Bedwetting - Chicago,IL

My almost 6 year old son is very similar. We go weeks without accidents and then they start up again and he'll have several back to back. I use the waterproof pads others have mentioned. Between wet spells I leave them under the bottom sheet, when he has more than one close together, they go over the bottom sheet for a week or two; he will pull the pad off and change his pjs without waking me up. Saves a whole lot of washing and lost sleep! I just accept that his body is growing and changing and try not to get frustrated with the wet spells.

I was a bedwetter and my oldest son had the same problem.

When my son was about 8 we bought the alarm system that goes off when the child starts to wet. The system worked very well but I'll warn you, for about a week we had some very long nights. I followed several of the suggestions that were on the web-site for the system: I sewed little pockets in his underwear to hold the sensor in place, we practiced laying down and pretending to sleep and setting off the alarm and getting up and going to the bathroom. We were up 2 or 3 times a night for the first 2 or 3 nights, then it really started to work and we would go several days without the alarm going off at all.

As other Mom's have said, it is not her fault, try not to punish her. Withholding liquid is a form of punishment, I'm not saying give her liters of water, but let her have a drink.

Try the system, they really work.

M.

My son started wetting the bed about 1st grade and DIDN'T stop until just abuot a year ago at 13. We used oral meds (caused huge problems) tried nose sprays (didn't work). You name it we did it.

One of the mama pedia mommas suggested taking my son to a chiropractor. After about 5 or 6 adjustments it worked!! He was so thrilled! Call chiropractors who are familiar with this process. I call and talked to about 3 of them. One of them was actually a high school friend. So he was able to offer some pretty honest explanations. It has something to do with nerve endings and the spin and pressure.

I encourage you to call and talk to a few chiropractors and question this concept. It worked for us.

6 is still very young in terms of bedwetting; it's common up to age 10. Since it started after she had been dry for a while and it's sporadic you might want to get her checked for constipation. Kids can poop regularly and still be constipated, the dr can check with an xray. Many times correcting the constipation will end the bedwetting. Think about it, the full colon pushes on the bladder so there is less space for urine and they have to go more often. It also desensitizes the bladder since it's being pushed on all the time and the child doesn't recognize the 'full' signal because of the desensitization.
If her health checks out ok then just put her back in pull ups. It will save your sanity and make her feel less guilty. She's not doing it on purpose; if there's nothing physically wrong she'll just have to outgrow it. The alarm won't work until SHE is ready to do it, she'll just sleep through it. My son wet the bed till age 9 before he decided he was ready for the alarm. It took weeks (8-10) of wearing the alarm before he was consistently dry - it is a process and not an easy one. If she isn't committed it won't work.

She is possibly going through a growth spurt. No kid wants to wake up in pee so thinking you can solve it with rewards is useless since she doesn't have control over it. Take it from me, a former bedwetter and the mother of 3 out of 4 bedwetters. We have all outgrown it. Yes, talk to the pediatrician to rule out any issues. Keep up with the waterproof mattress pad and you can even double make the bed so that if she has an accident in the middle of the night you pull off the soiled bedding and the clean is already underneath. Please don't blame your daughter it's humiliating enough. Typical bedwetting has to do with a hormone that hasn't kicked in yet. If your daughter has been dry through the night since she has been potty trained and this is a brand new thing then you definitely need a trip to the pediatrician. I wish you luck and patience, I have been there! If you want to PM me I can give you more info on our experiences.

She had a growth spurt and her bladder has not caught up. Put her in pullups and let her sleep. Poor kid, she must be exhausted. She will start being dry again soon but until then, tell her she needs the rest more than the undies.

Our son is 7 and we've struggled with nighttime dryness for a few years. Finally we got alarm underwear. I had been putting it off for a long time thinking that he would grow out of it. I've limited water, wakened him before we went to bed to get him to use the toilet, used reward charts, gave rewards, etc. But, he would only stay dry for a week or so and then have many days of wet nights in a row. It was very frustrating on all levels! He finally told me a month ago that he had been at a sleepover almost a year ago and that one kid noticed he was wearing pullups and made fun of him to the other kids. This was almost a year ago and he never said anything! I felt awful as I would have helped him WAY earlier, if I had known how he was feeling about it and how this boy made him feel. So, I went to www.thebedwettingstore.com and read all about how these alarms work. It was a bit overwhelming because there was a lot of information, but when I read all the reviews on some wireless alarm underwear and all the positive responses and parents reporting similar experiences to what we were experiencing, we decided to just try. We've been using them for over a week and he's only had 2 (very lightly wet) nights! He's super excited to be doing this and feels more happy and proud of himself as well! Good luck!

Ditto BOTH former responses. My daughter did it until she was 6-7. Totally out of her control so rewards don't help.

Please don't let her see your frustration if possible. Believe me, I know changing bedding in the middle of the night is not fun so I understand your frustration.

Remember, She is embarrassed and nothing could be more uncomfortable than having urine soaked clothes and having to get washed and changed in the middle of the night while she's probably cold. To see you upset will just make her feel humiliated, guilty or worse, insecure. Kids usually want to please.

Remind your self when you are ready to "blow", that this is a phase. Good luck.

My son is 10yrs. old and he started wetting the bed around the same age as your daughter. I would mention it to different doctors and they all said it is normal. Some boy's tend to do it until they are 11! Until I took him to my doctor. He refereed us to a urologist. She said there are pretty much only 2 things you can try medicine or the alarm. He still wet's the bed on ocation. We chose the alarm. We have had it for almost 2months now and I honestly haven't seen much of a change. We did tend to slack off on nagging when he had to stop drinking. but i dont like the medicine idea. because i don't feel like it will correct the problem. We tried everything that you mentioned also, including the regrettable words. Now that he has the alarm we are trying, the no video games if it goes off. Its LOUD though. Sounds like a house alarm. If you want to talk about it my email is ____@____.com

I recently read an article about constipation and bed wetting. Here's a link: http://children.webmd.com/news/20120130/study-constipatio....

To summarize, without being too graphic, even if a child doesn't seem constipated, there can be some stool left, pushing on the bladder and reducing its ability to hold urine. Might be something worth discussing with your pediatrician.

As an aside, discussing bed wetting with a friend, she said: "I rather change a "pull up" than a bed." It's worked for us!

Write down everythin g she eats each day for a week or two and then at the bottom write down the nights she wets the bed. It is probably a food she is reacting to. What happens is the food she is intolerant to causes inflammation of the uretha or bladder since the food has to be excreted somehow. Well it coming out causes inflammation and then you can't hold it when the muscles and tissues are red and swollen and inflamed.
You can try an allergist to rule out food allergies but most of the time it is an intolerance of a food causing the problem and the allergist can't always find that through RAST or patch testing. Patch testing did help our family though. As long as my son doesn't eat rice he doesn't wet the bed. It was easy to figure it out for us by the food diary log. After writing down for almost a month we could see it was obviously the rice. I know strange but it worked for my son and his twin sister. Hers was harder. But she is allergic to egg and soy. They both tested positive through patch testing. They also testing positive in blood and patch to wheat but it was causing painful reflux and made them vomit and not grow. We took them off wheat and then were able to fine these other culprits. So good luck and go for trial and error if nothing else.

I didn't read the replies, but I am sure people said it can be just a normal, developmental issue. It certainly can!

Here are some other thoughts:

Try keeping a food diary- sometimes allergies can cause bed-wetting (it could be something environmental too- shampoo, bubble bath, exposure to bug spray or a scented candle, etc.)

It could be strep. My daughter wets the bed when she has strep throat. I know it's weird, but true! We went through this for YEARS before I figured it out. Sometimes my daughter comes back negative on the rapid test they do in the office, so be sure to have them do a "culture" where they check it after 72 hours.

A UTI- this was probably mentioned, but it wouldn't hurt to have her checked for a urinary infection.

Could it be psychological? Even good things/excitement can be stressful to kids. Someone described stress to me as "filling a bucket." Let's say she goes to a birthday party, then you and your hubby have a little argument in front of her, and then isdisappointed because herballoon from the party pops..... seems like nothing much for us, as adults, but if you look at it overall from her perspective, it's a FULL bucket! If you think it might be this, try doing a "feelings check-in" at night, where the two of you sit together for a few minutes and talk about the day, or she draws a picture or writes a few words. (I find this helps my kids sleep better overall, anyway!)

Something you might do to save yourself some sanity is make the bed in layers... put on a waterproof pad, then make with bottom sheet and top sheet, THEN put on ANOTHER waterproof pad and make AGAIN on top of that. Then if she wets in the night, you peel off the top layers and already have another made bed underneath. You still have to wash the sheets, but it saves you the hassle of making it again immediately.

Hope this helps,
M.

You need to buy, some waterproof bed pads.
I got mine from Amazon.
I have 4 of them.

Next, know that your daughter is not the only one like this.
Physiologically, even if a child is day time potty able, night time dryness is a whole other separate thing. It takes up until even 7 years old, for night time dryness to occur and is normal. It has to do with the organ development etc. and is physiological.

My daughter even at 7 years old, had night accidents. No biggie. I always had the waterproof bed pad, DIRECTLY under her and the sheets did not get soiled. All I had to do was wash the bedpad, put a new one under her, change her jammies and she went back to bed.

My son is 5. He is still wet a night and wears Huggies night time diapers. It holds more. And of course, I also have a waterproof bed pad directly under him when sleeping. Its fine.

I never scolded my kids for accidents at night.
It is a physiological thing. Having to do with organ development.
Even our Pediatrician says that.

ALL of my daughter's Teachers, from Preschool to Kindergarten to 1st Grade, ALL unanimously said, that kids these ages are wet at night, wear night diapers, and can also have accidents during the day too and at school. Normal. The Teachers never make it a big deal. It is childhood.

It could be medical. Please don't rule that out. Keep pull ups on at night until it gets figured out.

I wet the bed as a child. No one knew why and my parents we always mad. Flash forward to second grade, I had a ruptured appendix. During surgery for that, they discovered I was only functioning on one kidney. Long story short, they fixed it so both worked and the bet wetting stopped.

I'm not saying its anything that serious but don't rule out a medical issue until you have it checked.

I went through this with my son. I tried the alarm.. did not work. I tried medication too, but for a very few days. An urologist we know recommended that we don't do that. So, we went back to pull ups. When his pull ups was dry for about 2 weeks in a row, stopped putting pull ups.
I decided to wait for a few more years before trying any kind of medication.
Most important for me was to not make him feel bad about it because it was something that he did not have control over.

was she colicky as a baby? Does she seem to be able to hold her pee forever when awake? Did she have frequent fevers for her life?
If you answered yes to these then please have her checked for kidney reflux. My daughter has lost 1/3 of her kidney on one side because we didn't get it checked earlier. She had surgery at 9 1/2 yrs old (in January) to fix it.

Before we knew it was a kidney issue we had her wear a pull up to sleep in until she was dry for a week. She hated that, so the doc put her on meds that were supposed to stop it. Neither med they have worked for her. Usually they won't do this until the child is 8, btw, but for my daughter they did it at 7 1/2 cause she was so upset over it.
When that didn't work we tried a chiropractor. The chiro said if it isn't fixed in 6 visits then it's not going to be by chiropractic care. It didn't work.
So, we ordered a bed alarm. It worked somewhat but not really that much.
The next thing we tried was homeopathic medicine I got at whole foods. They were little dots that she swallowed. THEY WORKED!! If she didn't remember to take them she did have accidents but they really worked great and she was finally dry at night by her 8th birthday.
After about 4 months of those she was able to be dry without taking them.

Then at 8 1/2 she had a series of high fevers that led us to find out that the real cause of her bedwetting was her kidney reflux. It turns out that if they have reflux it goes into the kidneys instead of into the bladder, but at night time they fill up so much that it can't go back up to the kidneys cause they are full so the bladder also fills up and it's too much for their bladders.

You should try having her pee every 2 hours during the day. Stopping liquids isn't really going to help, neither will waking her. If she is unwilling to wear a diaper buy pads that can go under her at night and put LOTS of them on the bed so she can just remove those if she pees.

In my opinion yo ushould take her to the doctor to rule out a bladder infection.
Before the bedwetting started, was she dry at night for a couple of years? Is it only at night?
I know you are frustrated, but I don't think it's her fault or anything. Lots of kids have bedwetting problems.
If she doesn't have a bladder infection, you could ask the doctor about DDAVP which is medication. But prescribing it is based on hormone levels and other signs/symptoms of physical issues rather than the natural adjustment period associated with nighttime waking to use the bathroom.
Hope that helps.

I wet the bed on and off like that until I was @ 10yrs old...many people do struggle with bed wetting that long. 6yrs old and wetting the bed (even every night) is normal. My son just turned 7 and he still wets the bed most nights...we use pull-ups every night because if I had to change the sheets or wake him up several times a night to go potty I would go crazy!!! I have never met anyone that used the alarm in the undies thing and had it work. If you feel like something is wrong, though, a mother's intuition is often right and in that case I would talk to your pediatrician about recommending a specialist. Good luck, it's hard to just let it run it's course but at least we have pull-ups to preserve our sanity :)