nearly 5 and still wet at night and damp during the day

[Pengimum]

help my lovely DD1 will be 6 in january and still needs pull ups at night, she also eduringthe day, alhough not huge accidents, more that her knickers are damp and smell quite horrid. I do have her checked periodically for urine infections and nothing ever comes up! My GP tells me not to wo rry thatshe will probably grow out of it etc my current concern is that DD2 , who is 3, is completely dry at night, she evens gets up and uses the loo if she needs to,.she is also in pull ups but does not need them. I would likd to get rid o fthe pull ups for the little one but i am worried how that might effect DD1's self esteem! should i just go ahead and get rid of the pull upsfor the little one or keep her in them.DD1 shows no signs if improvement...i dont let her drink after 5.30 i lift her at 10.30 when i go tho bed and get her to have a wee, often she had already soaked her pull ups....:(

Oh, I sympathise. My DS was 6 in May and we've only taken him out of his nighttime pullups since a week or so after his birthday. Up till then he'd never once woken up dry. We use a bedmat every night and for the first couple of months it was more or less 50/50 - he'd have a run of maybe 5 dry nights, then four wet ones. To be honest though, I was pleasantly surprised with this - I thought he'd be wet every night! He is still learning now, and it seems to be a very very gradual process. I actually didn't think he could actively "learn" to stay dry himself and that we just had to wait for his body to be ready, but now I think it's kind of a mixture of both. He's doing great now and only wets maybe once every two or three weeks. But it is a very very slow process and if we'd tried it 2 years ago we would have given up and put him back into pullups almost straight away, I think!

Your DD's self-esteem will only be affected by her sister ditching the pullups IF YOU LET IT! Sorry to shout, but there is absolutely no need for her to feel bad in any way about her sister "leapfrogging" her. This is exactly what happened with us - DD (now 4) has been totally dry at night since Feb 2010, when she was little more than 2.5 (I was gobsmacked as I wasn't expecting it at all!! ). But we always just said to DS that he was still in pullups as he was a heavy sleeper (true) and that his body would be dry at night when it was ready. It was honestly never an issue - though I concede that it might be a little bit more delicate as yours are both DDs.

okay

first of all day time and night time dryness are two separate issues

night time dryness comes when the child's maturing body starts producing a hormone that concentrates urine production at night;this can occur from very young, as in DD2 and is not considered a medical issue til age 7 in England; the child has no control over when the hormone starts to be produced.

Things you can do to help in the meantime:

increase daytime fluid intake (milk/water best, avoid red/brown drinks as they can irritate the bladder) - the point is to stretch the bladder volume and thus increase holding capacity and don't withhold drinks after tea time

make sure she's not constipated - this can press on the bladder and cause leaks and wettings

wee/teeth/wee at bedtime (double-voiding)

avoid lifting at night, this reinforces weeing-asleep and is not recommended

wrt daytime wetting/leaking:

you have ruled out UTI, so look at constipation and ask GP about thrush

again, increasing fluid intake will improve bladder holding capacity. you might need to get school onside to encourage her to drink more during the school day. a sports-type bottle for swigging as you leave school each day?

good luck

oh, and shower/bath in mornings for social reasons, we all remember going to school with the smellie child

Have a look on ERIC website. Cant do a link as im on my phone. Fab organisation who will give you loads of advice.

gawd yy eric

here

good call, cosy

My DS is 6.5YO and he is still wet at night. He is aware of it now and seems disappointed with his wet pull ups.

He sleeps through a wet bed if you know what I mean? When we've tried for a few weeks to work through it I'd find him sound asleep in a soaking wet bed!

Really good post 53180 - I'm thinking of having another go using the bed pads now after reading this.

We went to the Dr and he said he could give him nose drops but they wont actually 'train' him they would just prevent him producing urine. I declined because they wont actually help unless he was going to a sleep over and he is a bit young for those.

Thanks 5318 they are so informative.
Really helped when ds went through bad constipation issues.

Can I ask what sort of pull ups your DC use? DD was 5 in June and is still wetting heavily at night. She goes to the toilet right before bed, but has normally peed in her sleep within a couple of hours. We use tesco own-brand pull ups, but she's almost getting too big for them. The dry nites ones seem so expensive.

Pengimum, we have the same thing with the slightly whiffy pants through the day!

No advice sorry but good to know it isn't just us! DS will be 6 after xmas and still wet every night. We are using biggest size nappies because pull ups are just so expensive! He doesn't care at all, so hopefully it's something that will sort itself out.

dear all ta so much 4 all your advice will give it a try, in response to PricklyThistle we use Huggies Pull Ups for girls grim Dinsey Princess branded nonsense but they go up to big sizes and have a pattern on the front which fades if the child has wet them. not too expensive and are currently on special offerin sainsburys. xxx

Just wondering if anyone thinks the big nappies and pull-ups are making the problem woarse ?
These are a pretty modern invention and do just seem to be a money-making rip-off.

Don't restrict drinks as this can actually make a child wet the bed more. DD3 was under the enuresis clinic and I was told to let her drink right up to bedtime. Restricting drinks apparently affects the hormones that kicking at night to stop bedwetting.

Rosemary - both DC used cloth nappies, and if I'd known that this would go on as long, I would have kept DD in them (thinking she might feel the wet etc). However older DS was dry at 3+ night and day within a week, and I guess I thought that a girl would be dry quicker than a boy. So when she got toilet training in the day, I ditched the real nappies and went on to pull-ups thinking it would be short term. Wrong! Don't actually know if they do real nappies in a size big enough for a sturdy 5 yr old.
I have tried no nappy at all, and believe me, she's not able to go more than a couple of hours in sleep without wetting. And she sleeps on in a soaking bed without waking up. Do you have an alternative suggestion to pull ups then?

My dd is nearly 7 and is still a bit damp in the day at times although she is usually dry at night. She has only been dry at night since about 3 weeks after her younger brother stopped wearing nappies at night. It was just the incentive she needed to go for it, for the first three or four nights she was wet every few hours but she really didn't want to go back in to pull ups, suddenly she got it after five or six nights. Neither of them are regularly dry in the day which bothers me a bit but my dh tells me not to worry about it and every dr/nurse/hv I have ever mentioned it to tells me not to worry, so I'm trying not to. (have been checked for urine infections and clear)

Thanks for the info on ERIC - never even imagined that this would exist!

I don't want to hijack your thread Pengimum but I have similar problems with my dd so hope those advising you might have ideas for me too...please??

My dd is 6 now and we have only just started to try nights without a pull-up. Been doing it for about 4 weeks - about 50/50 success rate I think which is better than I expected as her pull-up was wet every night. So I'm really pleased with her!
But, my biggest concern is the daytime...she still regularly has wet and poo accidents...and she is not in the least bit bothered and tells no-one when she is wet or pooey, even when she's at school, and will deny it even when it is obvious. She occasionally thinks to take herself to the toilet, but usually has accidents unless she is told to go on a regular basis (at school and at home) and will frequently argue about going to the toilet even when we can see she is desperate.

We have used all of the reward systems under the sun, been supported by our health visitor team, seen the GP regularly and been under the enuresis team and there has been some improvement. But it's been 4 years of potty training now and I'm fed up with it!

It is behavioural because she can do it sometimes and has had times when she has been brilliant for a run of days but she invariably regresses just as I think she's cracked it. I try so hard to work out what her barriers are with it all and remain positive with her, but I also get so frustrated I really struggle with it sometimes. The support we've had has been useful but has stopped each time she starts to improve and it's still very adult led if you know what I mean. I would have thought we should be aiming for her to be independent and managing her own toiletting, given her age, but this is something we can't seem to achieve with any consistency. I am at a loss with it.