5 Yr old still wetting the bed

[Nano0915]

Hi all I had the problem with my son but he was all sorted by now.

But. My daughter is 6 in April and she keeps wetting the bed we finally got her out of pull up the beginning of the year and then in March she started to wet the bed again and then it became every day. So we have had to put pull ups back on her

We tried cutting liquid after 6 ( but truthy if the want I drink I'm not going to stop them getting on as I wake to have a drink at night 🤣)
We tried taking her to the loo when she goes to bed and again at 10pm and then again when we go to bed but she still wets

So we just took the pull up off of her and she will sleep though in a shocking wet bed

I now think she just doesn't wake up when she needs to go, it's not clicking

Anything else we can try

She's currently back in pull ups, but even she doesn't want to be in them because she is a big kid

Presumably March coincided with lockdown and school.closing? In these circs I would get it checked for any physical/medical cause but not be too hard on her as this has been a very stressful year?

It's a hormone thing. Some kids really can't be dry at night until this happens in their bodies.
Have you seen this website?
www.eric.org.uk/why-do-children-wet-the-bed

Honestly, its hormones and I would just roll with it until about 7 when it will hopefully click. If not, you can try a bedwetting alarm (expensive but they do work, some school nurse teams will lend you one but its a bit of a wait) and there is also desmopressin which works wonders but isn't a long term solution - I used it when my DD was 8 and going away with school but still wetting occasionally.

In the mean time, lots and lots of water to drink in the day - get school involved to encourage her to drink, sticker chart for drinking the whole water bottle 3x in a day etc etc. No juice, especially dark coloured juice. And just try not to stress her out about it - nice bubble baths in the morning if she's been wet, don't show any frustration, they really just can't help it at all. My first DD wet the bed until 9, second was dry day and night at 18 months and ai didn't do a thing different

I definitely think it's not Triggering right she just doesn't wake up, even at the beginning of the year she was finally dry at night but we were taking her loo 3 times before we went to bed to make sure her bladder was empty

Doctors don't normally see kids until they are about 10 or 11 for bed wetting as it is still common up till then.

Loads to drink during the day. Not blackcurrant as its mildly diuretic. Drinking more will stretch the bladder so that in time its big enough to hold a nights worth of wee.

@Nano0915 pre-covid we got an appt with the school nurse about it at about 7.5 which is the age it becomes less usual. She had lots of suggestions but still didn't fully stop until around 9

OP my 6yo is exactly the same. We've only tried dc out of pullups a few times and apart from one night, they just slept through despite being soaking wet.
I'm ok with them wearing pullups for now, it's quite common even at age 6 to need them. I just hope the hormone kicks in soon, and I'll consider medical advice in a year or so, or an alarm.

The issue for us was that DC goes through phases of being incredibly lazy and just wetting in the pullups while still awake in bed - sometimes when they've just got into bed. So we've had leaking pullups. They are now back to being motivated to get up and wee if they're awake, and the pullups are much lighter in the morning. But it's a struggle. We have to clearly communicate that we are cross if they do that but not if they wee while asleep, dc just starts saying they did it when they were asleep even if they clearly haven't even gone to sleep yet!

Getting them to drink more, earlier in the day, seems to help, but it's a constant struggle. I'm sick of the sound of my own voice asking them to drink their drink! I've given in and started giving more squash, diluted juice etc, because at least they drink that, although not for every drink.

On the flipside my toddler has been dry at night for 6 months.

Could it be black current juice or other cordials with artificial sweeteners that is causing it?

I was a Ribena junkie as a kid and my parents never made the connection between blackcurrent juice/ cordials and my late bed wetting.

They were not cruel about it in any way and let me wear night nappies to bed so as to avoid soaked sheets (there were no Pull-Ups or DryNites then), with occasional periods of “trying without”. I wore nappies to bed far older than your DD is now.

Fast forward and both DD’s had the same issue as me and I just assumed that they had inherited my bladder issues.

I didn’t want to stress either of them out and they both wore DryNites without getting embarrassed or upset (the fact that they go up to age 15 and say so on the pack helped, I think!)

Then a friend told me about blackcurrent juice and how it irritates the bladder causing it to empty by reflex and how other cordials and “juice drinks” with artificial sweeteners have the same effect.

We experimented, initially for just a week, with just water and milk.

It was like a miracle cure. Almost overnight the bed wetting stopped and after a few nights of dry DryNites we donated the remaining supplies to the food bank.

We added fresh fruit juices back into the mix as an experiment a few weeks later and that didn’t cause any problems but neither have cordials any more, and neither has wet the bed since.

My eldest was eleven at the time and had never been dry.

We had already done the whole experimenting without the DryNites for a few nights, cutting out fluids after 6pm, even the alarm thing (which we ditched after less than a week because it woke us all up) and GP hadn’t identified any issues. Both are NT, no disabilities or anything like that.

So if she has cordials (blackcurrent juiced and Fruit Shoots are the worst) try going to just water and milk for a week and see if it becomes your miracle cure too.

I wish my parents had known this as they would have saved hundreds of pounds on night nappies if they had stopped me having Ribena and had I tried this earlier I might have also saved hundreds on Pull-Ups and later DryNites!

I’ve posted this on other posts here because I’m a bit of an evangelist- it was like a miracle cure for mine and I hope it is for yours too.

Good luck!

Can I join in! My son is almost six and still has to wear pull-ups eveynight as he has ever had a dry night. Every mod I g they are wet through. I’ve tried lifting him out but he still is wet every morning. I just do t know what to do?

@GC12345 I would really recommend an alarm. We managed to borrow one on a local Facebook group. It sorted out our problem in two weeks.....previously our 6 year old had never had a dry night. He now drinks right up to bedtime, sleeps for 12 hours and is always dry.

I'd give it more time tbh. I think DS was pretty close to 6 when he was consistently dry. I was starting to wonder if it would happen and it did. I didn't do anything different so I think it is just a case of being ready - I got him to try for a wee before and after bath, reminded him he had no pull up so to go to toilet if he woke up needing it.

Bet loads of kids are in the same situation it's just not widely talked about.

My DS was 8 before it clicked, so I was reassured on here at the time that it's actually pretty normal and hormones linked.

DD was 7 or 8 before she was reliably out of pullups at night. I echo reading the Eric website and just waiting and watching for a while before you do anything. I was worried too, tried lots of stuff, but it's really perfectly normal at that age.

My dd was 7 before she was reliably dry at night having been day dry since 2. Her little brother wasn’t dry in the day till 3 but dry at night straight away. She had a setting alarm for a few months- maybe it was that or maybe it was just time for her? The alarm did help her feel she was doing something as it was starting to bother her

Is she solidly dry in the day?

If so, get some of the nice pulls up with whatever she's interested in l, reassure her they wouldn't sell them in her age and even older if it wasn't a perfect normal thing, and back off of it completely for a few months. Get her settled back at school then consider then review