When to stop night nappies for a 5 year old?

[CatStoleMyChocolate]

Our (just turned) 5 year old DS trained very easily for daytime toileting age 3 but still wears a pull-up at night. It’s really frustrating because he tends to be dry for as long as two weeks, before then soaking through a pull-up. There’s no real pattern to it either (beyond perhaps tiredness being a factor). He is definitely majority dry though.

He is keen to stop wearing pull-ups at night. I’m torn because on the one hand, he is mostly dry and it would be a fortnightly “accident”. On the other hand, he is consistently wetting a pull-up every couple of weeks.

Would you go for it and see if this prompted a stop to wetting, or would you hold off until the wet pull-ups stopped? (We did the latter with my oldest and he was night dry around 4). I know it’s hormonal but it feels quite late, especially as he trained so easily.

I'd stop with the nappies and deal with the wet beds I think. Put a good mattress protector underneath him, and stuff to soak up the wee - eg puppy training pads - under his sheets.

I would wait. For me it's not the sheets that is the problem with an accident, protector will keep the mattress dry, it's the duvet getting soaked and then having to dry and wash and dry a huge duvet before the next night is tough

DD turned 5 this January. She daytime toilet trained at 2.5 without a single hiccup and yet has been in night time pull ups till 2 weeks ago. Like your DS she would go weeks with dry pull ups and then suddenly one day soaked through.

We decided to make a clean break ten days ago. She put the pull ups in the cupboard under stairs. She helped us line her bed with Bed mats. She understood that she will have a big wee last thing before bed and that at 11 pm when we go to bed we will wake her for a very sleepy wee.

We've been doing that for the last ten days and it's been fine so far.

The question now is at what stage do we stop waking her when we go to bed for that 11 pm wee? Should we leave it one night and see what happens? Should we continue waking her at 11 to train her body to hopefully get up around then for a wee? Do we keep waking her for that 11 pm week for a couple months? and to that, I don't have an answer I'm afraid!

Waterproof duvet protector! We use it for our 4yo for this very reason.

I'd wait until the weather improves slightly so you can hang washed duvet outside to dry, but would do it soon. Buy a few sets of mattresses protecters and sheets and put them on the bed in layers, then it's just top layer off and straight back into bed. Having a second duvet in a cover ready to go also helps (we just used the out of season on, with an extra blanket on top).

If he wants to stop then I would. You can protect the bed. It might make a difference anyway.

Thanks - this is really helpful. We do have a spare duvet so it wouldn’t be the end of the world. And we would use mattress protectors but a duvet protector sounds like a game changer!

We're in the same boat with DD.

I think that often, her wet pull-up is from her doing a big wee when she first wakes up and isn't quite with it yet. I hope that if she knows she's not wearing one she'll make a bigger effort to get out of bed for that! But I'm not brave enough to go cold turkey yet...

I'd wait. DD was 5 when we took the night time pull ups off her, they'd been consistently dry for a couple of months before I took the plunge. That was almost 3 years ago and she's only ever wet the bed once since then and that was when she was poorly.

Start restricting drinks completely after 6pm. Stick to this religiously.

A few days after this, wake her earlier, then earlier again the following night. You should work back to the normal bedtime pee.