How long to try without night nappy??

[Ninni]

My son is 4 1/2 and stopped wearing day nappies at 2 1/2. No problems at all, went very smoothly and quickly.

He has never had a dry nappy in the morning and we thought we'd wait until he was ready. But now we felt we'd try and give him some support, it seemed more of a habit than a need; 'the nappy is there so it's ok to wee'.

We have tried a week now and there is no improvement. I take him up at 11 to sit on the potty but he comes in to us every night between 04 and 07 and has peed in the bed.

The potty is next to his bed. He drinks little if anythig in the evening. He wants to be dry.

Any suggestions, advice? How long shall we try for? I feel I can only be up every night and change sheets for so long...

My DS2 was dry during the day about the same age as yours.

He's 5.4 and still in night nappies - I was lifting him at 9pm and 11pm but he never woke up to go for a wee (this is with no drinks/wee at 7 before bed).

I just don't think my DS is ready but it't not a big deal for him and at least he's getting a proper night's sleep.

I really wouldn't bother for the moment.

My HV said to wait until my dd was dry at night for at least a week, and then to take her nappy off. This happened only when my dd was 4. However once the nappy was off, she only had one or two accidents. It seemed as if a switch had gone on somewhere in her body and suddenly she was capable of being dry at night. I did nothing to help her. It just happened all by itself.

From what I've read, I think kids need to develop a particular hormone before they are dry at night and some kids get this hormone later than others.

I've also heard that waking them to wee in the night is not considered a good idea because it trains them to need to wee at a particular time.

However, feel free to ignore all my advice as I am currently going through potty training hell in the shape of my dc2, so I am obviously not that great at it!

It doesn't sound like he is ready. from what I hear there doesn't seem to be much you can do to train them on this. I'd say go back to night nappies then give it another go in 2 months. Keep trying for 4 or 5 days every couple of months and at some point he will be fine.

When you do this, make sure that the only drink he is offered after about 3pm is water and that the last drink he has at all is a good hour before bedtime.

All I would add is that you don't necessarily have to wait until you get dry nappies in the morning. Neither of my DDs had dry nappies in the morning. I think that they used to wee in them first thing when they woke up as they were both fine once we stopped the night nappies.

DS1 had mostly dry nappies at 2 years 9 months and he stopped wearing them then. He wet the bed occasionally but was fine.

DS2 was still having wet pull-ups pretty much every morning at nearly 5. We decided to try him without. It took about 2-3 months of taking him to the toilet at our bedtime, wet beds every 2-3 nights (sometimes twice in the night), but he did get better at it. About 6 weeks ago, I stopped taking him to the toilet and he's doing OK. He still wets himself on the way to the toilet sometimes and sometimes the bed, but not so often now. He has gone 2 weeks without wetting. There's been a lot of extra washing, but I'm glad we persevered with it. He'd been weeing in his sleep for nearly 5 years so it took time to break that habit.