Any tips for getting DD off nappies at night?

[clarebear1]

Daytime is now sorted, started night yesterday and woke up to a wet bed as expected, any tips please!? She is 3!

hmmm going to have to as 6am today wasnt much fun either!

What about the EXPENSE of the nappies though! I have been a cloth nappies mum all along (except at night) and at almost 50p a nappy, pull-ups feel like the biggest waste of money! (I have tried cloth nappies for night time with disastrous consequences). We started trying to train DS (4) again last night but we're not holding out much hope! Good luck to everyone else!

My DS is 5 in Sept and due to start school, tried first time out of nappies last night and changed bed twice thru night!! I have read all your comments and found them helpful, feel I maybe shouldn't worry so much but he seem so big to be putting nappies on!! Not sure whether to keep trying it this week? means lots of washing!!!

DD had the odd dry night again last night :-) ive found if i go up there 10/11pm put her on the potty and she actually goes then she stays dry till the morning, which means she must be just doing one wee at night. Gonna take a while still

DS1 is still in night nappy at 4.5 and it hits the floor like a lead balloon in the morning . Am happy to be lead by him - he has no interest at all in getting up in the night to go to the toilet, in fact he will refure point blnk if you wake him/ask him when he's woken for another reason so I've given up that tactic! Mind you he's only really recently become reliably dry at daytime despite starting potty training just after his 2nd birthday at his insistance "want wee wee like Daddy"
On the other hand DD is 2.8 and had been dry at night since March but has just started wetting the bed about 2 wks ago, sometimes two or even three times in the night. I'm very reluctant to go back to night time nappies but am starting to pull my hair out.....getting up twice to change bedding on top of getting up for my 5month old DS2 is taking it's toll

Any suggestions from anyone who's had this problem would be very gratefully accepted, please !

Is this true about some mysterious hormone kicking in? My understanding is that children don't develop bladder control unless their parents do something about it (assuming, that is, that they don't have any other problem).

I found this worked with all of ours: nothing to drink for the hour or so before bed, and a last wee before getting in to bed (even if it's just a teeny tiny wee). They were all dry at night at just two. We had a night light and potty in their rooms at first. I just don't buy this hormone thing. How many of us were still in night-time nappies at three plus?!

The hormone is anti-diuretic hormone or vasopressin which is produced by the pituitary gland and makes the body produce less urine overnight than during the day.

I agree that some behavioural training is needed as well but if your child is not producing ADH then no amount of star charts will work.

Aha! Thank you, LaDiDaDi.

But it is still a mystery to me why so many children are starting school now with night-time nappies when they didn't 30 years ago. Is it just that it's so easy to stick them in pull-ups (my own personal hate) that there's no particular incentive for parents to do anything about it?

(Lest I sound smug and know-all-y, rest assured we have a zillion other problems with the children. Nocturnal wetting just doesn't happen to be among them ).

Firstly 3 is VERY young for a child to be dry at night. Those that are have done it of there own accord.

As has been said on this thread urine production is slowed overnight to prevent us getting an overfull bladder, and hence allowing us to be able to hold it overnight. This is hormonally controlled, and this control mechanism doesn't develop until somewhere between 2 and 8.

A child won't be considered for medical investigation until they are around 8 - so please don't fret yet.

It is also counter intuitive to limit fluids - as if you go too far the bladder shrinks...making the problem worse.

One thing that has been mentioned...and is something that you can definately do is to remove red/dark/blackcurrant based fluids which can stimulate the bladder. This is the first thing that is done as part of medical intervention, and from personal experience my 2 children that drink predominantly orange juice/apple juice were dry at night from the day they were dry by day. My DTD who would only drink ribena as a toddler took a bit more night training - but not a lot as we let her lead.

I know that that observation holds true for several children I know.

At the end of the day I don't think you can train a child for night dryness in the same way as you can day dryness. You do have to let them take the lead.

If you google this topic, it's interesting to see that most of the advice comes from parents whose children are not dry at night. I think there's an element of one parent reinforcing another in this. The Australian continence association does say that most children are not dry before four - but that if they are, they have their parents to thank for it (both for taking action and, in some cases, for passing on early-dry genes). I think the hormone argument is a handy one for a lot of people - rather like overweight people blaming their hormones when, in fact, hormones are involved relatively rarely in obesity. I'm also a bit suspicious of this whole 'letting children take the lead' thing as it often extends to their lives generally. But hey ho!

You can't train children to be dry at night.

I still have my youngest 2 in nappies at night, no bearing on when they were dry in the day.

If the hormone arguement wasn't true then why would giving children a synthetic version of the hormone (desmopressin) make them dry at night? (Not every child admittedly but it's highly effective though not without side-effects in some).

My dd has been dry in the day since 2.2. She's still in pullups at night and has just turned 4. We've tried all sorts but her pullups are massive in the morning. She's wet before 10pm when i go to bed, despite restricting drinks and toilet just before bed. I suspect she's a really heavy sleeper. The other afternoon she had an hour nap and wet the bed and didn't realise at all. She's never had a dry pull-up in the morning, ever. Yet has always been fantastic in the day and was 'dry' in one day. She also wants to be out of pullups and keeps asking but she just wets the bed. So it's not like we (or her) are being lazy, i don't think, she just can't do it yet.

(And for what its worth,my mum kept harping on about how 30 years ago i was dry in the day at 1 blah blah blah, but how she always had a row of knickers drying cos of my accidents! I waited till DD was over 2 and she's never had an accident!)

LaDiDaDi - a fair point. What I wonder is whether production of the necessary hormone is inhibited by parents not being pro-active enough on the wet nappies front? Just a thought...

LadyHooHa, as a parent of children late to become dry at night, of one whom has bladder problems during the day, and also as one of a family of bedwetters, I can with experience and honesty say that you are talking absolute tosh. Do you really think that I didn't want to be dry at night? Or that our mum, with no disposables, didn't want us to be dry, or didn't make hugely pro-active efforts to try and help us be dry? I was even sent for pyschotherapy (that was the approach in the 70s).

Ds1 wasn't reliably dry at night until he was 8, and that was after a year of lifting every night.

Dd has bladder problems for which she has to take long-term medication (which does not stop the production of urine) to have any control at all during the day, yet she at 6 is begining to have dry nappies at night after being lifted - much earlier than her brother who had no bladder problems.

hi there

I'm reading this with interest as my ds is 4.3 and we've tried without success to get him dry at night. we've tried lifting (but he couldn't wee) and we've tried just taking him out of nappies.

we had a break over the summer as we were away a lot but have tried again. he's wet the bed almost every night (6 out of 7 I'd say) and wet his bed and then our bed last night.

somewhere in the back of my mind I thought boys were later than girls? I have an older DD and she was dry at night pretty soon after being dry in the day...I kinda assumed it would be the same for my 2nd (foolish error!)

I'm worried that he's getting upset because he's 'failing' to be dry...but we are at a loss at what to do! I'm also flagging at the interupted sleep too.