Bed wetting

[Mills20]

I have a sensitive question. How do you deal with kids older than 5 year old wetting the bed?

Pull ups x

It's a tough one.
The biggest hurdle I found was a mental one personally. You have to stop stressing about it - it doesn't help you and it doesn't help them as you do pass the stress on.

What we did...

• Bought extra bedding.
• Made sure the bedding fits the washing machine we have.
• Teach the child to strip the bed as much as the can when they realise and dump it all somewhere suitable - in our case the bath.
• if they wake up wet overnight have a set ready to drop straight on the bed quickly. (This will likely involve plastic under sheets as you need to keep the mattress dry).
• stop talking to other parents about it - little johnny who was dry from 5 months is not what you need to hear repeatedly - it will drag you down.

In terms of solving the issue:

• Cut out blackcurrant and all dark Berry squashes as well as fruitshoots (and other similar bottle drinks!) They are the devil's work for bladders!
• make sure the kid is drinking plenty through the day. This might sound daft - but a small bladder doesn't help - it needs expanding to work properly.
• I don't restrict drinks later on BUT only allow milk/water after dinner.

It's a slog - but they will get there. Good Luck!

They are only dry when the produce the hormone vasopressin, it suppresses urine production whilst we sleep and so our bladders don't get full and empty. Children who sleep deeply often wet the bed. Have you ever wondered why valuable supermarket shelving space is given to pull ups that are for much older children?

There is a stigma attached to bed wetting, but science now shows the main underlying cause. The Eric website has a wealth of information on this subject eric.org.uk/ we have been through it all, GP, alarms, monitoring liquid input and output.

Look on incontinence websites for bedding to protect the bed, have spares ready to go in the middle of the night and be kind. I wet the bed, my Dad wet the bed, my son wet the bed. My other son was completely dry from before 3.

Hi. My boy has wet the bed up to the age of 8. We have been through the GP’s, tried alarms and eventually ended up on desmomelt medication when he turned 6. This helped slightly but was still wet about 5 days a week. After approx one year I decided to stop the medication and took to the internet to find other ways. I came across a company called therapee. And although expensive to buy the alarm with mat and the monthly package, we had regular reviews with new exercises and a progress chart, my boy is now completely dry. It took 5 months which the first couple of months I did question if it was going to work and it was disturbing my sleep most nights because of the alarm going off. But now my boy is 8 and a half and now completely dry for the past 2 month. I think the version of the alarm with a mat worked a lot better than the standard clip on alarms we have tried before as he seemed to roll over in his sleep and detach it from his pants so it wasn’t reliable in waking him up wet.

We tried the alarm when my son was about 7.5 as we were so fed up of the constant sheet changing. However in hindsight it was a big mistake. He found it traumatic the alarm going off in the middle of the night, it made him more anxious about it than ever. We used it for weeks and weeks and I wish we hadn't.

After that we approached the Dr who was fairly dismissive but gave us desmopressin. This didn't work either.

We stopped and took the pressure off completely. He became dry during lockdown at the age of 9. It was presumably just hormones, anxiety, stress etc. Eventually he was just old enough and relaxed enough.

But it's tough at the time. I wish I'd not been so frustrated about it but it's hard when it's every night.

Hello! I’m hoping for some guidance and a bit of help but not sure where to go!

my DD is 5 (and 6 very soon). She has never been dry through the night. She potty trained during the day very early but has been in nappies during the night. We always worked to ‘once she was dry a few times during the night we’d stop the nappies’ but she was never dry. And it sounds silly I guess but pow all of a sudden she’s now about to go into year 1 and she’s still wearing nappies at night.

We followed some advice and for the past 2 weeks we’ve been (trying!) to restrict her fluid intake after 6 (she only drinks water anyway) and have been waking her up around midnight to take her to the toilet. We have removed the nappies but have been using a protective mat. (There’s also waterproof mattress cover etc but the washing of the bedding isn’t a problem).

Even with the waking her up she isn’t always dry throughout the night - we have had a couple of dry nights but then for example last night she was wet before we woke her up, and then wet again this morning. She does not wake up either to go wee, or even if she’s been.

She can also get very angry once woken (understandably! I hate being woken up!!)

This morning she told me about her dream - and it was all about toileting and it sounded very much an anxiety dream.

This all feels wrong - I feel like I’m causing her anxiety, and it’s not like waking her up every night is even working. She’s been asking to go back to nappies - but are we stopping her from learning this by herself if she does? All the websites I’ve read, and even on some of the posts here everyone just says oh we just had to do lots of washing for a while - it seems that people stop using the nappies and just let the little one wet the bed until they stop.

I don’t know what to do for the best - all my instincts scream to put her back in nappies to help with her anxiety and clearly her body isn’t ready to wake her up/hold her wee during the night but then the advice seems she will never develop this whilst still wearing nappies. Any help or guidance would be much appreciated!!