4 year old still in nappies at night.

[PaddlingLikeADuck]

I have a son who is 4 years and 7 months old and he is still wearing nappies at night.

We have tried him endless times without one and it’s 50/50 whether he has an accident or not.

We restrict his evening time drinks and make sure he has a good wee before going to bed but it doesn’t make any difference.

The longest time period we have tried him without a nappy for is 5 days but we had to put him back in one because for the last 3 of those 5 days he had an accident.

I’ve had people tell me to just leave him without nappies as his body “needs to learn” not to wee at overnight, but the endless washing and broken nights sleep night after night was taking its toll.

The difficult part is that my son hates using nappies - he cries and tells me he wants to be a big boy and gets so upset when I put one on him. We tried using pull-ups as they are considered to be more grown up but to him they are no different to wearing a nappy and he gets just as upset.

I’m just having a vent really because me and DH don’t know what to do.

He was toilet trained in the daytime really early (far younger than my other son was) so still needing nappies at night at this age has thrown me a little.

Is it within the boundaries of normal??

I thought the advice was NOT to take for a dream wee?

My youngest has been dry at night for months, but still has accidents during the day. Still soils during the day. I would gladly swap it round to your situation ( he is 4y8m).

Can you not use an inco pad under his fitted sheet? And one on top too?

All of mine have been the opposite to this thread. Dry through the night consistently, but took longer during the day to be dry.

My two youngest took desmopressin and weren't dry at night until 8 or 9. You just have to wait until they're ready. It's really common. We often had visiting children come to sleepovers with pull-ups and when mine went on primary school residentials the staff would discreetly help those that needed pull-ups; they were used to it as it's totally normal.

We went on holiday with some friends who had DC a similar age to ours and one of them wasn't dry at night and he must have been 11 or 12 at the time.

There's no point in lifting for a wee at night; it's counterproductive and makes everyone stressed.

Also don't let relatives with no experience of this tell you that there's something wrong with your DC. We had this and it was irritating having to keep explaining that they didn't know what they were talking about.

My eldest is nearly 4 and has absolutely no interest in being dry overnight. She wears the expensive Pampers night time nappy pants because she leaks through everything else we've tried. She has huuuge soaking wet nappies every morning as she drinks a lot in the evenings, drinks water usually a few times a night, always refuses to go to the toilet in the night, and then wakes up and deliberately pees in it upon waking rather than going to the toilet. I find it all a bit ick tbh but there's not really anything I can do about it. Hopefully she will show more interest in keeping herself clean as she gets older! She was day trained at 24m and initially had very lightly wet nappies for the first couple of weeks and woke in the night crying for the potty. It seems like she clicked on after a few weeks that she didn't need to because she had a nappy on, so then stopped bothering and has never been bothered since.

While I agree that hormone perusing can't be rushed, my oldest was just sleeping too heavily to wake for a wee. We g gag him checked by the GP and continence clinic at the hospital and they recommended an alarm which fully woke him up when he started to wee. I slept with him for about a week and helped him get up and go when the alarm went off, and then he just seemed to be able to do it by himself! I was so convinced that it wouldn't work that I was really shocked at how quickly it did!!

If your son is really bothered by wearing nappies and sleeps very deeply, it might be worth trying?