Bed Wetting- help needed please!! (sorry, bit long)

[albert]

My DS has been in 'big boy' pants for well over a year with virtually no accidents whatsoever but he is almost never dry at night. Just recently though it seems that he can get through every other night so last night at the insistance of DH and DS (they ganged up on me!)he went to bed in his pants. Of course, as I had predicted, he was wet this morning and I had to strip the bed and load the washing machine before rushing off late for work. However, DS was soooo upset at his mishap that I have said we can try again tonight - am I mad?! What should I do? I really don't want to start lifting him at night as this will develop into a habit and also it took 3 years to get him to sleep though the night (I kid you not, it got so bad a one point that we were threated with eviction by our neighbours!!) so I really don't want to start waking him up in case it leads to sleepless nights again. In all other things DS is very happy and, dare I say, advanced for his age. But I really don't know what to do now. Can any help??

How old is he, albert? Dryness during the day has no connection with dryness at night so there's no reason that he "should" be dry yet.

Would he be OK to go to bed in a Pull-up rather than a nappy (or is that what he wears anyway?)

It's much nicer for everybody when they're still wet every night (ie not ready to be dry yet) to have dry bed and wet nappy/pull-up/whatever. And you're right about not getting into the lifting habit.

Good luck!

Thanks Janh, actually he's 4 so I reckon he should be ready. He's been wearing the 'pull-up' things to bed up until now and to be honest I was very happy with it but the pressure from DH and DS (not to mention the grandparents) is getting intense. I told DH he should do the washing before he went to work if he was so concerned!

I try not to put pressure on the little ones about bedwetting, in order to help them to be relaxed about it. If My dd doesn't wet the bed I say good girl well done etc but if she wets the bed i do not tell her off. Do you use pampers bed mats? they absorb a lot of it and keep the matress dry. Also if you are the one doing all the cleaning etc then I think the decision regarding pull up nappies should be left more up to you without pressure from dh, unless as you have mentioned he would like to do the cleaning.

Don't think I can get the Pamper bed mats in Italy, I use a sort of fleecy rubber sheet thing which I am continually washing. Glad to know you agree with me about letting DS be, although he himself is desperate to get out of the night time nappy! And as you mention, I pile on the praise when we get through the night dry and never scold if he doesn't. Let's see what happens tonight. Have to go now, hour time difference in Italy, time to make dinner already, wonder what I'll find in the cupboard!

Have a look at the ERIC site, albert. It has different sections for parents and kids and should have the stats about ages for night dryness - I recently saw that 15% of 5-yr-olds are still regularly wet, the figure for 4-yr-olds will be higher than that.

The thing is that it's a totally individual thing and there is no "should be dry at night" age. Please ignore the grandparents and DH and show DS the figures which mean that lots of children his age still wear a nappy/pull-up at night, even if he doesn't know any of them! (Show the others the figures too if they keep nagging. And, yes, let your DH be responsible for the laundry if he insists on no pull-up.)

My dd is also doing the bw thing, having previously been dry b4. We were lifting her at night (she remained pretty comatosed), but obviously this is not the long term solution and gets difficult as she gets bigger. We don't remember when it started, but it was b4 the recent arrival of ds2 (19wks). It has become more frequent now and we've resorted to 'Dry-nights' (pull-ups too small) which are v expensive, but we have enough to worry about at the moment without the added pressure of extra washing not to mention a distressed child. We don't get cross about it - no point. We've now had two dry nights in a row without lifting her as we reckon the lifting is only contributing to her tiredness. She's emotional anyway right now and we're just hoping this little problem will sort itself out in it's own time.

btw - she calls them 'special pants' and quite enjoys wearing them!

Bed wetting at 4 is really nothing to worry about - I would say your only reason for persevering is that your ds himself seems keen. My eldest is still wetting every night (and still in nappies) at 7. Some children are just slower at it than others and the consultant we saw at the hospital said if one or both parents were late to be dry through the night it is more common for the child to be a bed-wetter too. I would just stress to your son that it is really no big deal (sounds like you are doing this already) and that he WILL be dry through the night eventually. I'm with janh, better a soggy nappy and a good night's sleep than a soggy bed and a disturbed night for everyone (though we are shortly to be given a bed-wetting alarm so I reckon we are in for some disturbed nights!)

Oh, yes, I meant dry-nites, not pull-ups, thanks, Aero.

They make them in VERY big sizes, you know - not to be depressing, just to point out that lots of kids take years to become dry at night and although the cost of them is a pain, it needn't be a big issue otherwise.

In fact DryNites have a website which also has useful information.

Janh is our resident bedwetting expert

Ooooh perhaps you could give me some advice Janh. My DS1 is 6 and wears what we call bedtime pants (xtra large nappies). We regularly try to get him dry at night - this involves lifting, reducing drinks before bed etc. He has never in his whole life had a dry night, he even wet the bed when lifted twice in the night!!! I do not get stressed about it but do you think i should be getting help of any kind?? P.s totally dry in the day since 2.5

Well, one of them

Actually, albert, I just reread your first post and saw what I missed first time I read it - that he has been dry some nights recently. That is a good sign actually and as he is keen to try then it seems silly not to, as long as you can get him to see beforehand that if he does wake up wet it's just bad luck and nothing to get upset about. (He'd probably convinced himself last night that he would be dry and was desperately disappointed not to be.)

Could you get him to agree to still use drynites during the week (because if he's dry in them, that's still good!) and try pants just at weekends when you have more time to deal with the bedding?

My ds was just under 4 when i got him dry at night but he asked to do it, and i hardly had any accidents. I think each kid is different. When he's ready he will do it. As someone said use those pull up pants so if he wants the loo he can go, but if he has an accident he won't soak the bed and get upset.

Hi, Tessiebear! (This is a bit long...)

If he has never once had a dry night then it's a developmental thing. There are actually 3 factors involved in bedwetting - how much urine is produced at night, how much the bladder can hold before releasing it and the brain not recognising the signal from the bladder that it's time to go.

The body is supposed to produce a hormone that reduces kidney function at night and in some children it's late starting (the tablets you can get for occasional overnights are a synthetic form); some children empty their bladders every chance they get during the day so it never learns to hold on to a lot; and some children sleep so deeply they don't get the signal enough to wake them. (Some kids have all 3 problems - I have one of those!)

You can't do anything about the hormone yet, I think 6 is too young to start using Desmopressin and in any case you're not supposed to use it on a regular basis. You can try bladder training - difficult when they're at school, but in the holidays encourage DS to drink more than usual and then hang on until he's busting before he goes. If his bladder can learn to hang on to a night's-worth of urine he might be able to go right through.

Training the brain to recognise the signal is where the alarms come in - they wear a sensor inside their pants (or under the sheet if it's a really old one) and the second it's wet the alarm part either makes a loud noise or vibrates which is supposed to make them a) instinctively stop weeing and b) wake up and go to the loo. After a while the brain is supposed to recognise by itself that a wee is coming and wake the child up before it wees. Have to say this never happened with my wetter!

I've never insisted on restricting bedtime drinks, dino, though I think ds has done it himself without saying anything. If the urine is very concentrated that can make them wee more too. It's very complicated!

Have heard that Coke is bad for bedwetters - because it's diuretic I think. So not good any time and especially not in the evening. (Not that I buy coke anyway as a rule.)

Go on then, tell us some more topics of conversation!

dino, i believe that restricting drinking up to bedtime can exacerbate things further, janh is right,it's complicated. how old is your ds? my dd (nearly 4) has been dry in the day for ages but nappies (won't wear pullups ) are soppy in the mornings still. doesn't really bother me but I think it's starting to bother her.

DS2 is just 5, and is still very wet at nights. I'm feeling fairly chilled about it at the moment ... go through stages of getting fed up, so leave the pull-ups off, but we usually end up with 2 or 3 complete changes of bed linen every night I leave them off (I kid you not), so I soon get very sick of it - even when the weather's nice! So I go back to feeling laidback about it. His bro was almost 5 and suddenly went from very wet to very dry, so I'm hoping the same will happen for him soon.

(Btw they were both clean/dry within a week of their second birthday, so it doesn't necessarily follow).

it's apparently genetic, researchers have found areas of chromosomes (12,13 and 22) which are associated with bedwetting. it's linked to neural maturity and your body clock brain chemicals like vasopressin, and more of a problem for boys than girls.

Thanks for your good advice Janh. How old was your DS when he was dry at night? Did the bed alarm thing work, or was it just time???

Good advice here albert...both of my ds s were wet at night up until 7. In fact ds2 was probably later than that. Coke and that type of drink definitely mean more wee so avoid at all costs ditto 'lifting' although I must admit to doing this whilst away on holiday to avoid wet beds.

Told you she was good didn't I Tessie!

Jan, it's brown drinks in general dd1 is told to avoid. Coke, hot chocolate etc.

Tessiebear, Jan gives great advice. Most places will not investigate any bedwetting probs until children are at least 7. If he has never been dry then it is most likely because the bladder has not matured enough yet to understand the signals being received to say it is full. There are still a large amount of children at this age who do still wet the bed (i forget the statistics), you would be surprised. There are plenty of treatments and drugs out there to try if he doesn't grow out of it.

Which reminds me I need to call dd1's doc.