6 year old never had a dry night

[Bobojangles]

My 6 year old has ever had a dry night in his life. We've just gone with the flow (he's in pull-ups) but I'm wondering if it's time to do something about it. I think he's just a very deep sleeper, as when we've tried him without a pullup he just woke at his normal time sopping wet. Any tips/experiences?

His 3 year old brother has been dry for 6 months with no intervention

Yep, completely normal. It's a hormone thing and if he isn't producing the hormone yet, he will when he's older. The gp won't be interested until he's at least 8. DD never had a dry night in a pull-up, simply tried her without every couple of months until she was dry at about 7ish and she's had 3 accidents in the last year.

My DS wasn't dry at night until they were 10, have a look at www.eric.org.uk/our-vision for advice

My son dry at 6. You can be referred to an incontinance (sp?) service through nhs for support. What worked for us was a buzzer. A little alarm attached to pj's. Once he had it on he never had an accident. Been dry 6m now.

Is he definitely weeing in the night we discovered my lazy son was just lying in bed and weeing first thing ... may be different but ds is a heavy sleeper and wasn't actually weeing at night.

One thing you could check is constipation - my DS was also in pull ups until 6 years- we discovered he had chronic constipation (even though he passed a stool every day) which put pressure on the bladder. Once we sorted that with regular non-habituating laxatives he improved.

My daughter is exactly the age and exactly the same issue. Contacted the GP and they were definitely interested. GP did a quick exam in the surgery nothing obvious so referred us to continence clinic where she had an ultrasound of her bladder and some tests to check volume of bladder etc. Clinic gave us advice to follow around drinking, timings before using the toilet etc. a follow up consultation was scheduled at this point for 12 weeks later. We’re about six weeks following the initial consultation with the clinic now. We’re in Scotland in case that might make a difference to how processes work.

I could have written the same post. My soon-to-be 6 (in May) year old still needs a pull-up on at night and wakes most mornings sodden through and I'm starting to worry now. He's far too heavy to be lifting him in the night, but he just sleeps so deeply he must not feel the need to go. He's been dry in the day since 2.5 but there's no sign of night dryness yet.

In contrast, his 2.5 year old brother who only been toilet trained for 3 weeks, has woken up every morning for the past 5 days absolutely dry as a bone 🤷🏻‍♀️

@Krapom can I ask how old your daughter is? And is the advice they gave working?

@BunnyFree how did you figure this out? He poos every day and it's never hard

They did a scan of the stomach - see your doctor and if it's a possible cause ask about Lactulose or something like that

Similar with DS, NHS not really interested until he was about 8. We tried everything and took all the advice (which you'll find on enuresis websites etc so I won't regurgitate her.

In the run up to school camp (P7, year 6 in English money) we threw everything at it and he was on high dose of meds and we got a bedwetting alarm off Amazon. That did it. Dry all week at camp. Came off the meds in the end and now wet may be 1 every three months when shattered.

FWIW school told us there is at least one every year at school camp and they are expert at dealing with it discreetly, very supportive. Enuresis nurse had great tips as well that would work for sleepovers e.g. "forget" PJs and oops! I'll just sleep in these jogging bottoms that disguise pull ups.

Please contact ERIC - they are the experts in this

It's not unusual OP. My 10-year-old has only been dry at night since October. He has dyslexia, which along with other LD apparently goes hand in hand with delayed nighttime bladder control. We tried lots of things, but in the end the only thing that worked was giving it time.

Stuff we tried:

• pull ups - saved me the trouble of having to get up in the night and change a wet bed, but ultimately I think these didn't really help, because they encouraged him to be lazy about it.
• 'lifting' i.e. getting him up to pee just before we went to bed at 11 - it reduced the number of times he wet the bed, but if we forgot or he'd drunk a lot before bedtime he wouldn't wake up himself and would still wet the bed.
• alarms on his underwear - didn't wake him because he'd such a deep sleeper.
• bed vibrating alarm to wake him to take himself to the loo at 11 - it didn't fully wake him so we still had to go and get him up.
• medication - worked a treat, but didn't solve the underlying problem. However, it was very useful for sleepovers and school trips and saved him from being embarrassed.

I can't tell you how happy I am that he is FINALLY dry at night. It just took him a long time to get there.

Oh and the NHS (England) were very unhelpful. Just gave us a leaflet and directed us to the ERIC website, but we'd tried everything! You should also try everything to see if there is anything that works as PPs have found alarms, etc, work, but for DS they just didn't. Once my DS reached about 9 I demanded medication, but I had to be very insistent and they only ever gave me one month's prescription at a time. They simply weren't very interested and clearly saw it as a bit of a non-issue/merely an inconvenience that we should just live with.

We took my son to the doctor when he was five and they sent him to the hospital to rule out any physical causes with a bladder scan and a couple of other tests. Then they gave some advice, including an alarm which I was convinced wouldn't work, but actually had him dry within a couple of weeks!!

My 8yo is dry now but it took until he was about 6 and a half.

We did limit drinks before bed but it didn't seem to make much difference. GP recommended an alarm system but the alarm would just blare and and blare until one of us got up to deal with it, so we ditched it. We implemented an adult-driven 1am wee. It involved my DH going into DC's room at 1am, forcing 6yo awake and making him walk to the bathroom to pee. It felt like child cruelty. Poor kid would be stood there swaying around sleep-peeing. Sometimes he would really cry about being woken up.

Anyway, it worked. Dry within about 2 months, I reckon. But we kept up the 1am wee for about a year.

God bless my DH and his determination!

And, btw, he still has the occasional accident now so invest in a good quality, long term, no-crinkle-sound waterproof sheet! 😅

We were using pull ups at 6 and patiently waiting for hormone. Then contacted GP who prescribed desmopressin which works in place of hormone. So we stopped using pull ups.

We also upped our effort on getting him to drink plenty during daytime so he could avoid a drink for an hour before bed then pee at bedtime. For a while we did midnight pee too as desmo alone didn't help (which led me to believe it was habit rather than hormone). My next thought was bed alarm but not needed as after 3 months tried no desmopressin and he was dry. Also stopped midnight pee now. Still limit drinks before bed though.

It's interesting to see how support varies across the country. My 6 year old was the youngest of all my 4 to be dry in the day but is still in pull ups at night. The others were all dry at night by age 3.5. I had a good look through the Eric site and went to GP, as it advised. She checked his tummy to check no constipation, said she would refer to the local clinic and suggested we try a star chart (not helpful!). Clinic wrote to decline the referral and won't see us until he is 7 at the earliest.

Am about to part with more cash than I wish to purchase a waterproof duvet cover and then we will try to remove the pull ups later this month. Not looking forward to it, not least as he's a devil for sneaking into our bed during the night, but feel we have to try (not least as GP was very dismissive when I said we hadn't).

Might try an alarm too based on some of the comments here.

I can be bothered to write all the tips now I'm not on my phone, some mentioned by previous posters:

• drink loads during the day, milk does not count
• stop drinking altogether for an hour or two before bed (can't remember which it was, it has to be a couple of hours on desmopressin)
• no orange or blackcurrant at any time
• double void before bed, so they have a wee, then 5 mins later they have another, then bed.

We also used a book - "Stop bedwetting in 7 days". We saw some improved but for DS it didn't "stick", although some people evidently swear by it.

www.amazon.co.uk/s?ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_2_10&crid=VAJLWNT9Z3MF&sprefix=stop+bedwe%2Caps%2C153&k=stop+bedwetting+in+seven+days&tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Then finally desmopressin, then double desmopressin dose, then double dose desmo PLUS bedwetting alarm, PLUS all the double voiding shenanigans (drink loads all day but not before bed, no orange or blackcurrant) PLUS the routine in the stop bedwetting book. That did it with a week to go before heading off to school camp for a week. Heave sign of relief.

Good luck to all on your dry night journey!

She is 6. Testing showed that her bladder has about half the capacity that would be expected, so the steps now are to stretch it out gradually. Until that’s done there is no point with other training methods (like the night alarm thing) because her bladder simply doesn’t have the capacity for any of them to work yet. At the moment it’s more about getting her to drink more and gradually build up how long she holds it for.

I removed the night nappy at 5 years old because he peed so much that it leaked anyways and i had to change the entire bed. He was wet for about 4 nights without the naooy and then he was dry like magic. Hasnt peed in bed since and hes 7 now.