Night Time Bed Wetting - Stone Mountain,GA

My oldest is almost 7 and still wets the bed about 3-4 times per week. She's still in pullups until her body is ready to hold it all night or wake her up to pee. My younger two have both been bone dry since potty training at 2. Every child is different and there's not too much you can do to speed the process of nighttime dryness along.

I don't wake my daughter up - she has a hard time falling back to sleep and then is miserable the next day. Much better to just let her use pullups until she no longer needs them.

I've read that bedwetting can be genetic. Both my husband and I wet the bed sporadically until the age of about 10-12....so my daughter was kinda doomed from *go* lol

A.:

You might get more help/answers if you change your title to
Night time bed wetting instead of "All moms"

Night time training is NOT like daytime training. There is nothing you can do to "train" anyone for night time...the alarms don't work.

What does work is patience and cutting back on fluids 2-3 hours prior to bedtime.

Give him pull ups so that he doesn't need to wake up and get you to change the sheets, etc.

I personally don't subscribe to the waking them up in the middle of the night. It messes with their REM sleep and can cause them to the hyper during the day because they are sooo tired.

Good luck!

Some kids wet the bed till they are 11 or 12 yrs old.
There's nothing you can do to mature their bladder any faster.
Waking him up just makes him (and you) tired and it doesn't change his bladder capacity.
Put him in pullups at night till he wakes up dry for 2 solid weeks in a row.
Out son was 7 1/2 when he finally finished with night time pullups.

How old is he? I wet the bed well into my teens. One trick I have is putting down one of those waterproof sheets, then a regular sheet, then a waterproof sheet, then a regular sheet. If he wets in the middle of the night, you can remove one sheet and waterproof sheet and not have to remake the whole bed in the middle of the night.

My problem is that I sleep too deeply and just can't wake myself up until it's too late.

How old?

I still have my 4 yr old in pull ups at night. You might get some overnights or put a cover on the bed. Nighttime wetting is different than daytime accidents and it is very common for kids to be dry in the day and wet at night. Lately my DD is more often dry, but a few middle of the night changings and we decided to go back to the pull ups for a bit. I am not going to worry about it. Her body will grow and she will grow out of it.

I don't have the energy to type out my typical response... please do a search and find all of the things people have said before. it boils down to: THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO! Staying dry is a physiological thing; until your child's body is ready, s/he will wet the bed at night. Put him/her in a pull up until that time happens.

(of course - if your child is 15, please go see the doctor)

How old is the child? It's not uncommon for kids to be fairly late in developing the ability to wake up to pee. I don't believe in waking kids up - I don't think it serves any purpose other than to create a very tired child and tired parent. There's no way to "train" a child to wake up - it's a developmental stage and some kids are just not early developers. I also don't think the alarms do anything - they only go off when wet, so it's really too late by then.

If the child is under 7, definitely just do pull ups or pads for this purpose. I put 2 sheets on the bed with a waterproof pad in between. If my son wet the bed, I could whip off his wet stuff, wipe him down (keep the wipes and a spare hamper in the room), peel off the wet sheet and the pad, and have a clean and dry sheet ready for him - so he didn't have to wake up too much.

Some kids, particularly boys, aren't dry at night for many years. There is a medication that can be used - we were so advised by a pediatric urologist, and we wound up using it until our son was about 12. The doctor said he had some patients who used it until age 18 without complications or side effects. We just used it beginning at the age when our son wanted to go to sleepovers, and later on it enabled him to go to overnight camp.

I'm not a big proponent of medication unless it's necessary, and if your child is too young to really notice and doesn't mind the pull-ups, then just wait it out. If your child is upset or really getting run down from no sleep or from waking up feeling wet, then it's an option to discuss with the pediatrician.

No matter what, don't blame or shame your child - it's not an issue of training or of desire, but of normal development.

Did you know that you can type this into the search on top of the page and get all our answers?????

Not many do. There is no such thing as training them to go at night. Waking them up makes them clench the muscles they clench during the day so they are in effect "holding it until the go back to sleep" when you wake them up to go pee. They can't wake up and go pee. It doesn't work. So stop, it's only making you and them tired because it's ineffective.

They have to produce a chemical in their brain that tells their kidney's to stop producing urine when they fall asleep. Until that time they are not in control of their bladder during the night. There is NOTHING that you or they can do until their brain tells the kidneys to stop making urine when they go to sleep.

When you wake up do you feel that sort of rush where your bladder suddenly fills up and you have to get up and go quickly? That's the way it is supposed to work. Your kidney's stop producing urine when you're asleep then when you wake up it starts all over again and your bladder fills up and you have to go right away.

When a kiddo is not doing this there is nothing anyone can do to make their brain do this. It is a growth and brain maturity issue. The doc can give you medication to help the kidney shut down for the night but it has some nasty possible side effects.

The doc can do some X-rays to see if your kiddo is constipated too. When they are full of pooh and they lay down it is pretty heavy on the bladder so it is compressed all night and it leaks urine out all night.

So, put an overnight pull up on the kiddo and save yourself a lot of laundry and have that extra time to do something fun.

If anyone tells you it's cheaper to wash the bed linens and clothes instead of buying a box of pull ups each month you might want to keep track of the actual expenses of doing a load of laundry.

Water
Gas
Electricity
Laundry detergent
Wear and tear on both machines
Wear and tear on the linens and clothes too
Dryer sheets
Bleach to sanitize the pee
Fabric softener so it will feel softer and it will smell prettier than pee smell
Your time is worth something too

All this adds up each load. Spending day after day after day washing those bed linens and clothes over and over is demeaning to you.

Having a wet bed each morning is also demeaning to your child. It's a matter of fact in my house that they just put on a pull up if they still wet. No one here gets to choose. It's part of growing up to stay dry. No matter how old they are or how young, if they have accidents they wear a pull up. They feel better about themselves when they can wake up and not have pee smelling clothes that are dripping wet too.

I'm with Gamma G on this – children produce a hormone called vasopressin that significantly reduces nighttime urine production. This kicks in anywhere between the ages of 2 and 12. Unlucky kids (and their parents) fall later on that spectrum. Boys often reach this stage of maturity somewhat later than girls.

Since your son is dry some nights, his vasopressin production could be coming on.

My 6 year old has the same problem and it's every night. I don't wake him up and I don't limit fluids. My other kids drink before bed and don't wet the bed.

The only time his bedwetting stopped briefly was when I was giving him large doses of vitamin C and Hyland's cold and cough medicine. he was dealing with allergies at the time.

I have read that bed wetting can be an allergy and the bladder is reacting. Also heard it is a magnesium deficiency. Also heard that it's a hormone in the brain not sending signals to the body.

We don't make it a big deal about it but I am tired of the pull ups and the occasional leaking on the bed sheets. Best of luck to you.

How old is he? It would really help to give advice if we knew.

Anyway, if he's under 7, I wouldn't worry about it. Some kids just take longer for their bodies to figure it out - they might have a smaller bladder or be a really deep sleeper. It's not uncommon for kids to wet the bed until they are 5 or 6 years old. Chances are, one day, it will just suddenly click and he'll stop doing it. If he's older than 7, I'd talk to the doctor again, or see another doctor. Most kids past 7 shouldn't still be wetting the bed multiple times per week.

Also, for some kids, limiting their drinking has nothing to do with it. It's simply that they are sleeping so deeply that their brains just don't clue them in to the need to pee. For others, it's bladder size. But drinking or not drinking rarely makes a big difference, as there are physical things going on to prevent them from staying dry.