Enuresis in 8 year old

[Levantine]

Things are fairly calm at the moment and I am considering getting a referral re ds's enuresis. The thing that is stopping me is that wearing night nappies doesn't seem to bother him (though he said he would be happy to give it a go) and I don't want to drag him along to a clinic if there isn't really all that much they can do. However, his nappies are beginning to leak a bit and obviously we will need to sort it at some point.

What are people's experiences? Has anyone had any success?

Hi Levantine,
I have some experience of this as my ten year old ds has always been in pull ups until very recently, and 9'times out of 10, absolutely soaks them, often through to pjs and even sheets.

At age 7 he was seen by the school nurse and she tried to increase his bladder capacity by getting him to drink lots in the day. We kept lots of charts - had to write down how much he drank, measure his output one a day etc. Unfortunately he still soaked his pull ups at night. For a while after that, I decided that we should just let him outgrow this in his own time, but that didn't happen.

Earlier this year, we changed his pull ups to an enuresis alarm (the rodger one) which makes a loud noise as soon as ds starts to wee. Theory is you then get up, ds goes to the toilet, then changes his pants, reattached the alarm, then goes back to bed.

That was met with quite a lot of success, and really saved on the washing, though we often found ourselves trying to wake a very drowsy boy to go to the toilet! We had a dual alarm, ie when the alarm went off in ds's bedroom, it also went off in ours.

Just a week ago, after being referred by our doctor, we saw an enuresis consultant who prescribed our son with a tablet which he puts under his tongue each night before bed. And so far we have had 5 out of 5 dry nights! The tablet tricks the body into doing what it should do naturally, which I to stop the production of urine at night. The tablet is called desmopressin. We have to go back for a review in 3 months.

I must admit, I don't particularly like him taking medication, but I think the dryness is good for his self esteem, and certainly makes my washing load less.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for replying that's really helpful. So, as far as you know, do they stay on medication in definitely? That's the bit I don't get. I'm with you on the self esteem and washing and not at all anti medication btw

I'm not completely sure. We have to go back in 3 months. My brother, who is a pharmacist, seems to think that it is likely he will be taken off the medication after the 3 months, in the hope that the body will have learnt to do what the medication does, naturally, ie that the body will have learnt to stop producing urine at night. Hope that makes sense!

DS1 was not dry at night at the same age. Might be off the wall but DS1 had retained reflexes. I think it is the spinal gallant reflex that is often triggered by the waistband of PJs and the child pees whilst still asleep. He became dry once the reflex was suppressed - easy everyday exercises. It is also easy to see if the reflex is retained. See youtube or google.

I had bought a bed wetting alarm but was waiting for a school nurse referral so didn't try it. Found the nurse useless but she did provide a letter for the GP to issue a prescription for Desmomelts. I used the alarm in combination with the maximum dose of the medication.

When my daughter was having dry nights after about 4 nights, I then reduced the dose of the medication each night and still used the alarm. It took less than 3 weeks in total. I think the alarm retrained her brain and the medication made it easier in terms of volume. It was a tricky 3 weeks and I was shattered, lots of racing up and down in the night but a fantastic outcome and well worth it.

My daughter was almost 8 at the time and has severe learning difficulties. She is 16 now!

Thanks keepon I'll look into retained reflexes. Thanks for all other replies too