First time poster, so please be gentle.
My son is 14 and I am getting a bit worried about him. He potty trained fine at normal age (I think he was about 2 and a half, feels like a lifetime ago now), basically night and day. No significant issues.
But throughout his childhood he has had very occasional and very mild bedwetting accidents. When I say very occasional, I mean, perhaps once every few months - maybe 3, 4, 5 times a year, so barely 1% of the time. And when I say mild, I mean, enough just to get his pyjamas a bit damp and leave a small patch on his bedsheet. We're not talking about significant amount of liquid.
I have over the years chalked this down to him being a deep sleeper and, given that it's so infrequent and he is quite easily upset / embarrassed, I have never raised it with him and always just reassured myself that he will grow out of it. He has never mentioned it happening or seemed upset by it, even when he was very young (like starting school age). I would only notice when making his bed and of course whenever there was a small patch on the sheet from time to time, I would find the corresponding issue on his pyjamas. From the odour there is no doubt that it's pee, but it's a really small amount.
The issue seems more likely to arise when he's either very tired or we're in a strange environment, like on holidays.
Anyway, he is now 14 and very much a young man (I have to ask him to reach for things on high shelves in supermarkets!) but the issue is still not showing any sigs of going away. Last weekend I overslept when we needed to be out very early, and raced in to get the kids up. He was in a deep sleep, I practically pulled him out of bed as we were running late. As I did, it was obvious that his shorts were damp - not wet, but what I would describe as clammy. Obviously he is at the age where wet dreams are also a thing, but this was a large enough damp area on his shorts to not be that, sort of covering his thigh on the side he was sleeping. I didn't say anything about it (too busy trying to get him moving!) but I think he was immediately aware of it and trying to hide it from me a bit. When I checked later, he'd put the offending shorts deep into his washing basket, and it was clear that it was pee.
I have done a reasonable amount of research on teenage bedwetting and see stats around 1-2%, so I know it happens. But I am unsure how common it is and how seriously I should take it. For example, I don't know if that 1-2% includes teenagers with disabilities, which may make it much rarer in a healthy boy his age. And I don't know if that 1-2% figure is for kids who wet a lot and need pullups at 14, and whether the number who have occasional and very small sleep accidents is actually much higher than that recorded, making it much more common. Since pre-school years he has never had a heavy bedwetting incident and never wet himself in the daytime.
I am reluctant to take him to the doctors because in a practical sense it's not a big deal to our lives, being so infrequent and mild, and his self-esteem is fragile. But I am also concerned as to how common this is, and he's at that age where he's still my little boy but he's also less than 3 years from driving.
Any thoughts appreciated!
Thanks