4 year old boy nowhere near dry at night

[KJ26]

I need some advice on how to get my little boy to be dry during the night.. he's been dry through the day for a couple of years now, but at night time he's nowhere near ready. He's quite a big boy so I'm on the hunt for size 7 nappies. I've tried putting him in bedtime pants/ pull ups etc but he literally just leaks through and ends up soaking everything. He doesn't wake up during the night alot, he is quite a deep sleeper.

I just don't know where to even begin and apart from the obvious - stop him drinking agter a certain time etc I'm completely dumb founded!

Hey there.... my little boy is 5 and he's only just out of nappies at night. I also know of others the same age who aren't yet dry at night. My advice? Don't worry about it... he will get there eventually.

There's nothing much you can do as night dryness depends on two hormones that reduce volume of urine produced at night and wake up the child when they have a full bladder. It's not unusual for some children to be quite old before they start producing these and doctors generally won't medicate until 7.

We use waterproof wraps with an extra pad over pull ups.

My DS wasn't dry until 9, it's a hormonal thing. We used large pull ups

My 5 year old is nowhere near either. His older brother was dry at night aged three, without us doing anything! So we feel like we don’t know what on earth to do about this.

We push for him to drink more during the day as he’s a reluctant drinker and I think dehydration makes it worse. We get him to go for a wee after dinner and before bedtime stories and then again after the stories are done but he still soaks his pull up every night.

He’s not far off six now and we are planning to take him to the GP soon to find out if there is more we can do.

We have tried just taking the pull ups away, getting up and waking him to take him to the toilet in the night but we were changing his bedding once or twice every single night when we did that - it made no difference at all.

DS was 5 when we finally got him dry at night. I tried an app, which helped, but I was aware that it just takes longer in some kids.
One morning I went in to him early, I had already changed him once in the night, and he was awake. As he was lying in bed awake he just did a wee right there and then in front of me. I totally lost my temper, after years of being calm and patient I was so cross that he basically just couldn’t be bothered to get up and walk to the loo.
He never wet the bed again 🤷🏻‍♀️. I’m not recommending this approach just saying that it’s not always hormones that are slowing them down sometimes they are just bone idle!

You can't rush it. It's dependent on hormone release that halts urine production at night.

One thing that was suggested to me for dc was to measure how much wee their bladder could actually hold. There is amount of wee based on their size their bladder can hold and if their bladder can’t expand big enough, you don’t stand a chance of dry nights. I can’t remember the equation though, but might be worth googling and then measuring an average wee to see if they tally up. If the bladder can’t hold enough, then trying to increase fluids during the day might help.

At 4, it doubt it would be considered an issue at all by the doctor. Dc was 7 when we went and we had an alarm which sorted it out. (The medication didn’t work, which to me suggests her hormones were fine, the problem was that she wasn’t waking up to the sensation of needing a wee.

As I remember the Eric website has some good advice and also sell continence products, I think the bed mats were far cheaper from there than anywhere else, so might be worth a look for some bigger nappies.

There's nothing much you can do apart from wait for him to grow out of it. Neither of my DCs was dry at 4. One of them was dry at around 5 or 6, the other was older still.

Op how many adults do you know who still wear nappies? ( without medical reason)

So don't worry.
Ds at one point went back to a sleep nappy as he was having accidents. Well he's 15 now and just grand

It's totally normal. Don't fret. It's a hormone thing you can't force. Size 7 nappies available on Amazon.

Dryness at night is a result of hormonal changes. There is nothing much you can do beyond not letting him drink in the evenings and waking him to use the loo at night.

Thank you everyone!! ♥️

Aldi have size 7 as these were what dd was wearing up until a few weeks ago.

She’s 6 and we’d tried everything too, as MIL kept pushing that she “should be dry by now” and said she must be drinking too much. She’s a very heavy sleeper, but she was getting herself upset about wetting because we made such a big deal about it.

We bought her bigger pull ups and just didn’t mention it anymore, and ignored MIL. Just before Christmas she was dry for the first time and it has continued ever since, and she no longer wears pull ups! I honestly felt like it would go on forever but she got there in her own time.