Can anyone help with bedwetting?

[6fsn]

Our son is 3.5. He'd been very successful with potty training during the day. We left the overnight diapers on until we ran out a month or so ago. The diapers had been dry for weeks but now he's wet the bed every night for a week.

We've talked to him about getting up and going to make sure he knows it's ok. We leave the bathroom light on and he has a nightlight in his room. When he does wet the bed he gets up, changes his clothes (putting the wet ones in the hamper) and goes down stairs to sleep on the couch.

I don't want him to think he's being punished by putting him back in diapers, but I also don't want him to keep wetting the bed. I don't know if it makes a difference or not, but he's also got a cough right now. So I wonder if that wakes him up and it's hard to cough, not pee, and get to the potty.

He needs a preschool physical soon, so maybe I should just ask the doc?

[lala]

I can only really tell you what we've done. From my reading, a kid can be day trained but is not ready physically to be night trained. DD will be 4 in September and has been day/nap trained for about 15 months. We've gone w/ that assumption and she wears a cloth pull up at night. This way she can get up an go to the bathroom if she wants to, but if she does pee, it's fine. I like the cloth b/c it still feels pretty wet when they pee, unlike a disposable (just to make her realize it's uncomfortable), plus I think in the end I'm saving money. She pees in the diaper maybe twice a week. Some nights she'll get up, pee and go back to bed, but more often she runs to pee as soon as she wakes up. Until recently we kept a little potty in her room to eliminate the step of going to the bathroom. (the main reason we removed it had to do w/ pooping in it at naps, ugh)

Anyway, I know that doesn't quite help, other than to tell you that I think it's normal and DD doesn't feel like a baby at all b/c of the cloth trainer. She knows its a special night time diaper, and that it's okay that she has accidents at night. I'm probably not going to push the issue for awhile. Sticker type charts have worked for her in the past, so at some point I might try that. I had a friend who woke up her son to walk him to the bathroom before she went to bed, I guess that helped some b/c it emptied his bladder about 4 hours into the night.

[ijack]

DD is 4 and has been day/nap trained for almost 2 years and is still wearing a diaper at night. We're about to start the process to get rid of them, but it's pretty normal for kids to take a while.

[Deleted]

My 2 youngest still bed wet. They wear diapers.

I read somewhere that it was caused by constipation. I think that is true for DS1, but I"m not sure about DS2. He's a super heavy sleeper and if I make him go potty before bed and limite his drinking after dinner he is usually okay (of course the night I decide to not put on a diaper is the night he wets the bed.

[vanillacourage]

Have you tried making him pee riiiight before climbing into bed and also limiting liquids after a certain time?

If he's ok with changing into new clothes by himself, until he's fully trained you could look into those Good Nites sheet pads to protect the bed.

[6fsn]

Thanks for making me feel better. We have limited the liquids and he uses the potty right before bed. He's had a regular poop schedule since forever so I don't think it's constipation.

I like the cloth pullup idea for night. Then it's not as much a step back as a different step. He was just so proud of getting rid of the "night night fanny" I didn't want him to think something was wrong if we had to go back.

We do have a pad under the sheet to protect the mattress.

[lala]

Yea, DD wasn't upset by the cloth pull up/trainer at all. We just said it was just for back up - so that if she had an accident she didn't to worry about the sheets. I mean, washing the sheets once a week is enough, having to change things in the middle of the the night, ugh. We have a waterproof mattress pad, but I wasn't interested in any kind of disposable pad option just b/c that's not our "lifestyle" so to speak.

[brit1017]

DS is 4. He has been day trained for 1.5 years, so we decided to try and train for overnights as well. For the last month, we have tried to train him. We switched to underwear and a plastic cover from pullups, and I would make sure he peed right before he went to sleep and DH would wake him up and have him pee when he got home from work (between midnight and 1am). We were stopping all liquids 2 hours at least before bedtime. DS was still wetting the bed, sometimes before and sometimes after DH woke him up. He would sleep right through it. He was getting a nasty rash from the moisture caused by the plastic cover, so I had him put on underwear underneath of pullups (so that he would still feel the wetness). Still no help.

At this point, we are putting him back in pullups for awhile. DH is still waking him up to pee, but physiologically, I don't think he is ready. He is such a heavy sleeper that we are going to hold off for awhile, then talk to the dr about other options- I have seen a $$ alarm that will go off when they pee to wake them up, but I'm not ready to go there yet.

[vanillacourage]

May 16, 2012 7:26:28 GMT -5 6fsn said:

We do have a pad under the sheet to protect the mattress.

The ones I was talking about go on top of the sheet, FYI. So no middle-of-the-night sheet changes.

www.goodnites.com/bedmats

[6fsn]

Honestly we rarely do the middle of the night change. Sometimes DH hears him get up, but I never do. I just find it in the morning.

[h]

My son was not able to consistently stay dry all night until just before turning 4, despite having been day trained for well over a year.

He is probably not physically ready yet. I would not worry about it. The cloth pull up sounds like a good idea.