4yr old not dry at night - should we be worrying?

[Empress]

I've read/heard that before the age of 7, there's nothing actually 'wrong' as such with a child who wets at night without waking, but the vast majority of children, as far as I can see here & from people I know, are dry at night by 4.5, our daughter's age. She wears trainer pants (they call them 'pyjama pants' now, & they go up to AGE 15!!! but I guess it's in Huggies interest to make out like it's normal till as late as possible, but that's another issue!). The pants are always sodden wet in the mornings, without fail, but she asked if she cd wear knickers now, so we tried it one night during half term, & she wet the bed twice, poor little thing, she was cold, wet, uncomfortable & deflated after thinking she could do it now she's 'big'. We didn't try a second night, there didn't seem any point & I don't want to dent her confidence any further. Should we have persevered longer? Or is she really just not ready? Shall we try again at, say, Easter, even if the pants are still wet in the mornings?

She doesn't sound ready. It may be worth getting her wee checked just to make sure there's no slight infection (unlikely but worth ruling out). Also I head a while ago about some tablet (!) or something you sniff (???) that the child takes for a few days and then is dry at night (honestly- I thought it was a hoax but apparently not). Perhaps worth asking the HV?

Empress, sorry if this is obvious but have you tried limiting her fluid intake before bed and making sure she does a wee immediately before bedtime? If so you could maybe try lifting her at 11pm or so too, it definitely helped us.

My ds (5 in June) is still wet at night. They say wait until you get a few dry nappies before trying them without. Well his were always sodden. Nevertheless, we tried doing without last summer, but gave up after a few weeks of wet beds with no sign of progress.

I've heard there's a hormone that you produce that suppresses urine production at night, and that if a child isn't producing enough of it then they wet. Eventually they will grow out of it. I think it's this hormone (or a synthetic version of it) that's in these sprays that Jimjams mentions. But I don't think they are meant for long term use - just prescribed if child is going on a school trip away from home or something to avoid embarrassment.

Now my ds's in pull-ups. (He's too small for the dry-nites.) Until recently they were soaked - but then we got the ones with fishes on. I think they are huggies. It's Mickey Mouse fishing - and the fishes disappear if they are wet. Well, he's been so keen to keep the fishes that we were having quite a bit of success. He was going to the toilet in the night when he woke up. But recently he's been wetting again. Possibly because he's been very tired as the half-term has worn on.

I've decided not to worry about it. I think it is very common (or there wouldn't be a market for the dry-nites, would there.) I'm sure it will sort itself out, and until then there's no point in putting any pressure on him.

Thanks for your replies so far. I'll do some research about whatever it was you read about, Jimjams - anyone else know about this?
Re 'lifting' - I read somewhere that this wasn't the thing to do because the aim is for the child to learn to wake up herself when she feels the need to wee, but if you wake her then her body's not learning how to do it. I don't know! Fluid intake, yes this does sound sensible, but she loves her cup of milk at bedtime, it would be hard to give that up.. but something we could look at, though.

I am the bedwetting queen! I have an almost 11 year old, a 6 year old , a 4 year old and a 2 year old who all wet the bed at night! We have been through everything available on the market for my 11 year old with no results so far. She is due to go on a school trip for a week in June and is getting a bit worried about anyone discovering, so we are going back to see her consultant in april to see if there are any new treatments available. If you have anything you want to ask feel free. We have tried charts, lifting, restricting fluids, drugs, alarms......I could almost be a consultant myself .

My dd is 4 and is (usually) dry at night and has been since her 4th birthday almost. However I think she is still such a heavy sleeper that she would not wake up to go to the loo (she never gets out of bed at night - hurray!). However she is able to hold on for the night, so I think there are two ways of being dry at night - either having the ability to hold on all night or having the ability to wake up when they need a wee.

Restricting fluid intake at bedtime (dd now just has half a beaker of milk) and making sure they have a good wee before bed is going to enable them to last longer, and lifting, although it won;t encourage them to wake up at night to use the loo, will hopefully enable them to last most of the night so worth a go I would have thought.

Make a note of what times she wets as well - you may find that she is actually lasting five or six hours, in which case lifting will probably help.

Good luck!

Empress - don't worry, don't worry, don't worry. She is still very young.

Since the age of 3.5 DS1 has slept in bed at night for 12.5 - 14 hrs a night. He's in a top bunk, and lifting was out of the question. He wore nappies, which were always sodden in the morning. Like you I used to worry a bit that he would be always in nappies, and hear of friends who were dry at night at 2. From time to time I would leave them off, but the results were fairly disastrous, it just wasn't worth it. It was fairly obvious that he just wasn't ready.

Then suddenly - literally overnight - when he was just a couple of months' off being 5, the nappies were dry in the morning. We took them off, and he was dry - end of story.

So my advice is relax, and wait until she shows you that she's ready. I'd wait until the pants are dry .. That's what I'm doing with ds2, who is nearly 4.

Empress, 4.5 is really not very old to be still wetting and, trust me, "up to age 15" is not just for marketing purposes! (Obviously it is pretty uncommon at that age but does still happen.) Agree that lifting etc is not necessarily helpful, although if you do it at a different time each night then the brain isn't programmed to wee at a particular time. (But we have found with a bedwetter that even with a proper wee at bedtime they can still be soaked half-an-hour after going to sleep!

Do tell her, in a way she can understand, that with some children their brains don't tell their kidneys to slow down at night and that is why she wets - simple and true. She will get there before too long, and in the meantime she will be more comfortable in "pyjama pants", and not using them won't make any difference.

She is a bit young to start using the hormonal drug that controls the kidneys in the way the natural hormone should, and possibly also too young to use an eneuresis alarm. Give it another year (in my experience!)

Try googling for ERIC (Eneuresis Research and Something Else) and you should get some stats to help you.

lou33, the drugs that you and Khara mention do work, but it takes a while. We tried them at a younger age than 11 and they were not so successful then but with an older child they worked! (Hooray!)

Most children start producing the hormone that suppresses kidney function at night well before they're 5, but in some children this comes much much later and in the meantime all the normal "avoidance" procedures just don't help. It is a physical developmental thing and there really is no way round it. For your daughter I would definitely recommend trying the desmopressin tablets again, well before her trip, and seeing if they will work now.

We have also tried all the techniques you mentioned and nothing really worked - it is just a question of time - a combination of desmopressin and a small personal alarm has been the best so far, so that even if the pills don't work the child wakes very soon after it starts to wet and everything isn't soaked.

(Things like not going to bed exhausted, and not drinking Coke in the evening, also help.)

Empress, my DS was almost 6 before we had a dry night, he was just such a heavy sleeper that he didn't wake up - even after wetting the bed. Neither of the boys ever produced dry pants in the morning - if they had them on they would use them, so it was just a case of go for it and hope for the best. I tried lifting but DS didn't wake up enough to do a wee and just panicked because he didn't know where he was. He still has the odd bout of accidents but these are usually when he is really tired or excited about something (lots around christmas). I would say, stick to pull ups for now and just try again every couple of months but don't put any pressure on, 4 1/2 is still very young.

We have tried desmopressin tablets and spray, imipramine, and various others Janh, for long periods of time, but they didn't have even the slightest impact on her. We even had combinations of drugs but that didn't work either. Her consultant has said the only thing for now is just to wait, which is more than frustrating for us. And tbh if they don't work after about 6 weeks then they won't, so I am not going to keep giving her drugs she has no reason to take iyswim. We are going back again in April so I'll see what happens then, not too hopeful though.

Oh, sorry, lou33, I just got the impression you might not have used them recently - we tried them for various periods at various ages and they didn't work for us either (so, like you, we stopped trying, I don't like giving a child unnecessary drugs either) but then when we tried yet again they did start to work so I thought it might help your daughter...I do hope you can get something that will work. My DS missed out on cub camps and birthday sleepovers for years - to the point where he wasn't invited any more.

www and others - how do you graduate from regular lifting (which is working well for us) to staying dry through the night? At the moment dd will flood the bed without waking if we don't lift her by about 11.30. Would it help to vary the times? She is so deeply asleep for the first half of the night that she almost never wakes when we lift her - just surfaces enough to wee and no more.

We are having that sort of problem now with dd janh, she has a week long school trip to go on and is worried she will be "found out". She got herself into such a state we had to see her headteacher about it. After talking to her dd has decided to go on the trip after all, and they will put her in a smaller room with girls who are unlikely to tease her. It would be nice if we could crack it before then though,but she wets herself so thoroughly I can't see it happening . We get pads for her at night time from the incontinence service now, but she was leaking through one type. The hv discussed it with the nurse in charge and she said dd has to weeing over a litre at night to make them leak! And she has the usual restriction of fluids etc, so I hate to think what she would be like otherwise!

I wish I could say something to help, lou33! I so sympathise with your daughter, and knowing that it isn't "her fault", just late development of one function, probably won't help. (Although once the desmopressin did start to work on DS, so the GP and school nurse could say categorically that it was just this developmental thing and not something he could control, DS was a lot more philosophical about it. Even with the tablets he still occasionally starts to wet, if he goes to bed too late usually, but then the buzzer wakes him and he just has to change his pants, not the whole bed - before, he used to flood like your DD, so do tell her about him, it might cheer her up a bit!)
Could she use 2 pads at once? Are the holders big enough? Might that work? (Would you like to talk about this by email??? If so ask mumsnet for my email address!)

That's very kind of you to offer Janh. She isn't too hard on herself unless she hears me praising dd2 when she is dry, then she takes dd2's praise as a personal insult against herself. I have always told her it is not her fault, and never got cross about it (how could I?) but she still seems to blame herself from time to time.

She was a bit happier after finding out that there are some other children with the same problem as her going on the school trip too, and her cousin who is 12 has only recently started being dry all the time. I wonder whether there is a hereditary thread to this as well, because although dh and myself didn't have this problem, my other children look like they may well follow suit!

I am also a bit loathed to go down the drugs route again, because dd in her wisdom once, decided that as we forgot to give her a tablet one night, she would take it upon her self to take a double dose the next night! We ended up having to be admitted to hospital overnight for observation , and although she was old enough to be left, I think she was pretty scared and so I ended up having to camp out there, 6 months pg at the time!

We tried alarms, and silent vibrating ones too. The vibro ones didn't wake her, and the alarm one woke everyone but her! I had 2 children screaming their heads off in terror in the middle of the night, and it took ages to get them off again .

It's a bit frustrating from my point of view, having tried everything, had all the investigations, to be told we just have to wait for her to grow out of it. I've been listening to that for so many years now (she's 11 soon). I don't know if surgery would be the answer either as everything loked normal on the xrays and ultrasounds.

That's excellent news lou33, that she isn't the only one on the trip! (When you look at the statistics you know there must be others in the class but of course nobody wants to talk about it.) Good news that her cousin has got there at 12, too. There is a hereditary link - I was very late myself so I have been able to be laid-back about it too. It must have skipped a generation in your two families.

I know what you mean about the alarm waking everybody else, DS sleeps like the dead too and when he was about 7 we had one of the old-fashioned big clunky alarms with metal pads that went in the bed. It made a huge racket, but didn't wake him, so we put it inside a biscuit tin, which doubled the noise, it was right by his head and STILL didn't wake him, but woke everybody else in the house!

The vibrating one doesn't work for him either but a small buzzing one did, and the one he has now does a really irritating electronic beep and that works too. (We are lucky to have a very supportive school nurse and all these alarms come from the NHS.)

DS has never had X-rays or ultrasound - just a couple of urine tests, and they took his blood pressure once, forget why. They have certainly been thorough for you!

We tried the buzzing one, it fitted in a pad inside her pants, but that was the one that terrified the house! They have been good with her,I don't know what else they could have done. I got her transferred to a London hospital, as I didn't have much faith in my local one at the time.

It is good news knowing there are others like her, it would be nice if she knew who they were though, it could be like a private club!

You have probably looked at the ERIC site before but they have pages specially for kids, divided into ages, has your dd looked at them? It's at

www.eric.org.uk/

in case you don't have it.

There is a message board but it doesn't look as if it gets used very much.

Janh, what do you think about the link with sugar and nocturnal enuresis? Dd seems incapable of not eating sweet things, and we are seriously considering getting a lock on the kitchen door to stop her sneaking in and helping herself. I wonder whether it has an effect big enough to cause her problems. I know they say avoid sweet things in the evening, but i wonder if she should be banned completely? I am quite strict with her because of her penchant for sweetness, but she still manages to amaze me sometimes. I caught her the other day , after asking if she could have a biscuit. Only one I said, but then discovered she had added a dollop of honey and about a tablespoon of sugar to it! Needless to say I threw it straight in the bin, but it makes me wonder if there is something else to consider.

Help, my son's seems to spend most of his school day in the toilet! he is not a shy boy the opposite very confident but hates change. He is still wet at night, tested him for diabeties as I am so that was top on my list, but seems to have high protein in his wee? dr keeps sending us for test, but no luck yet? anyone else have this problem?

Dominoxx,
I have no experience of what you are describing - but you may be batter off starting a new thread under "Health" rather than tacking this on to an old thread. More people would notice it then, I think. Just click on "Topics" at the top, scroll down to Health, click on that then click on the "here" link to start a new discussion.