4 year old DD soaking through nappies at night

[rainbowmagicunicorn]

4 year old DD has been potty trained since 22 months, but has never been dry at night.

However she used to wake with a lightly wet nappy, and it seems to have gradually increased to the point where she is now often soaking through nappies at night!

I don't know what to do as it's interfering with her sleep. Have tried different brands of nappy, talking to her about trying to use the potty if she needs a wee at night, incentives for a dry nappy but nothing works.

She has a potty right by her bed to make it as easy as possible for her to go.

Any ideas much appreciated

Are you restricting liquids before bed? At least a few hours

Don't want to restrict too much, but she has her tea at 5.30 and has a drink with that but then doesn't really drink until bedtime at 7/7.30

what drinks does she drink- water or squash? Is she cold at night? Always does a wee before bed?

This happened with my DD. We had to stop using night nappies and go back to regular nappy pull ups for a while as they hold more wee than the night specific ones. She will stop weeing in the night completely eventually but until then I found it easier just to cope with the increased volume of wee as opposed to struggling to get her to remain dry at night.

We have this with our 4 year old.

He needs to go to bed circa 6pm after a busy day at school, but I don't want to restrict fluids as he doesn't drink enough at school!

We are trialling taking him out of bed and putting him on the toilet for a wee around 9, 9.30. this has meant that he doesn't end up with a wet bed around midnight!

I was resistant to taking him out of bed for a wee during the night as a route to being dry at night, but it's worked. I haven't changed the bed during the night for weeks 🙌 it's far less disruptive to sleep than changing the bed.

There isn’t anything you can do other than wait it out :). It’s biological, you can’t train it.

firstly restricting liquids sounds like a reasonable idea but can be counterproductive- part of the bio feedback is the full bladder triggering them awake. If you restrict fluids you actually slow down this mechanism which is vital for being dry at night.

second “lifting” late in the evening- again seems like a good idea but you’re effectively teaching them to wee in their sleep, unless you wake them fully. But again you’re stopping them developing that full bladder waking mechanism.

nappies, bed mats, and wait for the anti diuretic hormone to kick in. If she’s very wet it clearly hasn’t- it stops the kidneys making urine at night.

Aldi pull ups were the best I found, dd was dry at night just after she turned 8 and often with enough volume to over top the pull up so the bed was made up with a water proof sheet topped with inco pads and I used a duvet that could be washed and dried quickly, a cheap one from Asda.

My friend's grandson had this issue.... They were giving him hot chocolate at bedtime, which as I understand it, can have a "diuretic" effect, or the body actually actively tries to expel the sugar content. They stopped the hot chocolate, the super-wet night nappies stopped as well.
Just a thought maybe? Depending on what her bedtime drink is.

I used regular nappies with 2 massive tesco value sanitary towels in them to absorb the volume of liquid overnight.

And, whilst I agree that most night wetting sorts itself with hormones, we ended up with an alarm that sorted everything in a week.

My child was older (6 iirc) and we had sought medical advice so knew it wasn't a physical problem. I was convinced that the alarm wouldn't work and only tried it to placate the enuresis clinic so I was amazed that it did the trick!!

I could have saved myself years of wet sheets and soaking nappies, so I always urge others not to be as sceptical as I was!!!

Just a thought, are you sure they're weeing in their sleep and not when they wake up? My DD was in night time pull ups until she was 5 as I followed the "its biological, you can't train it out of them" theory. However I realised that she was actually dry at night, but doing a huge wee in them in the morning because she couldn't be bothered to get out of bed and go to the toilet!

We had this. We found daytime nappies better than night ones. Last drink at 5:30pm and a big wee before bed at 7pm. At 5.5 something clicked and that was it, thank god!!!

Aldi nappies! They go up to size 7 and we use them on DD who is 4. We alternate between pull ups and actual nappies

Try cutting out blackcurrant juice as well it’s a bladder irritant