to put my toddler back into nappies at night

[BuskersCat]

She is 3.5 and been dry for several months now with only a few accidents, but the last week she has had 3 almost in a row. Waking up in the early hours, cleaning up piss then having to wash anddry sheets in a day is reaally starting to annoy me. I've told her any more accidents at night and she is in nappies again. She doesn't want to because she isn't a baby.

Yanbu. No ones going to get any sleep other wise,

Worth trying to get to the root of the problem though. Is she drinking too much after say 6 or is she not very well it has something upset her ?

Night time is not the time to be dealing with accidents so go ahead and put her back in pyjama pants or something.

If she has had a decent period of dry in the night then I wouldn't go back to nappies. I would look at how much she is drinking later in the day and treat this last week as a blip.

If however she has been dry for a while in the day but only sporadically at night, I would say she is not quite ready for the night time bit. In that case I would use the pull ups or "big boy night time pants" as my ds used to call them. He was dry in the day for about a year until his night time bladder control caught up. I would not use the word nappy though or use it as a threat.

I'm not sure "threatening" her with nappies is the best way to deal with it.

I've never reduced her drink, and she regularly wakes in the night to have a drink (as do I) I cant imagine anything worse than been made to go 6pm-7am without a drink. She has been day time dry for about 7 months or so, before her 3rd birthday. She doesn't seem upset at anything though or ill.

She has had maybe a handful of accidents in the last few months

My 3.5 year old has been dry of a day for over a year, but we cant seem to master the nights. I found these pad types things in asda, bit like a sanitary towel for toddlers which just sit in their underwear. I haven't used them yet as waiting for my supply of night pants to run out, but they may be a short term solution for your LO to get her back into the swing of things?

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Booo didn't work.

Buskers,

Night time dryness is not within a child's conscious control UNLESS she is waking up but choosing to wet her bed rather than get out and go to the toilet (this is possible if e.g. she has become scared of the dark, monsters under the bed etc).

If you can exclude the latter possibility (does she get out of bed to go to the toilet on other night perfectly OK? Does she talk about the dark or about monsters? Does she have a decent night light and is the route to the toilet well-lit? Might she prefer a potty next to her bed for a few nights?) then there is no way that threatening her with nappies will help.

An awake child can choose to go to the toilet, so wetting themselves is at least to a degree a conscious choice. An asleep one cannot, so 'punishment' for a wet bed cannot work - and is probably counterproductive as we all know how being nervous makes us MORE likely to need the toilet.

Keep an eye on fluid intake overall (don't limit it, but see if she has been drinking more than normal). Does her wee smell at all, as it could be a minor urinary tract infection? Is she absolutely well in herself - DD, my non-bedwetter, used to wet every time she was brewing a cold but at no other times? Has there been a change in her life e.g. holiday, about to start new nursery etc - as i said above, nerves affect bladders. Has she recently had a massiv growth spurt?

DS was dry in the day at 2.5. And dry at night round about his 9th birthday - the two are not connected, because one is a conscious and one an unconscious process. I changed beds several nights a week for most of those intervening years, because his issue was a lack of a hormone, so he produced as much urine during the night as during the day, which is enough to soak through any nappy / night pants available in 10+ hours asleep.

This is a short-term phase for your DD. Getting cross is wholly counterproductive. Investigate possible causes calmly, do not threaten or punish, and it will almost certainly pass. If it doesn't, it's worth a quick trip to the dr to rule out an infection, then you and your dd together can decide whether she would prefer to use nappies for a short while to help her to sleep better 'until her insides grow up a bit more'.

I'm not sure but she has been fine going to the toilet in the night, and in the very early hours of the morning before its just been the last week or 2 that it's been an issue.

She is going to a new pre-school on Tuesday but she is really excited (she knows several children there already) so cant see why that would make her wet the bed?

Her wee doesn't smell bad, just like wee.

UANBU. DD was dry at night 2-3 months (2.9 years) after being dry during the day. She decided she didn't want pull ups and gets up to wee on the potty during the night.
On holiday she wet the bed a couple of nights on the trot and got very upset with herself (we think she was so exhausted she just didn't wake for a wee). We asked if she would like to have pull ups for a little while as waking up cold and wet isn't nice. Se agreed but after 3-4 nights of being dry again she told me she didn't need them anymore and that was the end of that,

I know it's difficult but don't make a big thing about her wetting the bed, have a little talk with her a ask if, for her own comfort, would she like a pull up for a couple of nights ? She will feel better about it then and you can stop them again when she feels ready.

If she's been fine getting up in the night BUT she hasn't been getting up AT ALL recently then that may well indicate a problem with not wanting to get out of bed (IME, night fears were often linked to changes in other aspects of life, even if in the daytime those changes are something that the child is positive about).

Check night lights, landing lights etc, offer her a torch (we have a great one that roars like a donosaur, relally good for scaring away the onsters under the bed). Dream catcher may be good if she complains about 'scary thoughts', soft toy to keep guard under her bed...

OK, to us it's not logical, but I did find that when in the daytime things were 'changing' in some way then that very active 'mental work' seemed to carry on into the night and could manifest itself in terms of night fears / dreams / being scared of something that they were previously OK with (when DS taught himself to read and could access unknown books, we had a long series of night wakings linked to 'pictures in my mind about the books').

YABU to say that to your child.

She won't be doing it on purpose, waking up covered in cold urine isn't something a child chooses to do.

My ds aged 6 is still in pull ups, apart from a few weeks in a row he has never been reliably dry.

It's no issue here, if he gets sad (as he does sometimes) we gently remind him how awful it is to be tired and frumpy in the day because you've been up soaking wet a couple of times a night, and that he will get there one day.

There are loads of designs now, let her choose some herself and just try not to mention it to her.