Bed wetting clinic appt- what will they suggest?

[popgoestheweezel]

Ds is almost 7 and has never had a dry night in his life. He has been referred to the enueresis clinic by the comm paed who has been seeing him to assess his social communication difficulties but has now passed him on to CAMHS for their evaluation.
To be honest, the bed wetting is one of the least of our worries with all the behavioural issues we have to deal with and very far down the list of priorities but obviously, at the same time, we don't want the bedwetting to become a big problem. Atm, we don't really make any comment on the issue to ds and never have. Occasionally, he will say he is embarrassed and doesn't want his friends to know but for the most part he doesn't seem that bothered.
We know it's important for him to drink plenty during the day but his issue is PDA so encouragement is generally counter productive. Because of the PDA I am not sure an alarm would work well, usually when he is woken from sleep (e.g.. if he falls asleep in the car) he will awake straight into a meltdown and I'm not keen on coping with one in the middle of the night! Also, he already disturbs dd in the evenings with his repeated demands of us so I don't really want to add to that problem.

My DD has VERY similar issues. All I can say is that the only thing that worked (because every 'initiative' that was tried was something for her to kick off over, due to PDA issues•) was TIME.

•DD hasn't yet been dxd PDA, she's HFA, but 10 years ago, PDA was dxd as HFA. We are trying to get a PDA dx currently.

DD didn't stop bed wetting until she was 12y7mo.

Is he is a bunk bed or cabin bed? I found one thing that improved DD's wetting was to be in a bed that didn't obstruct her movement to the toilet.

The enuresis clinic will probably ask you to get him to pee in a jug, to measure output, and also to keep a chart of this. Which is fun with a demand avoidant child...

Bicarbonate of soda, sprinkled on a mattress, left half an hour, and then hoovered off, will take all the smell out of a mattress, btw...

They may suggest Desmomelts too - a medication that replaces the missing hormone that tells the body to wee or something. They are little tablets that dissolve under their tongue.

If you can get the DC to take them. Which I couldn't with DD.

Thanks, he has never had a dry night in his life and has always worn pj pants. We are very wary of trying any techniques at all because we are also dealing with PDA.
Ds is in such a bad place ATM that we are certainly not in an emotionally strong enough position to even think about anything but waiting to see if it happens by itself.
Nurse is very sympathetic though, she knows all about ds cos she originally referred us to the paed over our concerns two years ago. I said to her that on our list of issues to deal with the enueresis was pretty low down!

DS was prescribed desomelts. We were lucky that he was compliant with taking them however we found that DS often woke up at around 5.00am having wet himself. It was suggested that he needed to take them later so we tended to give them to him just before we went to bed. As they dislve on the tongue, we were able to give him them whilst he was asleep. The medication worked and we have now weaned DS off them. He is now dry at night!!!

The clinic did suggest trying to get him to drink more during the day etc but it was impossible to do when he was at school. We also had the 'drink a pint of water then pee into a jug' challenge. DS enjoyed the novelty the first time but refused to drink the water after that!!

TBH the clinic visits seemed a waste of time - it would have been easier ifhte GP could have just prescibed the desomelt as we had to go back to the GP for the prescription after having been to the clinic!!

Hiya my dd is 7 and also has never had a dry night yet either. She has aspergers and we have enough sleep issues without trying the alarm. Her paediatrician agreed with us, our aim at the minute is getting her sleeping through with melatonin. She wears pull ups at night. I have been told it is the immaturity of part of the brain that produces vasopressin, the hormone that concentrates your wee at night so you can hold onto a small volume and pee in the morning, she has just not produced enough of this hormone yet. We are going to wait a while longer yet, till she is sleeping better then ask for a referral to a clinic, but I think the only route that would work with dd is the desmopressin drug tbh. I was also told to avoid black currant juice and make sure she drinks plenty in the day to stretch her bladder and make it stronger. All the best to you.