told her.

She squeezed me tight and kissed me on the forehead, “Be a good girl Holly,” she told me.

I rolled my eyes, “Yes Mommy,” I told her.

A second later a part of me wanted to cling to her and not be given to the woman. I could see a part of her wanted to not hand me over too. ‘Apparently being together and mostly alone with someone for a while messes with your head…’ I thought to myself. ‘Of course, nursing from her probably has too…’

I let myself be carried from the room and was soon deposited in the toddler room that I had been in the week before. It was a really large room, probably as big as many daycares were on their own back home… A room with cribs opened up off to the side for naps, while the main room featured several changing tables lined up along one wall. Another door revealed a bathroom with short toilets for any genuine toddlers that might be toilet training to get ready for the preschool class. From what I’d read though, many of the preschoolers probably still used their diapers as well, so that wasn’t the pre-req to advance here. That was simply being the age of two from what I could tell - or in my case just being the height of a baby…

I sighed as I walked around. Several littles sat watching a TV on the other side of the room. From the warnings Ivy had given me, as well as the ones I’d seen online yesterday, I steered clear of that end of the room. ‘I already did some damage that day I watched that building show…’ I shuddered a bit not knowing what I had exposed myself to. I knew that my accidents, thumb sucking, and pacifier urges had begun really taking hold not long after that.

A wall of bookshelves ran along the outer area of the TV area with numerous baby books and picture books placed neatly away. One little had a book out, but instead of reading it they were chewing on the corner.

Another sigh… I knew if I wanted to have a smooth time here, I needed to pretend like I was actually the twenty-month old toddler I appeared to be. Last time they didn’t realize I was a little because of my acting. I didn’t know if I could do that all of the time though! ‘Plus, they probably actually have my information now,’ I grumbled. ‘If nothing else it sounds like ‘regressed’ littles get treated better…’ I stuck my thumb in my mouth to try and help with that image while I kept exploring.

In one corner I found a few actual toddlers playing with some simple block toys, and a mixture of real toddlers and littles looked to be playing house. The real toddlers had the littles on the ground and were lifting their legs into the air pretending to change their diapers. It was unbelievable to me that a ‘toddler’ could still be eighteen or so inches taller than me! I quickly decided that was another corner to avoid after my experience with Kelly this weekend. The final corner of possibilities featured a couple of littles coloring on their stomachs. Somehow this seemed safer than the other options so I walked over there.

“Cowor?” I tried to speak babyishly.

“Knock yourself out kid,” the boy said.

I looked at him curiously. He wore a fairly plain diaper and a blue shirt with characters on it. The diaper was already drooping from what I hoped was only pee, while the shirt had splatters of goo from missed spoons of what I assumed was baby food.

Knowing that most toddlers just do their own thing I took the offered crayons and coloring book and began coloring. I made sure that my masterpiece was as terrible as it should be expected, grabbing onto the crayon wrong as I did so.

“When are we making the move?” one of the girls asked him.

“You can’t talk about this with a new person here…” the boy hissed.

“Look at her, even if she’s not a real baby, her brain is as mushy as your diaper.”

The boy sighed, “They’ve had some complications. It’ll be a few weeks still.”

“Few weeks?” the girl whined, “I’m so sick of pissing and shitting myself…”

“And you don’t think I am?” He asked as I heard a loud fart, “If we move too soon that’ll be permanent and your brain will be like hers,” he said towards me.

“Watch out, she’s coming,” the other girl said.

“Are you all playing nicely with our new baby girl?”

“Yes Nanny,” the girl said. “She’s not very good at coloring though.”

“Well, babies take a while to learn, don’t they?”

She nodded and I kept coloring. I had wet my diaper at some point and I felt the woman pull down on the bloomers to expose my diaper. “Looks like you can wait a bit longer for a change honey, but let’s pull these bloomers off so that Nanny can see your diapee easier,” she told me. I was flipped on my back and she pulled them off. I was not happy about it, but I pretended I didn’t care all that much. She tickled me for a moment, “What a good little baby girl!”

I giggled.

“Now you on the other hand Seth, it’s time for your change. You stinky!”

“Stinky!” He giggled back at her.

I started at that and looked up as she carried him away for a second before concentrating on my ‘masterpiece’ some more.

“I don’t know how he does that so well?” one of the girls said to the other.

“Sabrina it’s because he took his training seriously. I’m still shocked that you haven’t ended up getting mindfucked for your behavior,” she hissed at her.

I pretended not to understand the conversation, but I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on with them. Something seemed very off with the three of them.

I watched the room around me as I colored and tried to get a feel for everything else going on. After a little while I heard a commotion over where the toddlers had been playing house with the littles. One of the toddlers was wailing and I could see a short muscle-bound man standing there with nothing but his diaper on. I guessed his age at about twenty-three as he squared off to the crying toddler, “I told you not to hit me!”

A daycare worker swiftly picked up the crying real baby while another easily picked up the man and put him over her knee. I watched as the diaper was ripped off his butt and he shouted, “What the hell? He was punching me! I didn’t do anything but push the brat away!” Just as the large hand began forcibly spanking the man.

I could hear the slaps loudly from where I was, and the red palm prints on the man’s naked butt were visible even from the other side of the room. Ten fell before the man began to cry out loud for them to stop. Another ten fell and he was sobbing uncontrollably... but they didn’t stop. I morbidly watched on and counted until the number was past one hundred and twenty. The large woman finally stopped the beating, and from my vantage point the poor man's butt was bruising blue and purple colors already.

In my dimension I would have immediately reported any abuse like that to child protective services. ‘And this is a fucking hospital daycare?!?’ I thought to myself. ‘Mandatory reporters would do this?!?’

He was blubbering incoherently as she carried him to the changing table. I watched her secure his wrists above him, the normal chest belt went across, and he was quickly rediapered into a diaper so thick it could have been a pillow. “I guess you’re just not cut out to be a toddler, we’ll keep you in this newborn diaper today and talk with your mommy about the further treatments you’ll need before we’ll let you back in this daycare. I don’t think we’ll want you back even as a crawler now. So, if you come back, you’ll be toothless, drooling, and having a great time on your tummy when we put you on it for tummy time! That’s definitely what’s best for our wittle baby boy if your Mommy decides to bring you back.”

The man didn’t respond in words, but wails formed in his mouth again before a pacifier was shoved in his mouth and inflated. He was hauled away to another room then as muffled wails faded.

I was glad I had followed my gut and went to color… I forced myself to turn back to the page I was scribbling on and went back to it. ‘What the fucking hell?!?’

IVY WAS GLAD when she could clean up from the surgery a few hours later. She looked at her watch and saw she was a little early and could probably collect Holly for lunch, but wouldn’t be able to waste much time if she did. She debated about what to do when Macey came out of a nearby room.

“Just get done?” she asked her.

“Yes, the little girl should be fine,” Ivy told her. “I just need to go out and update her parents and then I figure I’ll get a bite to eat before she wakes up.”

“Mind company?”

“Sure…” she thought for a moment, “I’d thought about getting Holly to bring her to lunch.”

“First day for both of you, right?”

“Yes…” she said nervously.

“Then let me give you a piece of mommy-to-mommy advice. Let her eat her lunch down there today. They’ll be able to put her down for her nap, and then you can pick up a happy little girl who is excited to see you save her from daycare. If you go down now, then you’ll both just have to deal with the separation issues you just dealt with this morning all over again when you leave her again.”

‘That makes a lot of sense…’ Ivy thought to herself. She sighed, “You’re probably right.”

“Of course, I am, that’s why I’m your best friend!”

They talked for a few more moments before Ivy went to the waiting room and found the little girl's parents.

“How is she?” they asked immediately.

“Jade is doing great,” she filled them in before heading back and finding a spare set of scrubs to change into. Lunch with Macey would probably do her some good.

I HAD BEEN growing bored with faking interest in coloring about the time that the daycare workers decided it was time for an organized activity. One of them took my ‘snack’ bottle I’d nursed empty from next to me, while the other led me to a large colored carpet in another section of the room. They gathered us all into a circle and began singing songs and telling some stories to us. Next we were forced to play a game of duck-duck-goose, and in spite of my annoyance, I actually had fun running around. Midway through the game the woman who had abused the poor man collected me in her arms saying, “My you have a wet diapee baby, better get you all dry, huh?”

I tried to not shake with fear at the idea of this abusive stranger changing me. She put me down on one of the changing tables and strapped me across the chest with the attached belt. I noted the other straps that I had seen her use on the fighting little and others that morning. Each of them had seemed to antagonize her and fought with her though. To my relief since I lay still, she just used the normal chest strap and pushed up the skirt of my dress. She blew a raspberry on my belly and tickled me for a moment to make me giggle. ‘Another person trying to avoid changing my diaper again too soon,’ I thought cynically, ‘I really am tired of them all using that against me!’ I could feel the diaper grow wetter though as she tickled me so I knew it worked.

Obviously, a pro, she made short work of the diaper change. It felt gentle, just like with Ivy for the most part, except her gloved hands felt foreign as she touched me. She wiped me and had me back playing with everyone else very quickly. When I was back in the game, she grabbed another of my classmates. About the time that everyone was getting tired of playing the game another woman came in and started calling names out.

Most of the room’s occupants except myself and another girl were soon lined up and grabbing onto a rope with large colored plastic rings on it. I watched as they left us there, wondering what was going on and why I was left. “Okay you two, let’s get you your extra special lunches and tucked into your cribs for your naps!

She was so happy and smiling as she said that. She seemed to consider us both for a second before going to a counter and bringing back two bottles labeled with my ‘Holly’ and ‘Kylie’ on them. She put them down on a table next to a rocking chair before saying, “Come here girls so we can get you fed.”

I watched Kylie toddle over to her and slowly followed behind her. She picked Kylie up and sat her on her lap with her head cuddled into her right armpit. “Come on baby girl, you can come up here too,” she told me.

I didn’t want to get in trouble, so I walked over and with her help climbed onto her lap. She pushed the nipple of my bottle into my lips and I began nursing from it. ‘I guess Ivy couldn’t make it…’ I was annoyed, but also knew that it was unreasonable to assume she would have definitely been able to come get me. The bottle tasted like Ivy’s milk, but it wasn’t quite the right temperature… and the nipple didn’t feel right in my mouth. Still I continued nursing since I knew it was the only lunch I was going to get. Midway through the bottle I began feeling sleepy and decided it wasn’t worth fighting it.

IVY AND MACEY had a great conversation over a quick lunch before she headed back to the recovery unit. She had been checking over her patient’s vitals for a few minutes before she began to stir. Once she was sure that the little girl was awake and reunited with her parents, she signed out of the hospital and gathered her things up to head downstairs to the daycare.

“Hi, I’m here to pick up Holly Nickerson?”

“Hi Doctor Nickerson, can you just put your ID here really quick to scan it and I’ll take you back there? The system shows she’s still in her crib having her afternoon nap. She was put down about an hour ago after her bottle… You can wake her up yourself and I’m sure she’ll be so excited to see her mommy!”

Ivy smiled at her, and let her ID be scanned before being led back. Holly was indeed sleeping in a crib sucking on her pacifier, the ballooned shape of the diaper told her she needed changed. She leaned over and picked her up gently and asked, “Where’s her bag? I should change her before we leave.”

“Her cubbies right over here,” a woman said. Ivy was able to gently change Holly’s diaper without her stirring a bit.

“How was she today?”

“She was a little sweetheart! If I didn’t know she was a little, I wouldn’t have thought she was. She was a good little artist who colored most of the morning before we played some games.”

“What do the others play with?”

“Well there’s dolls and a play kitchen, and of course a TV to watch their favorite programs.”

“Regression shows?”

“Well… we do have parents that like them to watch a few?”

“Please make sure she doesn’t watch those?”

“Somehow I think she already thought that, but we’ll make a note on that.”

Ivy looked around and thought that her brilliant little girl being here day in and day out would probably get more bored than she would like to admit. “Is there any way she could use her tablet here?”

“We really discourage parents from leaving their littles attached to games on their tablets. They don’t interact with anyone else that way… Hurts their regression too,” she told her.

“She doesn’t play games, mostly reads?”

“You still want her to be able to read?” The lady asked in shock. “Most of our parents have intentionally removed that ability. The way she acts I assumed she had been fully regressed?”

“I’m not most parents, and she’s not most littles,” she told her. “Is it possible?”

“I’d need to talk to my boss. Realistically I’m thinking we’ll have to say no. It would probably cause some fights and drama with the other littles in the room. There are plenty of picture books in our library she can look at though?”

Ivy sighed and wondered what she needed to do there. “If you can at least ask for me? We won’t be back for a few weeks since I’ll be finishing up my maternity leave.”

“If you’re on maternity leave why’d you come in today?”

“VIP patient that I was coerced into overseeing her surgery. I have a couple of extra weeks of leave tacked onto my leave in exchange.”

“That’s good,” she said as she walked with Ivy out of the toddler’s room. She looked inside the infant’s room as she passed and saw a man bound with mittens, a locking pacifier, and physically tied down in a crib. He looked positively miserable!

A part of her suddenly felt even guiltier of leaving her little Holly with these people. ‘I know I said they couldn’t do those things to her… but what could happen?’

She silently carried Holly to the front, but squeezed her just a bit tighter as she walked out of the main door to the daycare. ‘We’ll just have to limit her time there as much as we can…’ she thought to herself unrealistically. She needed to work, and it was apparent from the previous incident that Holly wasn’t welcome elsewhere in the hospital. She gently strapped the girl into her car seat and was just about to close the door when she stirred.

I JUMPED, OR at least tried to when I realized I wasn’t in the daycare I’d last remembered. I looked up and saw Ivy and relaxed, “I slept all the way out to the car?” I was a little surprised by the pacifier in my mouth, but she seemed to understand me still.

“Yep, you just had a bottle about an hour ago?” she said with a shrug, “You were probably just still out from that. Let’s go home and I’ll find you a snack since you only had a baba for lunch.”

I stared at her as she closed my door and took off, wondering if she knew the Hell that she left me in earlier. ‘Probably not…’ I thought to myself. There was a part of me that could see where the amazon's blind spot came in with us. I was the size of a baby, so therefore I should be treated as a baby… That would mean taking me to daycare just like you would a baby since she couldn’t possibly safely leave me at home by myself. ‘I wonder if there’s anything else I can do there… just coloring every day for the rest of my life is going to suck…’

I sighed as I realized that I continued to nurse at the pacifier pretty much on autopilot. It wasn’t a long drive home, so she soon had me out of the car seat and standing on the floor of the kitchen. “Do you want something else for lunch?”

“Is it that early still?”

“They do lunch an hour earlier at the daycare than we usually eat, so you still have several hours until we normally eat dinner,” Ivy told me while bending down to my level.

I shrugged, “I don’t care… a sandwich or something would work.”

“Grilled cheese?” she asked.

“Okay,” I told her.

She turned to make it and I walked over to the coffee table where my tablet was sitting. I placed it up onto the couch before climbing up it like a mountain climber. Settled down on the couch I found another medical journal to read and made it through about half of the abstracts of that month’s issues when Ivy came for me.

“What are you reading?”

I told her about the journal I had found specializing in nanotechnology. It was one she was very familiar with and we had a very cerebral discussion about it then. ‘Almost makes up for the day of coloring…’ I thought to myself. I was full after about half of the sandwich since the bread was so large.

“I don’t think I can eat the rest of this,” I told Ivy.

She looked at me and nodded, “You had a bottle earlier too, so that probably has you still kind of full. Do you need to take a nap?”

I shook my head, “I just slept like an hour or two!”

“Want to go play outside?”

“Can I go to my playhouse?” I asked her.

“Sure, I’ll bring you a bottle of juice in a little bit too,” she told me.

I grimaced but followed her to the back door and tried to go into my playhouse, but it was locked. “Mommy, would you please let me in?” I asked.

“Tell you what, why don’t you try the play equipment…” she started to say and I felt my face fall.

“What’s wrong?”

I sighed, “You remember I really am an adult?”

“You’re not here though,” she told me.

“Please? Just let me do my own thing for a bit? This morning I had my fill of ‘pretending’ to be a baby. The worst was watching one of the women engage in what I would term child abuse if it was a child! Just because some poor guy just tried to defend himself from a bully toddler a foot taller than him! I can’t take anymore pretending right now!”

She looked at me and I could see the expression in her eyes debating a response. Having been around her long enough I could tell she was one step from just turning around and leaving me there, but after a grimace she nodded, “Okay…”

She used the keypad and unlocked my playhouse. I opened my small door and watched her gigantic form go to the house with her shoulders slightly slumped. ‘Why do I feel like I just kicked a puppy?’ I thought to myself annoyed. I decided I didn’t give a shit, and walked to the small coffee table where I had left my laptop plugged in and charging. I liked the tablet, but I knew without a doubt it was being monitored. My internet usage on her computer could have been monitored initially, but I had since taken some steps to use a network someone else had setup for littles to safely use.

‘I hope it is safe…’ I thought to myself.

I was doing research on seeing if there was any hope of escaping my contract with her, seeing if there was any other option to avoid daycare, checking their sites to see if I could do anything other than just look cute and shit my pants…

None of it was good news. Just the stupid chip that I knew was implanted in me took any options of just running away and getting to a portal out as an option. Apparently, a scanner at the entrance would start blaring a warning about me the second I stepped in. ‘I wonder how that one man got away?’ I had thought about it more and more and couldn’t help but figure he had to have been chipped at one point himself. ‘Someone like that may have just cut the damn thing out of his skin.’ I could probably do that myself, but I had no clothing that would make me look like a free little at this point. Everyone would see an unaccompanied baby because of my face, and I was certain to be stopped.

I sat there for a couple hours trying to find a way out of the now meaningless life I was trapped into when I heard the handle of the door begin to open. Three pre-programmed shortcut keys later there was no trace of my online adventures and it looked like I was just playing a game I had installed.

She closed the door behind her and sat down in front of me. I closed the lid politely as she asked, “Can we talk?”

I sighed, “About?”

“About the fact that… Well… I get it.”

“Get what?”

“I get that you’re not really a baby… even though I want you to be.”

I snorted, “So why keep up the charade? There’s got to be something else I can do other than be a pretend baby in daycare all day?”

“Was it really that bad?”

I sighed and put my computer beside me on the ground, “I pretended the first part of the day that I was a baby who couldn’t color inside the lines so everyone would think I was either a baby, or at least a fully regressed little, so they wouldn’t pick on me. Then I played ‘duck duck goose’ with a bunch of regressed littles and babies running around in a circle before having my diaper changed and naked body exposed to everyone else in the room. Finally, I was given a bottle of your breast milk and put down for a nap… does that sound like it was a very stimulating morning?”

I looked at her and was surprised to see some tears in her eyes, “No, it doesn’t.”

“Then to make it worse some poor guy had the ‘nerve’ to push away an amazon toddler who was grabbing at him and hurting him. What happens to him? He gets beaten to within an inch of his life by one of the daycare workers! This is in a hospital daycare where surely there would have to be some mandatory reporting laws?!?” I was just getting going. “So, what happens after the beating? He’s immobilized and taunted that he’s going to be kicked out unless his mommy brings him back as a newborn without teeth and being unable to move.”

“I’m sorry,” she said with tears in her eyes. “I…”

“So… why? Why torture me by keeping me like this?”

“I can’t undo your adoption,” she told me.

“Could you send me home?”

She shook her head, “Definitely not before the two-year period is up,” she told me.

“Why?”

“Contracts… you signed one, but so did I. If I try to send you back before the two years are up, they won’t send you back. They’ll just place you with another family.”

I grimaced at that, I knew that as bad as things seemed, this was far better than another home would be. “Do I have to go to a daycare? Is there another option?”

“I could probably have my mom watch you some of the time, but I’m pretty sure she’d inadvertently regress you.”

“How?”

“Put on a TV show, feed you little food, who knows…?” She told me. “Plus, if something came up that she couldn’t watch you, she’d just want to drop you off at Katie’s daycare.”

“And that’s definitely not a better option…” I told her.

“No, I don’t trust Katie any more than you do.”

“Kelly might be worse actually,” I told her.

She frowned but nodded. “Look, I did ask if maybe I could send your tablet with you…”

“What did they say?”

“They weren’t really in favor of it but promised to ask.”

I sighed and pushed on the front of my diaper. “Thanks for doing that at least… can you change me please?”

“Sure sweetie,” she told me and gathered me up in her arms. I was carried inside and changed before she put me in my high chair for dinner that was ready.

IVY COULDN’T HELP but feel like her world had turned upside down in one afternoon. Things had been like a dream – getting better every day! Then all of the sudden it was like the fake walls fell down and she was left with a guilty conscience. She had known how brilliant Nick had been in his dimension… ‘Why did I think he could be happy like this?’

She looked at Holly sitting across from her and felt her heart breaking. The little girl was eating the homemade chicken noodle soup carefully, even though she had a bib on. It almost made her smile as a noodle splashed back in the bowl, but the look in her eyes reminded her of a broken animal.

Everything she had done; she’d done it slowly in the hopes of never seeing those eyes on her own littles face. ‘I don’t even wish I’d ripped the Band-Aid off quickly,’ she admitted to herself. She’d done everything she could to be humane, but the problem was the larger world was anything but humane. She could do everything she could for her little girl at home… but the truth was she needed someone else to care for her if she couldn’t. If Holly was left alone by herself, LPS would get involved and remove her to a worse place. A nanny or babysitter wasn’t a better solution than the daycare either.

She wanted to grab her in her arms and just hug her and tell her it was okay… but she knew that because of today it wasn’t. They could pretend all they wanted at home, but it was unlikely to last past the door of the house.

The rest of the meal continued in silence and nothing was said between the two of them as she gave Holly her bath. She tried a couple times to say something, but the words just weren’t there. Ivy thought that maybe Holly had the same problem.

They ended the night together when she told Holly, “I won’t make you nurse tonight if you don’t want to…”

She watched her little shrug, “Might as well… it’s the closest thing to getting drunk and passing out that I get.”

Ivy wanted to shout at her about the inappropriateness of the statement, but didn’t entirely blame her after the day that she had. Sitting in the rocking chair she stroked Holly’s hair lightly as she nursed from her breast. It was the first time since she’d picked her up from daycare that she saw tension leave the muscles of the little girl at all. A simple lullaby came from her mouth as she watched her nurse.

She held the sleeping little long after she’d finished nursing and fallen asleep. It broke her heart to feel like she had broken this little girl so.

‘I wish I could honor the deal I first told her…’ she admitted to herself as she placed her into her crib. “I love you Holly,” she told her and leaned in to kiss the sleeping girl’s forehead.