Night Time Training - how long do you keep at it if soaking the bed???

[looneytune]

Ds1 is 5 and has been dry in the day since around the time he turned 3. His pull ups have always been soaking wet in the morning and we ended up changing to Huggies Night Time Pants a while ago due to the pull ups leaking as too full.

I started lifting about a year ago to see if they were dry or not so wet but it didn't make a huge amount of difference. I then stopped this as I was pregnant with number 2 and also ds1 went into a mid-sleeper and I couldn't lift him.

Now I've had the baby and it's summer hols, it's the perfect time to try again imo. We put waterproof protection on the bed, duvet and pillowcase and last night was the first night. Twice ds1 woke up soaked and had to be changed. I've explained to dh that this will happen for a bit but he seems to think after last night, ds isn't ready.

Is he right? Or am I right to say that we need to give it a set amount of time before we know for sure as it's so new to him? Ds1 is a heavy sleeper so not sure if this means he'll just keep wetting?

Any views or experience you can pass on?

TIA

Personally would probably give it 3 nights with cutting down on drinks late on etc and then leave it a while again..is Ds1 happy to try?

Mine all wet the bed the first night but then I have been lucky in that they were early trainers

Hi looneytune

My DD will be 6 in Sept and regularly still wets the bed. Unfortuntelty she will not wear pyjama pants or similar so I just go with the flow and do lots of washing :-) DS is 3 and has been bone dry at night since aged 2, so I just comfort myself that evenutally she will stop.

I guess my advice would be that if he was ready, his pull ups would be dry in the morning, so perhaps put him back in them til he starts to regularly be dry in the morning?

BTW, DD is a very heavy sleeper, and I don't think this helps matters.

Also, rightly or wrongly, I won't limit DD's drinks/ I figure if she is 'ready', she will either wake in the night or hold it til morning. DS takes a bottle of water to bed with him and deosn't wet.

DS1 (4.6) is same as yours looneytune - except that he can wet bed and still not wake up! i am waiting for the odd dry nappy before trying again. Not sure how long it's supposed to go if you do it kamikaze style?? I gave up after 3 nights.

What have you decided to do?

ooh - people with the same problem - good old MN!!

My 4.4 DD is a very heavy sleeper and nearly every morning has very full Huggies PJ pants. DH wants to go cold-turkey on her, but I'm not so sure. HV says that lifting and cold-turkey are not the way to go, and it will happen in time, but I'm starting to worry about sleepovers with friends - how do they cope with that when their friends are dry at night?

She's been dry through the day since shortly after 2 - so pretty early, but we've had bad sleep problems with her and finally got her to sleep through around 3 years, but now we are faced with another issue in that she sleeps too deeply through the night and doesn't wake up when she needs a wee!

Will watch this thread with interest. Sorry for the highjack looneytune.

Spiker my DD can also wet the bed and sleep through til morning!

Fettle in terms of sleepovers, I usually know the mums pretty well before allowing DD to stay over, so a quiet word, with DD (make sure you have a big wee before bed, then get up again just before you go to sleep) and also with the mum, usually does the trick. Its not an issue.

DS2 is 6 and a half and is just dry at night - happened by itself in the last few weeks. We had been lifting him when we went to bed and it became apparent that we wasn't going to do a wee at that point.

So it eventually happened by itself. One of the things I have learnt from MN was not to stress about it and that some children take their time about it. (DS1 was dry at night from really early age).

A good product is those bedmat things from, I think, Pampers, if it is only happening ow and then. You put one under the bottom sheet. That saved quite a bit of washing and was a useful back-up for holidays.

I was going to post something similar thank god for mn. I have a 7yo dd who was wetting and sleeping through it she started to be dry by herself just before she went to school (didnt think it was ever going to happen), however I now have a 5yo dd who has been quite happy to still be wearing pull ups at night. She is starting school in 2 weeks and decided she wanted to try without them. First night she wet twice but came and told me (this didnt happen with dd1) second night she wet once at 10pm and last night she woke for a wee as we were going to bed and wet at 7am. Does this sound good or is she not ready. As I didnt have any of this with dd1 I am not sure when to stop trying.

I'm with your dh and with a baby too wouldn't think it a hassle not worth havign atm.

i run bedwetting clinic for my job but we wont see children until 7yrs plus as child needs to want to be dry and feel some embarassment to get them dry.

top tips:

ensure he is drinking at least 1.5litres a day, this is the main reason children wet.

avoide fizzy drinks and pure fruit juices occasionally is ok but not in the 2hrs before bedtime.

at bedtime get him to wee, clean his teeth, then wee again.

dont lift hime unless you can be sure he is fully awake and can hold a conversation that he remembers the next day - otherwise all you are doing by lifting and putting on loo is encouraging him to wee whilst asleep.

take out of nappies let him feel the wet sheets - summer is a good time to try as weather is usually nicer to get sheets dry.

If after 6mths no joy leave him for another 6mths before trying again.

if he gets to 6.5yrs and still wetting see your gp or contact school nurse for an appointment at the bedwetting clinic.

Good advice Lindseyfox!

I took DS out of pull-ups at the advice of the enuresis clinic when he was 7.5yrs, he's now 11.5 yrs and he's probably been dry less than a dozen times!
Desmopressin helps and he now wees just before he wakes. We tried an alarm but he just disconnected it.
I've learnt not to stress about it.

unfit mother (sounds mean typing that am sure you are a fab mother)

sorry to hear that some children take ages to get dry has he had some urodynamics done at the hospital and some further investigation in our area we have a childrens specialist nephrology nurse and we refer to her when we have tried every possiblity.

I dont just hand out alarm, i know alot of clinics do but i always assess whether the child really needs one and what the benefits are if the child is a deep sleeper (my newest question to establish this is did you wake up to the earthquake if they say no they are not going to wake to an alarm!!)

I have no suggestions that to ask for a referral to a paediatrician or a specialist nurse if you have one locally.

oh actually have one which i tried recently with a child in same situation as your son on desmopressin and wetting just before waking, always woke at 7am. We set an alarm clock (unsure whether he would wake to it but put it close to his head) for 20mins before he normally woke up and so far in 4wks we have had 2 wet nights as appose to 6-7 wet nights a week.

I totally symapthise with these children as i wet the bed til i was 15yrs old and one of my brothers til he was 18yrs old!!

I must confess I have given up on our enuresis clinic.
After 4 years the nurse running it seemed to have run out of ideas (no nurse-bashing, I'm one )
DS had a normal bladder scan, we tried swopping Desmopressin for oxybutynin with disasterous results, wet by midnight. DS was horrified threw the pills away and lost confidence in the enuresis nurse, he has AS so everything is black and white.
He now happily takes desmopressin and for 4 years I've washed his sheets everyday. I keep thinking it'll come when he's ready but every now and then worry that I should be doing more.
He starts High school in September and will be going away with them for 3 nights in the first term!!

looneytune we are having exactly the same dilemma as you. Our son starts school in Sept so we thought it was time to get him dry through the night even though he has never woken with a dry nappy (quite the opposite, normally sopping). We've been going for about 2 weeks now with about 3 or 4 dry nights. Does anyone with experience of this think that this sounds worth continuing with or should we just go back to nappies/pull ups and wait for the dry nappy?

Miggins I would give up and wait a while longer.
There is a school of thought on here that says you can make it happen, but that wasn't our experience. As I say, it finally happened for DS at age 6 and a half.

miggins - i'm intrigued, what 'training' are you doing to get to having those 4 dry nights? Are you lifting?

General advice seems to be against it, plus me and DH are so forgetful about that kind of thing...poor spikelet

unfit mother completly understand the aspergers my 16yr old brother has it he was diagnosed at 6yrs.

not to be the bringer of bad news but a new schools and routine will be hard work for you and very stressful for him, bed wetting will prob be the least of your worries.

no worries about losing faith in enuresis clinic - we had a 65yr old running ours til last year (i dipped in and out not a huge fan of clinics full stop as hate it when people dont turn up!!) and when I took over I was appalled and discharged loads and said contact me in 6mths if still wetting poor kids had been coming 4-5yrs and had no luck and were completely unmotivated as expected amd some i referred on.

I generally dont see children for more than 6mths without success, i leave them 6mths then ask them to come back again. They need a break from it, if they are having no success they lose motivation and its very hard on them as they often feel a faliure.

I know its hard with an apergers child but can you get him to become involved in changing the bed - not saying this will stop him but will make him respect the extra work it involves.

Spiker, we've tried lifting some nights at about 10.30pm and sometimes DS manages a wee, sometimes not. Other nights we have not lifted. We tried both to see if there was any correlation between lifting/not lifting and not wetting/wetting. However, there is no correlation so we don't really know what has enabled him to manage the 4 dry nights.
This night time training is certainly tricky!

Wow - lots of conflicting advice out there, isn't there? Do let them wet the bed, wait until you'll getting dry nappies, don't wait until you get dry nappies.

It also all has a bit of a stigma attached to it - of the few people who know in RL, some are completely shocked that DD still wears nappies at night, others are quite supportive and understanding.

Not sure I could face washing sheets every day, with a 10 month old as well making extra washing! But I want to do what is best for DD.

My feeling is not to do it now though, we go on holiday in a couple of weeks, then she starts school and I figure she'll be so tired by that that the chances of her waking up to wee will be small!

Such a tricky one!

Interesting what you say Lindsayfox about the 1.5litres of water! Seems an awful lot! DD hardly drinks anything despite much encouragement and consequently doesn't wee much during the day - in fact it is a challenge getting her to wee during the day sometimes.

You can't train a child to be dry at night.

Just a quick update hilst feeding ds2 and ds1 is out I've lurked on this thread but not had chance to post until now. Dh told me that ds1 did NOT wake himself up being wet, it was dh who woke him to get him dry. We tried the next night and same again with ds1 waking up about half hour after wetting, crying We then put him in pull up and decided if he's not even waking when he does it, he's not ready plus we have a lot going on with a new 6 week old.

Thanks for all the advice and good luck to others trying

I would urge patience.

I have 5.5 year old id twins - one has just about become dry (of his own accord)- one wet bed in about a week. The other is nowhere near dry - even when he wakes up saying his nappy is dry it usually isn't.

My problem is that at this - when they week they are big ones and soak everything in sight. cue major washing - nightmare like yesterday when it was raining (so nowehere to dry it) and the washing machine broke on the second load !

Now I just have to learn how to be patient (not my strong point)

not uncommon for boys to not be cry by 5 surely? A significant percentage take until 7 to be dry through the night.

Agree with you both. I wanted to try ds out as he wanted to plus we know for a fact he wees in his pull up when awake out of lazyness so wanted to see how it went. We're now leaving it