Nocturnal Enuresis/Bedwetting in 15 year old

[Madamlulu]

I'd appreciate any advice as I'm now so worried about this. Please be kind.

DS 15 has NEVER been completely dry at night. I honestly don't know where to start and try to explain.

From a baby he was potty trained at 2 &1/2 and almost completely dry from that time during the day (with the very occasional/ normal toddler accident). He just never was dry at night and so this continues to now and he is starting to look like an almost grown man and I'm so lost with what to do.

We have tried;

• alarms when he was younger tried these loads. The ones that went in his underpants, the one he laid on. He DOES not wake up to the alarm but we tried me waking him up which he is delirious but then goes to the bathroom - had absolutely no success.

• we went to see someone via NHS when he was about 9. Totally useless. Insisted on asking DS for his opinions who is so embarrassed and so was saying it doesn't happen very often (it happens probably 50% of ALL nights). They then concluded that he was ALMOST there. Totally useless and after a years wait was soul destroying.

• medication from GP when he was going

On a trip. Didn't work

• I then left it for years thinking I had no hope but earlier this year took him to see a private urologist who said we had to go through a series of steps. The first being to stretch his bladder. This involves him drinking loads of water. He has ADHD and is hopeless at remembering and being reliable and when the doc said this I was sceptical that it was even the problem and also said 'it's not going to work as we have to rely on him to drink the water and he forgets' and the doctor then spoke to him and DS promised the doctor he would drink more than 2 litres of water a day .he doesn't and hasn't. I don't know whether to even go back as feel like we failed at the first hurdle.

The problem with the above is I actually have no faith . Why would trying to stretch his bladder even work? He CAN hold urinie in during the day but he simply cannot wake up in the night and so I don't see why this is key. I told the doctor this and he said it is just the first part of the step and then said 'a-% of adults wet the bed so nothing might work'

I feel like I'm failing him but he's a 15 year old outgoing boy with a social life! I can't control what he eats and drinks and this sort of thing now- he's not a toddler.

Sorry this is a bit lost but I just don't know where or how to get help. Going private is not something we can really afford but I'm prepared to borrow money if that's what's needed to see someone to get the right help but I just don't know what that it..

Btw he is a bright boy but the ADHD causes him attention difficulties and he now has medication for this: he was only diagnosed with this this year and I thought 'bingo!' This is related and I kind of feel like it might be - BUT the team at the ADHD clinic dismissed that. I feel like nobody can really help my child and they just look at process and not really HIM.

FYI he wears pull up pants which only hold a fraction of the urine in and the amount of washing is immense these are not small bladder wees! . I can cope with all of that if I can just do something to feel like I'm not failing him as I really feel like I am right now.

I really feel like this could be one of 2 things;

1 physiological - he produces way too much urine in the nighttime than appears to be normal. He observed this himself when he stayed up all night once at a friends sleepover and was scared to go to sleep as he would wet the bed. He said he kept going to the loo and peeing loads - that's normal

2 linked to his brain signal not waking him up.

For what it's worth - what the urologist suggested really did work for one of my nephews. He started younger and got a lot of nagging to drink by his mother espcially at first! In the end he was taking responsibility himself. Your DS is getting to an age where he needs to commit to the programme and e.g. set reminders to drink himself. So it's good that he's starting to do that.

But I'm so sorry the service has been wound down. That's really rubbish.

Daughter was a similar age and also has ADHD. I don’t know why they didn’t mention that it was related because it’s official that over 40% of children with ADHD wet the bed so it is definitely related.

We tried alarms, fluids during the day to stretch bladder, some pink medicine (can’t remember the name) and tried to encourage her to do some lower body muscle exercise's but nothing worked until we stopped wasting money on Drynites.

Kids pull-up nappies are terrible when they pass the age of 9 or 10. We got our daughter some medium slips for nights, thinking this was going to carry on into her adulthood.
It’s no shame if you have a good chat with your child, no matter how difficult it can seem. Our daughter just wanted to wake up with a dry bed as a priority and if possible to throw out the plastic sheet, so we purchased a case of adult slips in medium, thinking we’d rather they be a little big than too small, it turns out they were almost the same length in absorbent material as a drynite but much wider and about 4x thicker for absorbency so this is where it matters the most. Im not sure a smaller size would’ve fitted so good. They didn’t leak once so we removed the plastic sheet after a few weeks.

The change from childrens pull-ups to adult nappies must have provoked something in her because she stopped wetting at night while half way through the last pack in a case.

Hope this helps. I only wish we’d been given this advice many, many years ago.

There must be some kind of conspiracy around Pampers and Huggies because they sell junk older child and teen nappies and we all fall for it.

My 13 year old goes through phases of wetting the bed and now also wees on his carpet etc in his room it's awful! We didn't realise until his rim started to smell so bad

Some great advice on this thread. I just wanted to say that you don't have to go private. The next logical step is to ask for a referral to a NHS urologist at the hospital. This is what we did for my son after the failure of all the standard initiatives led by the enuresis clinic. An ultrasound reassured us that his bladder was of a normal size for his age. The problem was that his bladder was overactive. For example he was asked to have a full bladder for his ultrasound and was convinced he did (said he was bursting) yet the ultrasound showed that it was only half full. The way to treat an overactive bladder is to drink a lot. I don't understand the science behind it but apparently it's something to do with training the bladder to fully fill itself. (So the drinking is not necessarily about stretching the bladder.) So try to get your son to not give up on the drinking and make sure it's only water past 2pm. (Milk and juices irritate the bladder.) As mentioned in other posts, it's also worth consulting about Desmopressin again - perhaps the dose for your son was too low? Good luck!