7yo DS still not dry at night

[HairyFrogMother]

My boy turns 7 next month and he still isn’t dry at night. Should I be worried?

He is health and happy in all regards. He simply doesn’t wake up! Some nights his nappy pants aren’t that wet, some nights they are soaking and he wakes in a massive damp patch.

The constant washing of bed linen is a pain but I’m not really keen on restricting his fluids, etc - I’m just wondering how common/uncommon is this at age 7 ?

My daughter stopped at 13. Nappy pants are completely useless, they are made to feel like normal underwear and in doing so they lose all practicality. For us, after around 9 years old they leak badly every single time. There isn’t enough pulp in them and they are far too narrow between the legs to give that “normal underwear” feeling.
Kids that are less abled wear the slip type for good reasons - They always work. They worked for my daughter too. If I knew back when she was 8 what I know now then I would have put the money I wasted on Drynites to small adult slip nappy, 100%.

I would say it is worth making a gp appointment to discuss, even though they will probably say there is nothing they can do yet. But it will start a formal medical record of the problem which might be useful down the line. I would be pushing to find out what medical intervention there can be, and what the timescale is (I have a vague memory 10 is a bit of a step change?) so that you can be straight on it when the time comes if he hasn't got there naturally. It's not fair to just leave it and wait for it to sort itself out - it's bound to restrict his activities, sleepovers and school trips etc.

Same here. He's not far off 8. We've had phases where he's been dry for a fortnight at a time but then it falls apart again. We've had one dry night over the whole holidays.

And it really fluctuates. This morning was just a little bit but yesterday was soaked through sheet, waterproof sheet, second sheet and onto 2nd waterproof one. Always gets on the duvet too so he has a waterproof cover on that under the patterned one.

We've been just accepting it at the moment. DH was the same as a boy. Will probably wait another 6 months before trying to go to GP I think.

Ds 8 has only just got better. I stop drinks 2 hours before he goes to bed I also set an alarm for midnight to take him to the toilet and when I know he is awake I immediately remind him to go toilet then he can watch some tv and have breakfast.

For my ds it was down to him being lazy, well comfortable and not wanting to get up to go to the toilet.

I also found if his bedroom was colder at night, he would have a night accident.

Also regarding bedding I put a mattress protector, fitted sheet and repeat to make changing easier at night then put the wet bedding and clothes on for a wash first thing in the morning too.

My daughter has learning difficulties but I did seek support once she was 7, the bed wetting clinic nurse wasn't that useful but did prescribe desmo melts which I used in combination with a bed wetting alarm to get her dry overnight. It took about 2 weeks of broken nights but really worth it IMO.

Ds1 was 8 I think before he was dry every night, not helped by his younger brother being dry at 3. I agree that the pull up pants didn't really help.
What helped for us was taking him to use the toilet when we went to bed so around 11PM/ midnight, even if he wax very sleepy.
We only had to do this for a few nights and he stopped wetting the bed at night. It may have been he was ready at any rate, it's to do with a hormone that doesn't kick in for some children until they're older.
It is completely normal for some kids.

We took DS to bedwetting clinic when he turned 7. He had long chat with eunersis nurse and she asked us to monitor bedwetting for 8 weeks whilst she sorted out alarm type options and he stopped bed wetting in 5 weeks.

Full on placebo affect he beleived he could so he did it! Not promising anything but its apparently not that unusual.