No potty training and suddenly dry at night

[onomatopoeia]

I was just wondering if this has happened to anyone else?
My daughter is not even 20 months and I was planning to wait a few more months before even thinking about potty training. She wear nappies all the time but I talk to her a lot about toilet habits etc in preparation for potty training. The past couple of mornings her nappy has been bone dry. I assumed she was a bit dehydrated but she always has lots of water during the day and she always has 7oz milk before bed. My childminer suggested that she may be starting to train herself already! I hadn't even considered that. Has this happened to anyone else? I assumed dry nights were the last thing to happen, not the first!

We never had to train our children to be dry at night - it just happened and we probably noticed at about 18 months.

However, there is being dry at night and then being able/willing to ask to do a wee. Our dd1 wasn't fully potty trained until almost 3 and dd2 - who is completely continent will only do her biz in a nappy.

Being dry at night - though - means you won't have to worry about getting them dry at a later stage. And some children aren't dry at night until over 5.

You can't train a child to be dry at night. They have to develop the ability themselves. It's a physiological capability rather than a learned behaviour. Some kids are very early, for others it takes longer. Congrats - you got lucky!

As Molly says, it's just a hormonal thing. They're dry at night when physiologically capable and this is different to dry during the day which at most ages involves some degree of teaching.

i have noticed my son (3.1) is also dry at night....so have been trying to get him to sit on the toilet prior to doing the morning wee....sometimes we are lucky sometimes we are not.
I can easily get him to poo on the toilet as he is regular, however he does not wee on command yet, and am trying to train him to say when he needs to go for a wee.....he knows as he goes off and hides, as doesn't want to be interrupted form playing etc. Having limited success with this so far.
Dry at night, pooing on the toilet, yet no luck with dryness in the day...i think we are going backwards also yet am not complaining currently!

It is common for babies not to wee in their sleep. So if your dd is one of these it maybe that she is sleeping right through and therefore being dry. Ds is only seven months but we have had some dry nights on the occasions he has slept through. He wears cloth nappies and i get him up to potty him asap as we do ec so i know he is dry. Personally I find it hard to tell in disposables!

You could try a gentle ec style approach to potty training by popping her on the loo or potty when she wakes up. This is always a good time to catch a wee, even if the nappy is wet. As your dd may have a very full bladder you're quite likely to have some success. That way you can start to build the association between wee and nappy off/potty, and build on the fact that she might be conciously releasing (as she doesn't while asleep).