2nd dry night for ds 7.4. Is this it?!

[Whereisegg]

Ds has had very few dry nights in his life, and even fewer of these have been in a row.

At 5 he had his HUGE (surgeon said biggest he'd seen) tonsils and adenoids removed due to sleep apnea.
Dr had mentioned that his brain was so concerned about keeping him breathing, it didn't care if he wee'd but that this would likely resolve itself after surgery.
It did, for 3 nights.

Fast forward a couple of years solid of brick-heavy pants every morning (and occasional wet beds too despite pants), we are on our second morning in a row of bone dry pants.

I don't want to be too outwardly excited at home in front of ds as he can't control it, so I want to be excited here please!

Could this be it, or just a lucky streak?

DS was wet when I went to bed at 11 last night. Weird that one because he hasn't been wet at that time for ages. Kicking myself because I decided I couldn't be bothered to double layer the sheets when I made it yesterday. Doh!

Double arse

Double arse, indeed.

The washing line is full.

I'm at my desk. Intravenous coffee line is in. Not hugely looking forward to teaching today.

Filled DS up with water at breakfast, and will do likewise after school. He had had a mahoosive drink when he got home from Beavers, which certainly won't have helped - but after 90 minutes on his Fitness Challenge, I could hardly say, "no drink for you, DS".

Dry night number 24 here.
Hoping you both had good nights...

Wet night 14 (-2) here.

Another late-night alarm call. Poor DS: he really did not want to get up. He was trying to dehydrate himself yesterday, too. I realised when the whiff told me that he'd tried to pass a concrete poo. We're focusing on double-checking that he's properly hydrated today, and not necessarily believing him when he says that he's had a drink. My poor boy.

Your poor boy

No luck again. But he did have two massive drinks at 6pm which is an hour later than he normally last drinks.

I'm not too disheartened by it because I kind of expected it thanks to the nurse. We are going to refocus on proper drinking and not rushing to the toilet every 30 minutes.

It's so hard in this heat to get the fluid management right. We just can't deny them a drink when they clearly need one, can we. We're trying to up massively the amount he has earlier in the day - which is a tad tricky when he's at school. Still: at least the washing dries speedily.

Another grim night here. He wouldn't settle again last night, and wasn't quiet until nearly ten. He's so jumpy. While he was faffing his alarm went - and kept going. DH thinks it may have damp inside it, so we're trying to dry it out. So he was wet this morning, woke up horribly early because of it, and without having had any waking trigger at all. A lost night, really. I'm pooped, too.

Bloody hell, that is just rubbish

Wet again. Bloody alarm didn't go off, so I woke up, very excited, at half five, wondering whether he'd had a good 'un. Need to check the alarm again; DH thought that he had fixed it after Friday's problems.

We're resorting to bribery to get him to stay in bed in the evenings and to go to sleep, and he did have a much better evening yesterday.

Oh lemon, this is just heartbreaking, I don't know what to say

Changed Mr WetStop's batteries, and he's back to shrieking again. Had our first alarm about 10 minutes ago. Believe it or not, this is something of a relief, as it means that he was well and truly asleep, when recently he hadn't been settling at all until nearly 10. He'll never be dry if he's not sleeping enough, so this, bizarrely, was quite a good sign. Not looking forward to the inevitable stupid o'clock one, though.

His poor duvet was on him for five minutes over two hours before it found itself back on yet another rinse cycle. Bloody dizzy, it must be.

You're right, he really needs sleep, it's a pity he was dry the night he forced himself to stay awake really as I guess that is sticking in his brain.

Long may the sunshine continue

I'm really hoping that the lovely weekend that we have had has helped him to break the wakeful cycle. That, and out and out bribery for staying in bed!

He woke up early this morning and went straight to the loo. I assumed that it was simply because he was ready to get up - but he went back to bed and fell asleep again at 06:30! Which, I guess, is brilliant. I would not have been impressed by a second bed change at that time of morning.

Have a sunny day, everyone.

28 dry nights here.
I feel guilty!

Hope you both had good nights

Don't feel guilty! One of us needs to be keeping spirits up.

Alarm at 11:00 yesterday; he didn't take as long to wake this time. He then went through the night dry until he woke up at just after seven. So this was good news, of sorts, as he clearly wakes when he's in a shallow sleep, but we still need to nail the deep sleep. Poor boy didn't remember the night change or the pyjama switch, and thought that he'd gone through. Hopefully that will happen sooner rather than later; I'm not sure how much longer I can cope with the tiredness.

I agree with the advice that you can't 'train' them at night but it is worth taking the pull-ups away every now and then for a trail period. Dd1 has been daytime trained since 2.7 but was still wearing pull-ups at night (very rarely dry in the morning more this year than the others) at 5.9. I last took them away last summer with no success but this year, we have so far had 3 dry nights out of 4 (woo hoo).

I feel my DD had maybe become trained/conditioned (not the case for all DC I know) about the fact that she could wee in her nappy, now she is older there does seem more awareness about taking herself to the loo (since I took the nappies away) and I am hoping we are done with buying pull-ups. Touching wood!

So could be worth a try without them for a while but don't force the issue. Good luck to everyone else.

It's not just advice that they can't be trained. It's medical fact, as it's hormonal. Like many people, I was convinced that we had trained our DD to be dry at night - until DS came along. If they're dry, it's because they are ready to be, and it's NORMAL for this not to happen in a child under about 7. The fact that it happens around the time that we have a go without pull-ups means simply that they were ready. Here we're sharing advice from HCPs and Eric on helping our older children.

Hello All, I've been reading this thread for a while - so interesting to hear your stories!

I have a 5 1/2 year old son who has never had a dry night. I spoke to the School Nurse about it, thinking she would tell me to go away and come back when he is older, but she has given us a lot of information and set us on the task of testing his bladder capacity. For two weeks now we've been measuring a wee a day, the most he has ever done is 100ml and the least 50ml (he was really desperate that time as well!)

So I think the issue for him is bladder capacity, as I found somewhere on the internet that his bladder capacity should be around 200ml. And his wee does seem darker in the morning suggesting that he is producing vasopressin.

Has anyone else had a child with this issue and did drinking more help? The advice we've been given is to get him to drink 1 litre a day. I think we are just about achieving this with a lot of effort and resorting to cartons of drink rather than glasses of water.

Also, he seems incapable of making himself do a wee - he can only do one when desperate. We always get him to have a try at bedtime and he stands there saying "I don't know how to get the wee to come out". I really feel sorry for him, and think that might be part of the problem with the small daytime wees - he just releases and lets go the bulk of the wee but doesn't understand how to squeeze the last bits out. Have any of you had this with your children and any ideas?

I hope someone might be able to help, although I think a lot of you seem to have really heavy sleepers which I guess is a different problem. Our elder son was a heavy sleeper and eventually dry at 7 1/2, but I had more hope with him because he had occasional dry nights from 4, whereas our younger son has never had a dry night.

Hi shiny, it's great you have found the school nurse so helpful!

I don't have any experience of this but a few things I thought while reading your post were....

Perhaps try food coloring in water if you wanted to ease off on the cartons.

A ping pong ball in the loo to aim at and try to 'sink' to encourage him to pee more often.

Perhaps reading him a story whilst he sits on the loo to get him to stay there.

Maybe try rocking backwards and forwards slowly while sitting to pee to try and fully empty the bladder (this is advised to pregnant women to try and cut down on frequent tiny wees).

I think that being able to hold til he's desperate is actually a good thing, shows great bladder control, but I can see why you think it's an issue.
Hmm, maybe try pee for 3 seconds, stop for 3, pee for 3, to get him confident in stopping and starting?

Thanks Whereisegg. I particularly like your idea of 3 second wees and breaks - we'll try that one first!

Hi baby, we have discussed 'lifting' on this thread as you may have seen.
It is generally discouraged as they are actually being encouraged to pee whilst still asleep, and if you take them at the same time every night you can almost train them to go at that time iyswim?

Have you tried all the other tips?
No blackcurrant or other dark drinks, encourage them to wait a few minutes when they need to pee in the day to stretch the bladder?

If they have all failed then I think you have 3 options.

1- wait but don't lift anymore.

2- see the dr/school nurse with a view to using an alarm or meds.

3- buy an alarm yourself.

Good luck