To ask about bed wetting (5YO DD)?

[Namechxnge]

My daughter still wets the bed most night. She has peen potting trained in the day since just after she was 2.

The past week, we have been stopping food/drunk at 4pm and then she will go to bed at 8pm, using the toilet beforehand.

She has wet the bed most night. But she will wake up right after she wees.

Tonight for example, I checked her bed around 12.15am and it was dry, then she woke up at 1.30am saying it was wet. Is there anyway I can help her wake up instead of sleeping through it?

It's something we tried every summer, when I could deal with the extra washing. Ended up trying the alarm after being dry every other night and DD was dry within 2 weeks and has been ever since.

This was when she was 6.

She either has the hormone that prevents sleep weeing or she doesn't yet have it.

It's that simple.

Another vote for the pull-ups here.

Don’t get nappies though. I know they’re cheaper and often work better but they have a baby vibe.

I got DD some Pampers by accident when I ran out of her usual pants and thought I was ordering Pampers pants because the usual night pants were unavailable.

She was horrified.

Ninjamas are new pull up pants for bed that she might like to try

She needs to produce a hormone that wakes her up when she needs a wee.

You can train or teach and restricting fluids is just cruel.

GP won't be concerned till about age 7/8.

My first child was dry during the day at 2.5 but not at night till age 6.

Another one agreeing just purchase the night time pull up pants.

DS was fine in the day, but we still had episodes of bed wetting till he was about 5and a half.

He had Spiderman ones, he didn't mind them.

While boys tend to be dry at night later than girls so not a direct comparison, my youngest ds is still in nighttime pull ups at 6 and my eldest wasn't dry at night until 6 1/2. The eldest is 12 now and once whatever it was (hormones or age) clicked he hasn't wet the bed since. Both were potty trained at the normal time.

So I wouldn't worry too much, just encourage her to go to the loo before bed and not to drink too much close to bedtime.

I used the alarm on my daughter aged 6/7 and it worked for us and have never looked back. You have to stick with it but definitely got results. I slept in her room for a couple of weeks to help her when it went off.

My son was still in pull ups at 5. He's now 6 and not in them anymore. I just took them away every so often to see how he got on and my partner took him for a wee at 10/11pm when we went to bed ourselves. I never restricted his water he goes to bed with a cup of water always. Now we don't even bother with taking him for a wee and he just doesn't wet the bed. Try not to worry too much.

I remember giving up at one point because I was just washing his bedding every day and decided to get the pull ups back. A few months later we tried again and he wet the bed maybe twice a week, but because there was dry nights in between I decided never to put the pull ups back on and he progressed from there.

I have also heard that the gp/health visitor don't consider it a problem until a child is 7

My DD was exactly the same but her brother was dry at night from 3yo! DD took until she was 7. In her case I took her to the doctor at 5yo after good research on ERIC website (which is excellent), Dr said come back if she's still doing it at 7... By the time we were due she was (finally) reliably dry at night so we never went back.

In the meantime, to manage it I would wake her and take her for a wee before I went to bed myself, she never wet the bed if I did that.
In her case I think it was likely a combination of hormones but also my DD is a very deep sleeper, a marching band parade wouldn't wake her, so I think it was partly that too.
It does run in families though, so if your sister was similar, just manage it and wait. She'll get there in the end, the vast majority do.

My 5 (almost 6yo) is also still not dry overnight.

Not much you can do until they develop the hormone and limiting fluids won't help. I was also advised against lifting them to the toilet half asleep as they need to learn to wake themselves.

There is a bed wetting alarm you can get which may work if they've developed the hormone but still not getting up to use the toilet. We haven't got one yet as I don't think it would make any difference to my son (he rarely wakes when wet as is a very deep sleeper) but they do seem to work for some children.

I wet the bed til I was about 11. It was horrendous. Nothing worked for me.

They tried that alarm with me an jesus christ it scared the shit out of me, first night I woke in a blind panic crying, I couldn't figure out how to make the alarm stop because I was half asleep, I woke the house up, they were frustrated to be woken that way too, it was horrible. No child needs to be woken at night startled.

I know someone who is having this trouble with their child who is 4. Lecturing them every time it happens and making them pinkie promise they wont do it again which I think is awful.

Please don’t worry, I have a daughter who wasn’t dry at night until just before her 7th birthday. Absolutely no problems in the day time and is bright with no additional needs, aged 5 I asked the health visitor and said they wouldn’t even look at it until she was 7. They are all individuals, was in her it was ‘pyjama pants’ every night then it was like a switch went off and it never happened again. Other dd was dry at night from 2 but more prone to accidents during the day. No problems with either now and are happy and well adjusted. If she’s happy to wear pull ups don’t make your or her life harder by restricting fluids of waking her in the night, it will stop when it stops.

I know eric etc dont go for it but ive lifted both mine for a wee at 10pm from age 3, and found that doing so meant we could ditch pull ups and they gradually over a few months just went dry (peed less and less often at 10pm and were dry til morning) over a few months.

I really do believe sleeping in pull ups or nappies makes kids "switch off" to their bodies signals. Both mine also admitted when wearing them, to weeing in them at night rather than get out of bed to go to the loo!

I thought i did read on another thread on here recently that some recent research had suggested going without pull ups for a few weeks was linked to developing night dryness or something, im going to try and find the link

In my daughter’s case without pants she would sleep through and only realise in the morning after she’d been asleep all night in it, which is awful for their skin.

Just to say that we listened for too long to people telling us ds just wasn't yet producing the right hormone. Sometimes their brain needs a little help to switch it on. We used a bed wetting alarm. We were able to put him in pull ups over his normal pants and clip a wire to them, so no wet sheets (hee wasn't waking up even when his sheets were sodden). He was dry within a week and hasn't wet the bed since. He was about 7 and is now 12.

She not ready yet, she isn’t producing the hormone that stops urine production at night.
I wet the bed until I was fourteen, I just didn’t wake up, fluids were with held after 5pm, I still woke up with wet sheets, mum would wake me up when she went to bed..didn’t help, then at fourteen it stopped..just like that.
Dont restrict her fluid intake, put pull-ups on her, use a mattress cover, use a protector over the bottom sheet, it wicks away the moisture away.

Bed wetting alarms didn’t help me either.
Your last paragraph is so sad. They are punishing her for something she can’t control. Poor child.

I wish when I was younger it had been known it was a hormone problem. I was on anti depressants for years until my bed wetting stopped around age 12. It was a miserable time. Thankfully now there are nightime pants and disposable pads for beds etc. My poor mum only had a twin tub back then so laundry was only done once a week!

I know waking in the night isn't always considered helpful however the less fluid in the bladder the less likely a big puddle in the night.

More fluid in the bladder can help
in the long run as it stretches it.

Also dehydration means more concentrated urine which can lead to irritated bladder, more UTIs and an increased likelihood of accidents.

Can you or her other parent wake her up once or twice a night to take her for a wee and then settle her back into bed? Then her bladder won’t be so full that an accident happens.

I think 5 is too young to be worrying about it.

My ds1 was dry at night from age 3.5. We did absolutely nothing to encourage it, but he kept waking up with dry pull ups so we took them away. My ds2 is nearly 5 and still in pull ups at night time which are usually pretty full by morning. Just shows that children are all different and the hormone kicks in later with some than others. If he gets to 6/7 and still needing them I'll revisit it but I'm not wanting to be changing wet bedding constantly, which is what I think would happen if I tried to do something now.