Being dry at night question

[HeyAssbutt]

Quick question. I'm trying to get dd (just turned 4) to go through the night without a nappy. She's happy to do it, she seems like she's uncomfortable in the nappy now.
My question is, do you wake them to do a wee in the night? For example, she had a wee before bed at 7, do I wake her when I go to bed around 10.30/11? Then see how she goes into she wakes up about 6.30? Any experiences and advice welcome. TIA

Honestly? I did. But nighttime dryness is mainly about the production of a specific hormone. You can’t rush that.

If you decide to wake her, make sure she's fully awake, get her to walk to the toilet so she's fully aware that she's going to the loo. Lifting them and putting them on the loo whilst they are half asleep can be counterproductive and reinforce weeing whilst they are asleep.
Ideally though, if they are ready to be dry at night, they should be able to wake up themselves when they feel a full bladder and get themselves to the toilet (or a potty in the bedroom).

No we never did. Nighttime dryness is not something you can train.

DD was dry from around 2ish. It only after she could reliable go to the potty in the morning having a totally dry nappy overnight.

If you do this, don‘t stress and not show disappointment if it doesn’t work. Most GPS don’t investigate before they are 5.

Thank you. That's a good point about making sure she's fully awake. I might leave her to see how she goes. We talked about it before she went to sleep. Thing is her nappy is always wet in the morning but I don't know if it's from her weeing in it when she wakes up in the morning or not IYSWIM

Watching. I think DS (3) would also like to be out of nappies at night as he finds them itchy on the waistband and scratches himself.

I think he's nearly ready as he sometimes wakes me at night and asks to go for a wee.

We left our youngest in nappies until she was dry overnight. They may want to be out of nappies but it doesn’t mean they are producing the hormone necessary for night dryness.

As others have said it’s something you can’t train, DD is 4 and has been out of nappies at night for about a year now but DS who is 6 in November is dry some nights and not others so is still in pull ups. My eldest DD who is 11 wasn’t dry till she was nearly 6 but I tried to get her out of nappies at night too soon and all that got me was wet sheets every morning. I asked the school nurse about it and she said they won’t investigate till they are 7

Try pull ups at first, and lift before you go to bed. Sometimes a potty in their room is a good idea

I didn’t.
But I did layer the bedsheet with some mattress protector in between (so bedsheet, protector, bedsheet, mater protector etc...) so that, if there was an accident, it was just a case of taking the top bedsheet away and go back to bed.

Dc2 wasn’t dry until he was 10~11yo. The reality is that it’s about hormones. You cant rush that and waking them up doesn’t change that unfortunately.

Btw the way I looked at it was that no adult was still having some bedwetting issue (bar any specific SN/disability etc...).
Actually very few teenagers would be in that position either.
So I just let th8ngs happened as they were, trying from time to time to stop using nappies/pull ups when Dc2 seemed a bit more ready/was asking to try.
My aim was to keep it as low key as possible so that Dc2 never felt there was something wrong about it iyswim.

Definitely not something you can train and, once you do go down the path of having it investigated, number one advice from the professionals is that you DON’T lift /wake at night.

My seven year old is still soaking wet at night (the pull-up hits the bottom of the bin with a thump every morning). His almost-five year old brother has been dry at night since he was two. The hormone has kicked in for the younger, but not the older.

DS1 has been under a paediatrician (since he was six, so they do investigate from younger than seven) and tried on both of the meds they use to bring about night dryness with no change whatsoever. Our next step is an alarm which I honestly don’t think I’m going to bother with. That child robbed us of far too much sleep when he was a baby/toddler to start that all over again now. I also think that his night wetting is related to the fact that he sleeps so heavily (oh, the irony, given the multiple night-waker he once was) and the alarm would wake everyone except him.

The only things you can reasonably try is to really increase day-time fluid consumption, in case it’s an issue around bladder size- drinking lots (i.e. at least 1-1.5L per day) stretches the bladder, theoretically meaning it can hold more at night before being released. No fluids at all after 6pm, not even bedtime milk if you’re in the habit of this - if they’ve taken in the amount as above, this shouldn’t be an issue. Also, double-wee before bed - have one wee, then bath, pyjamas, stories, and try and squeeze out one more wee.

None of the above worked for my DS or his classmate with the same issue, so now it’s just a waiting game. His teacher’s son just suddenly stopped being wet at night at the age of nine, so I’m hoping it will all just sort itself out one day, now that we’ve tried most things.

Thanks everyone. I've just checked and she's wet so I've put a nappy back on. I won't worry so much now. I was kind of assuming they were supposed to be dry by the time they went to school (she is during the day)

I wouldn't wake her up, just make sure she has a wee just before bed.
My 2 year old and 3 year old are dry all night and I dont wake them to go the loo, my 3 year old still had wet pull ups at night but I just thought sod it! Let's give it a go, at the same time 2 year old aswell. Only 1 accident from 3 year old on the 3rd night. Goid luck OP.

Oh bless nevermind, it'll happen when she is ready.

My DS were both totally different. DS1 was still wearing pull ups at night a good year after he was dry in the day time. With DS2, he was dry at night roughly the same time as day time. He was never one for a full nappy when he woke though, whereas DS1 always was.

I did used to wake DS1 in the night to remind him to go. He went to bed about 7pm and we would wake him to go when we came up to bed for the night. I don't know how much if any difference it made TBH. We never needed to do it with DS2.

Dd1 was still wet at night and in pull ups until about a week before she started school (a couple months shy of turning 5). We kept her in pull ups a few weeks more in case there was a regression with starting school but she was bone dry every morning. Before that she'd wake up with a sodden nappy/pull ups every morning.

Dd2 on the other hand was dry at night as soon as we potty trained during the day at 2.5yo.

It definitely is to do with a hormone and no point stressing about it until they're a big older and still wet.

We leave the potty by our sons bed, (22months) and he just jumps out through the night for a wee and then back in to sleep, would she maybe do that ?

You need to get a wee alarm.
I used it with DS after he turned 4, they're amazing. If took 2 weeks.

If your child is dry some nights they are releasing vasopressin - if they are wet every night they MAY NOT be releasing vasopressin, but usually it is because of poor bladder capacity due to not drinking enough and leaving the child in nappies at night time. After all, if wetting the bed doesn’t result in the unpleasant consequence of waking up cold and wet why would a child want to get dry? And wearing a nappy encourages urinating in bed. If laundering is a problem then put pants under the pull ups so there is still the discomfort of being wet but the urine is contained.

I am so fed up of seeing poor and incorrect advice on here about the hormone (Vasopressin) and using this as an excuse to leave their child in night time nappies till 6, 7, 8 or even older.

Go to www.eric.org.uk which has excellent advice for all continence issues in children.

Rhinosaurus My DS has forgotten to put on his pull up on a few occasions. He sleeps blissfully through until the following morning and he/we only know about it because he and his bed stink of wee which by that time has largely dried so your theory about lack of feedback by leaving on a pull up doesn’t necessarily apply. I think heavy sleeping is a feature of ongoing night wetters - there’s certainly a theme among the case studies on the ERIC website - so if that’s a feature, as it is with mine, leaving a pull up off is simply an exercise in laundry generation for the ones who are still wet every single night past the age of about three or four.

@Rhinosaurus, I’m not sure that there has been any poor advice in here.
By any mean, ensure your child is drinking enough if that helps. But the idea that the child will get dry if they are feeling uncomfortable is rubbish tbh.

Dc2 wasn’t dry for a very long time. And even when things got better (around 10yo) he still had many many accidents. Because he was older he was waking up, changing his bed, going back to sleep. Sometimes twice in the night. So he had plenty of opportunities to ‘feel uncomfortable’ and you know what? He still didn’t get dry at night. But he did have many nights of broken sleep. And that, in itself, has other consequences on his wellbeing.

I would very careful about ANY advice that is basically saying it’s the child’s fault if they are still bedwetting. Not the least because of the effect this would have on the child on an emotional POV.

My son is 7 and still in oull us at night, although fingers crossed we can try without now... what has worked for him is no drinks after 6pm, a wee when brushing teeth and a second wee after reading, when its light out time. I have read somewhere that you shouldn't wake them to wee.... I might've been on the ERIC website? Take a look they have lots of good advice.

Pull ups! Bloody auto correct

@rhinosaurus I agree with @Elphabathegreen, we have numerous times gone without pull ups and my son has slept through the night like a log, woken up wet in the morning. He will sleep through the feeling, it doesnt seem to bother him at all.

The advice given on here about the reason children are wet at night is always the hormone is incorrect. Vasopressin concentrates the amount of urine we produce overnight, so we don’t produce as much - they can still wet if they produce the hormone but have poor bladder capacity.

If your child is still bedwetting at 10, hopefully you have taken him to the school nurse or the bladder and bowel nurse by now for intervention.

The nice guidelines state that night time wetting should be considered an issue after age 5, the lines of treatment go: bladder training / alarm / desmopressin / oxybutinin. Eric advice follows the nice guidelines. Eric advises not wearing pull ups to bed but waterproofing the bed.