My son is suddenly dry at night - no help from me.

[tigermoth]

For the last four weeks my just turned 4 year old has worn no nappy at night with only a couple of accidents. I realised his nappies were mostly dry in the morning so decided to leave them off. I have done nothing else, no lifting onto the loo late at night or limiting his drinking. He is not exactly early on the dry-at-night front, but at least got there under his own steam in the end. I just wondered if any other parents have done similar with the same result?

Well done your ds ! Our ds did the same. At almost 4 he decided that he would not wear a nappy and be dry at night , and he was ! Definitely worth waiting so as to avoid all the associated hassles. We'd already learnt the hard way from the problems of trying to get him dry in the day.

The few accidents we have had in past 18 months have been when we have been away from home and in his half awake state he hasn't made it in time.

This happened to my 4 year old ds a couple of months ago. Same thing, and he's been dry ever since. It's great isn't it?!

Well done that man! I was going to post something similar - ds is 3.4 and had still been insisting on having a nappy on for poos (no problem with weeing in the toilet). We'd been very patient with him, but had been saying over and over that his older cousins (5 & 6) didn't use nappies anymore, and as we were shortly to be going on holiday with them, I was hoping he would pick up on this, and we also resorted to saying on holiday that after the holiday all the nappies would have run out. This all seemed to have done the trick as on our return, we have managed to ditch the nappies for poos altogether!

So - I thought it would be a backward step to go back to putting a nappy on him at night (I'd been noticing a lot of dry ones in the morning anyway), he would use the nappies instead of the toilet for poos again, so I bit the bullet - after a couple of accidents he's cracked it and I am so very pleased to be living in a nappy-free house at long last!

Yep- ds1 who as you know is also 4 (last May) and is totally non-toilet trained has been dry at night for ages. Unless he wakes up when he then wees everywhere. Congratulations! You've reminded me I need to order some bedwetting pants (for the times he does wake up).

Congratulations to all these dry boys!

no - 5 and still wet altho 2 year old brother dry at night!

Coddy, don't feel too bad, I still have an 11 year old, a 6 year old and a 2 1/2 year old who are soaking at night still!

When my ds was approaching 4 and had been dry during the day since about 2 1/2 his nightime nappy was still completely soaking every morning.

I decided he showed no sign of ever having a dry morning nappy so sat him down sometime around his fourth birthday and explained to him he was not going to get a nappy at night . He was dry from the first night of this, with just the occasional accident for the first couple of months.

It is worth a try if you are having no dry morning nappies.

jasper, I've always found it funny when I reasoned with my sons about nappy wearing - they seemed part baby, part child all at the same time. I don't think the baby or toddler phase ends all in one go anyway - one phase gradually gives way to the next. I think many apparently normal adults still have that inner toddler in them alive and kicking. Hope dh never reads this (he is dry at night)

I somehow didn't think I'd be the only one with a suddenly dry 4 year old. LIZS, jodee, jimjams, it's good isn't it? Lou, I've read on other threads that your children can be wet at night. Your dry 4 year old hasn't copied them obviously - just being his own self about this.

Perhaps the average 4 year old's bladder is simply big enough to let a child stay dry for a night, so it's not a conscious decision really?

If someone could invent a bladder measuring device and work out what size a child's bladder had to be for dry nights, could we then all predict when to stop buying nappies?

Tigermoth, I wonder if it is a girl/boy thing too? My oldest 2 are girls and still wet every night. Youngest is a boy but has cerebral palsy, so there are other things for him that are more important than bedwetting , although he is only 2 1/2.

The doc who sees my oldest says in some children it just takes a while for the bladder to mature, and the signals to be strong enough to recognise that it is full. She has a 1 in 7 chnace of being dry this year, but nothing so far. They say there is nothing physically wrong, and none of the drugs they prescribe work, so we just have to keep waiting.

My dh tells me that male bladders are bigger anyway because they don't to make room for a womb and all that other paraphanalia, so perhaps there is a difference in how boys and girls become dry at night.

I have had a girl and a boy who had problems at night, and a girl and a boy who became dry just like that!

It isn't just the bladder size - it's this blasted hormone which is supposed to drastically reduce kidney function at night - if it doesn't start being produced automatically, then the bladder goes on filling up at the same rate as it does during the day. I think it's the pituitary which is responsible. Anyway that's what the pills (Desmopressin etc) do - mimic the hormone - but even they don't work if the child has small functional capacity, or if the child wakes during the night, as the brain then over-rides the synthetic hormone when the child goes back to sleep, apparently.

(I could write a book! )

Very good article here which includes the paragraph below which sums it all up v nicely (DS1 has all 3 problems!)

Though we may be some time away from the 'bed-wetting gene', research has established the physical reasons for 99 per cent of bed-wetting. The most common is insufficient production of vasopressin, a hormone that reduces urine production at night. The second cause, responsible for about 30 per cent of cases, is bladder instability, which makes the bladder empty itself before it is full. (Children with this usually urinate frequently and in small volumes through the day). The third factor, which does not cause bed-wetting alone, but is present in most cases, is lack of arousability. The sensation of a full bladder is not enough to wake the child.

Again I thought my ds1 had cracked it himself. 3 5mths and since coming back from Scotland and we 'ran' out of nappies has been dry. My friend whose daughter is exactly the same age did the same with the same result. What cleaver kiddies we all have!! Although I still have a care mat on....just incase

The only problem with ds1 I have now is that he insists on waking me up to tell me he is going to the toilet!

Tigermoth - this happened for us too for ds1, but he was almost 5. DS2 is nearly 4.5 and I'm still waiting. Have tried all sorts, but justs results in endless laundry - so now I'm just going to be patient and wait.

I never realised the causes of bedwetting were so complicated. I read that article janh, and really felt for the woman who had wet the bed till she was 17 years and now had an 11 and 13 year old who were frequent bedwetters.

DD1 had wet pull-ups every night till she was 4y 9m then announced she would stop wearing them and has been dry ever since. DD2 (3y 7m) has had various successful periods with and without pull-ups over the last 4m then had a run of 9 dry pull-ups, stopped wearing them, 2 wet nights and has announced she'll wear pull-ups till she's five!! Don't blame her.

tigermoth, obviously it's a tiny minority who are affected like this but yes, for them it is awful. DS1 went through the juniors refusing invitations to sleepovers and eventually stopped being invited - never joined cubs because he wouldn't have been able to go to camp etc. As developmental delays go, it's really not a major one, but awkward to live with. (I do wonder if DS1 will be taking these pills for the rest of his life - when he was younger, like lou's daughter, they just didn't work - now they work like magic, but if he stops taking them (we have tried this at intervals) he slips back. I don't know if there are any long-term implications...)

And you sometimes read things saying it's all down to stress or psychological disturbance, which must be very upsetting for people who haven't researched it or asked for help and got information that way.

But for most children it is just a case of either waiting until their bladders hold a bit more so they can last all night, or they learn to recognise the signal while they're asleep so they can wake up and go to the loo, so not all bad news!

Another interesting article on bedwetting in the New Scientist .

Has anybody any suggestions what to do about nappies? My 3yo is mostly a stomach sleeper, and by morning often his nappy has leaked because it is so full, yet the back part is still bone dry.

Put them on him back to front?

I have 2 ds, the eldest is 5.6 and still wil not go without a nappy, he goes to friends for sleepovers, but most of his class seem to still be wearing them too so hasn't been an issue. We had decided to try this summer holidays to go without, but there never seemed to be a good time, what with camping with his dad and then going on holiday. This issue doesn't seem to affect him at all, and he sleeps so soundly i think he'd never wake up to go! ds2 is just 2 and is trained during the day, but like ds1 he too is a stomach sleeper, and this does seem to create more problems, don't know if there is more pressure on certain parts making them wee more. Maybe coz they are MALE and lazy it could take a lot longer. Have decided lifes too short to worry about it.

Could you all get your dry at night kids to talk to my 3.8 yr old??? Still no sign of any dry pull ups overnight, although he's been trained for a year during the day now..

what's the view on Pull Up nappies vs. 'Pyjama Pants' - do the latter really just mop up little leaks? He's getting a bit big for pull ups.

Mine is 5 and hopeless.

Mo2, are Pyjama Pants what used to be called Dry-Nites? If so then we always found them absorbent enough and they go up to quite large sizes (though of course I hope you won't be needing them for long!)