Help please - dry nights?

[ncdoddy]

Hi,

My son is just about 4 years old and he is waking up uncomfortable because his pull ups are wet.

Some nights he wakes up and takes himself to the toilet, but that is a minority of occasions.

Can anyone please share advice or a good source of advice for how I help him train his body not to wee in his shorts, and to start waking up when he needs the toilet?

I'd be very grateful!

Thanks a lot

For night time training they need to producing enough of the hormone that limits urine production whilst asleep, it’s not really about waking up to go. 4 is the average age for this so he’s really very normal. You can limit drinks before bed and I’ve heard blackcurrant can be very bad so avoid that if he drinks it, but that’s probably as far as you’d go at his age. Is he in a night time, not daytime pull up? You could also try the dry nights pyjama pants for older kids if he needs more absorbency.

If he sometimes wakes at night and takes himself to the toilet that’s a great sign. But initially if you want to get out of pull-ups you will need to wake him up in the night and take him to wee, and in the early days you may need to do this more than once a night. Once you work out his pattern of when he is typically weeing you can slowly work on pushing the wake up time back, or he may start to wake more consistently on his own.

What pull ups are you using? It's totally normal to be wet at night at his age, so I wouldn't stress yourselves out about trying to get him dry. Could you use nappy pants, such as the ones from Aldi as these aren't designed to make the child feel wet so may work better

About 1/3 of all children are still wet at night at 4.

My DD who is otherwise developmentally fine is still wet a couple of nights a week.

Look up "Eric" - it's a kids continence charity and they have some excellent advice on their website.

Kids should be dry at night by age 5. If they're not seek a referral from your GP.

BUT there are things you can do first and that your GP will ask you to do if not already tried and they are outlined on the ERIC website.

My eldest was wetting through nighttime pants age 5 and we followed the advice, then tried a bed wetting alarm. We decided to buy one as although they can be lent out by the hospital specialist there's a loooong wait. Cost us about £75 and it had done it's job within a fortnight. They have a decent resale value too

Good luck, it's a total pita when they're bigger and wet at night

Hello! My boy has just turned 4 and wears a nappy for bed. At least 3/4 times a week he’s wet through in a morning. Absolutely soaked. I don’t know what to do but I’d just like to reach out as a fellow 4 year old Mummy who is struggling.

My boy is 4 and also still wet at night. Could you go into him when you're going to bed and change him into a dry nappy? I did that for a while.

Make sure he pees before bed

Do a dream wee around 10pm

Get rid of pull ups. Invest in some good mattress protectors

Did you know that about 1-2% or otherwise healthy adults continue to wet the bed?

No one ever talks about it but that’s literally one or two in every hundred people.

I wouldn't do this unless you want to be endlessly washing bedding every night

We had the idea that we'd wait until ours were totally dry to stop night nappies, aged about 5 our eldest asked not to wear them, we let him try, the first 2 or 3 nights were awful but we let him and he's had very few accidents since. His younger brother who was 3 said if he's not wearing them then I wont and was dry from night one with no accidents after the first week. I'd say try without for a week and see how it is.

Another vote for the bed wetting alarm. As I understand it the hormone produced stops the production of urine over night - but it’s possible to train your body to wake up at the urge pee and go to the toilet. This is what the bed wetting alarm does.