Bedwetting - Time to Throw in the Towel?

a bag of pullups is cheaper than a load of laundry every day.

my daughter is 7 and in apull up every night.. wet every night.. I don't worry i dont stress.. we dont mention it..

she will be dry when her brain wakes her up to go the bathroom at night..

I used pull-ups with my first until she was dry at night, which happened around 3.5 years. I continued to use them for a month or two after she was completely dry JUST to make sure, but that was that.

Your son is perhaps just not ready. Some children aren't dry at night for many years, I hear.

I don't recommend limiting water intake, however. It's not healthy and is not helpful for potty training.

Good luck...I'm getting ready to start the whole process with my youngest and not looking forward to it!! :)

Limiting fluids could be your problem. With no fluids in the system the bladder doesn't get full and signal them to go. Kids are NOT supposed to wake up to go. They are supposed to stop producing urine while they sleep. That is a chemical brain action that cannot be controlled except by medication.

So, if she's not dry in the morning she is not chemically ready.

Some kids wet the bed until they are teens or later. It isn't anything that training them or waking them up or anything can change. They fall asleep and their body keeps producing urine. If they sleep like a normal person they are not going to wake up every little bit to go. So they "leak" urine all night. Waking them up only gets them to close those muscles for a few moments and they don't go. They have an empty bladder and there is not an urge to pee.

So, out her back in pull ups or plan extra money for extra laundry. Also plan on a lot of extra time and effort on your part to be stuck at home doing that laundry...lol. I would rather spend the $15 on a box of pull ups to last a month and be done with it.

They will both get through this at some point in the future. It is how you want to live your days at this point, that's what decides how to handle this. Either spend extra money on extra loads of laundry and lots of time tied to the house doing that laundry or have your freedom and use pull ups.

Well I don't think one week dry is enough to take them out of pull ups. My son is 3 and just potty trained in October. He's been in pull ups over night since then and although he's only had 3 nights total that he's had a wet pull up we are still putting them on him until he's more consistently dry. Overnight is a bigger deal physically and I don't necessarily think that limiting liquids is the answer. Put her back in the pull up for a while, more than a week for sure.

For your son, I think that I would probably have him wear underwear with a pull up over them when he goes to bed. Maybe this will motivate him to not wet on purpose if you feel he's doing that. Plus, this will save you from doing laundry b/c if he does wet the pull up on the outside will catch it.

Good luck. I can only imagine how stressful this is for you! Hugs!

Those are very normal ages to still wet the bed. My oldest did not stop till he was in first grade. And my youngest still does and he's 10. No matter what we try it has not worked. We are actually taking him to a specialist next month cause at his age if we can stop it we need to. But until now we've not worried to much about it. With my son its genetics. You might ask your mother in law how old your husband and siblings were when they stopped. In talking to my mom I found out my brother was in his teens and my nephew that's 16 still does sometimes. As for the pullups it all depends on if you want to wash sheets every morning. I choose not to so I put him in pull ups. I have him clean him self off in the mornings but I don't want to have to wash sheets ever day. But I work full time so I don't want to have to wash sheets when I get home from work.

You can if you want to.
I just didn't want to deal with a sopping bed, sheets and blankets (pillows, stuffed animals, pajamas) all the time.
Even with the pullups and limiting liquids near bedtime, sometimes over flow would happen.
Of course I kept the waterproof mattress on the bed (I layered two).
My son was finally out of pullups at night for good when he was 7 1/2 when he stayed dry for 2 solid weeks in a row.

i really think no pullups for either of them. it is not normal for kids to wet their beds at this age. i believe pullups are to be blamed for that because they don't feel like underwear at all.
get a mattress protector, and yes you will be doing laundry for a while until they learn but it's better than your current situation. like i said, put real underwear on both of them.

Daytime potty training and night-time dryness are 2 completely different things. My son was day and night trained at 2 1/2, my daughter wore pull-ups to bed until she was almost 7. Th difference as that my son is a light sleeper and my daughter sleeps like a rock. My daughter still very rarely wakes up ay night to go pee... her bladder is just mature enough now to hold it through the night.

I would put them back in pull-ups. If you don't want to do that you can double layer the bed with sheets and plastic mattress pads. The you only take off one layer if they pee in the night and you don't have to remake the whole thing when everyone is sleepy. You're still washing a ton of laundry though...

They'll be ready to stop wearing pull-ups when they stays dry every night for a couple of weeks, and even then you might want to make sure that you have a plastic cover on the mattress. Until then I wouldn't worry about it.

Good luck~

my son wet the bed until he was 12 - back in the day when there were no pullups. I didn't stress with it. But he did have to clean himself up, strip his bed and take a bath each morning so he wouldn't smell like pee. I kept a plastic mattress pad on his bed, and wiped it each day before remaking his bed. He was and still is (at 30) and extremely heavy sleeper. He just didn't get there for many years. You could try putting it back on them, make them clean up after themselves. It isn't a punishment, it is just consequences. If you think that the pullups are causing laziness, you could tell him that the pullups cost $___ per week, and he can have that amount, but has to buy his own pullups, but if he uses less, than he can save the extra $$ for a special toy or game.

You have to look at your children separately, and I mean totally separately, in this regard. Your 3 1/2 year old isn't even in the ballpark of your 5 year old. There is a part of the brain that tells the body to stop producing urine at night when sleeping. It has to develop in order for your daughter to stop needing to pee in the middle of the night. She is PERSONALLY not old enough for this to happen yet. Some children's brains do actually reach this point at 3 1/2, but it's not a usual thing. My ped told me point blank that daytime toileting and night time toileting are not the same and that I could not expect my sons to night train before they were 4 years old. He told me that the best thing to do was to use diapers until they were able to go 4 nights in a row dry. THEN put on underwear. Tell them every morning that they are dry that you know how proud they are of themselves for having a dry night. When they wet the bed, you hug them and say "Aww, I know you were hoping for a dry night. I'm sorry, honey. We have to put on diapers again until you have 4 dry nights in a row. Here's a calendar. We'll put a check mark on each night you have a dry night. When we get 4 nights IN A ROW, we'll put gold stars on those 4 nights, and go back to big boy underwear!"

That helps take pressure off of them to perform, YET it also sets up the expectation that they are capable of doing it and that they are supposed to be proud of THEMSELVES for reaching the milestone. Not that you are supposed to be the one that is proud of them.

And you don't start this process until they have a fighting chance of being successful.

It's nice that your daughter made it 5 out of 7 nights. I would employ this strategy with her. Perhaps her brain can do this. I would NOT expect it of her. And I would not use a pullup with her. A diaper will help her FEEL the wetness. You do want her to feel the wetness.

As far as your son is concerned, it very well may be emotional because you are pushing too much. You might not think you are pushing, but HIS perception is what is important - not yours. I'd employ this same strategy with him (except that you may not be able to find diapers so large for him, so pullups may need to be what you use.) If you go to bed a few hours after he does, try waking him enough to take him to the bathroom and see if that helps.

Some children sleep so deeply that it's like waking the dead to get them to pee. My older son was like that. He couldn't even seem to let go because his brain didn't understand that he was on the potty. It worked with my younger son fine. I didn't have to do it for long. They both night trained pretty easily. I did the strategy I talked about from the get-go (because the ped told me to do this upfront) and it worked very well.

Another thing to remember is that some children just will not feel the wetness enough to wake, and there are "alarms" that you can buy to wake them when the sensors feel the beginnings of wetness. My niece had one of those. And yes, she was one of those kids who peed the bed for several years. It does happen that there are kids who don't finally stop doing it until they are teens.

I don't see any indications that that will happen to your child. However, it's too early at 5 for you to be worrying about that.

Try to ratchet down on the expectations and maybe that will take the pressure off of your 5 year old. The next time you see the ped, talk about when to think in terms of a medical response (like the alarm) and other alternatives. It's too early for those at this point.

Good luck,
Dawn

I had some problems with 2 of my 3 about this. Yes there is some genetics in night time bed wetting, and my last one was just like you described, too asleep to pee when I got her up. She stopped spontaneously just as she turned 10. She really wanted to stop but just wasn't able. (There was a lot of finagling with friends' mothers to deal with sleep over events. But her friends never found out.) It may be pullups will be a long term issue at night.

Your son, in the daytime, is another story. I also had that issue with my son. By the time he was 4 1/2, I realised that it was a strong will issue. My solution was to take all of his pants away. He had a shirt, socks and shoes, and was told he could have his pants back when he was using the toilet properly. We also reminded him what happened to the cat when she made a mistake. (Not that we would or did put him outside, but it made an impression.) Since it was winter, the house was a bit cool, and that added incentive. His dad caught him leaving a solid mess behind an armchair once, and made him clean it up. It didn't happen again. After a week, he promised to be appropriate if he could have his pants. I gave him a 2 day trial with just underwear (and relented after a day and a half), then gave him his slacks as well. We never had an issue in the daytime again.

My daughter had that problem and turned out she was allergic to milk and milk products. You might try keeping them away from that for a couple weeks then give it to them to see if they wet the bed again.

N.

I think your kiddos are too young for this solution, but night training with alarms works!

My oldest son, who is now 14, wet the bed almost nightly until he was about 9. My husband did some research and found an alarm system to try. We purchased the alarm and after about a week of use my son was dry every night. We continued to use the alarm for about another week as reinforcement. The first few days it was like having a newborn in the house, his alarm would go off and my husband and I would head to his room to get him into the bathroom and check his sheets. You are ways off from this, but it is a solution in the future if your son continues to have problems.

I was a bedwetter until my mid-teens. The idea of making a child pay for their own pull-ups is beyond horrible as far as I'm concerned as is paying a child for being dry. "We'll reward you for being good and keeping control of yourself when you are asleep and out of control." It is humiliating to wet the bed, even if your child is doing their own laundry, it is still a real esteem killer.

Good Luck,

M

My son, who turned 4 in July, had the same attitude as your son about pullups. He has been totally daytime potty trianed since 2 1/2, he actually trained himself b/ he wanted to be like his big sis. One day this summer when I didn't pay attention he stayed in his pullup until 11 am after waking up at 630. He didn't go to the toliet to do his business, just kept filling up the pullup. That was the breaking point for me. He hasn't worn a pullup at night since. I did laundry everyday for about 4 weeks and then slowly he started staying dry...It's been about 4 weeks since his last nighttime "accident". So the entire process has taken about 3 months. Maybe it would have happened in the same way and time, maybe not. I know giving up the pullups and dealing with the laundry was the right thing for me to do, for me. I was just over buying them and having to remind him to take it off in the morning, and have conversations about not doing his first morning pee in them just b/c he was wearing them, etc. While I do believe bedwetting can be a true problem, I also believe it's possible that we've (our culture that relies heavily on disposible diapers) just trained our kids to use diapers for elimination needs. Meaning for many it's a lifetime habit that has to be broken.