Dry at night for months, now wet every night.

[Confusion77]

Ds1 potty trained quickly and easily at 2.5 ish. I wasn't expecting night time dryness, as he was still leaking nappies several times a week at night. However, a few days into starting potty training, he woke up with a dry nappy. Fabulous! This continued for several weeks so I ditched the nappies at night too. So, dry day and night. A few early mornings as he would wake needing a wee, a few wake ups in the night needing a wee, but very quickly was sleeping through dry.

Fast forward 6 or 7 months, and he started having the occasional wet bed. Had changed nursery and was tired . Had been ill. But it got worse and worse until I started lifting him for a wee. It got to the stage where I had to do this every night, in the middle of the night, or he would wet. I never made a big deal of it. Eventually, being exhausted with this and a younger child, I started putting pull ups on at night. I figured that eventually he would start waking with dry pull ups.

He's 4 yrs 4 months. I know (because he's told me) that some times he will consciously wee in the pull up. They are wet every morning. He never gets up for a wee. He never needs a wee in the morning.

I'm thinking about stopping using the pull ups, and asking him to get up for a wee. I wonder if the sensation of seeing without the pull up will wake him, and he'll get back to it that way?

I think if he’s told you he’s weeing consciously it’s a good idea to trial without the pull ups for a couple of weeks. If you do this don’t lift though, lifting just trains the child to wee without fully awakening and makes bed wetting worse. Either be prepared for a wet bed or fully awaken him and have him get out of bed and walk to the toilet so that he learns to wake when he needs to wee.

Definitely don’t punish or criticise for wetting but it’s okay to reward dry nights so long as you don’t make a wet night a big deal. Let him choose something he’d like to work towards and agree that if he has X number of dry nights he can have it - that should hopefully at least stop him from purposefully using the pull up.

If removing the pull ups doesn’t work though I wouldn’t worry too much as 4 is still young and it’s not unusual for a 4yo to still be wetting the bed, especially boys. How old were you and your DP when you stopped wetting the bed as it does tend to be hereditary so if a parent was a late wetter there’s a high chance the child will be too.