Bedwetting Question?

Question

Our youngest boys are both bedwetters (8 and 11). I've taken them both to the doctors numerous times and I've been told it is something they will both outgrow. The 8 year old has been wearing youth diapers to bed since he was 6 and for the last year or so our 11 year old has been wearing goodnites pullups. Recently our 11 year old developed a rash, you know where. It was so uncomfortable for him he came to me and told me about it. Kimberly-Clark recently added some kind of odor obsorbing chemical and i'm wondering if that is causing the problem. Anyway, for the time being we've switched him over to his brothers youth diapers. The first night we tried to show him how to put it on himself, but he had a lot of trouble and it ended up leaking and he soaked his pjs and bed. Ever since then at about 7:30 each night I simply call the boys up to their room and take care of business.

My 8 year old doesn't care, but I know this is a little embarassing for my 11 year old and I'm wondering if there are any other products that might offer him more modesty? He is just under 80 lbs.

Answer 1

hmm - tricky

ok - take him to the doctor about the rash, they may not be able to do anything about the bed wetting but the rash they should be able to give cream etc.

yes it is something they will have to outgrow but you can help the situation by limiting water etc.

for your 11 year old, those goodnites are the best thing, they are much more suited to his age and will not be anywhere embarsseing for him, the youth diapers are not suitable for kids that age/size so i think for his own sake you need to get him back in them.

i have a 5 year old who still wets and he wears goodnites (we call them drynites in this country) and he prefers them alot more to pull-ups or normal diapers/nappys as they are much more grown up

Answer 2

My advice..
Let him clean up the mess. Let home know that if he leaks, then oh well, no big deal, but dont wake you up.

1-he can take the sheets off put them on the floor

2-he can lay out a few towels /and new pj's to put on in the middle of the night

3-morning comes, show him how to use the washer

This might be a mean approach, and I know he can't "help it" but this will make him more aware, and want to wake up in the middle of the night to go potty!
Good Luck!

Answer 3

My 10 year old just outgrew bedwetting. The doctors didn;t do anything about it and just told us to wait it out. I started to limit his evening drinks. He went to the bathroom right before he went to be and I got rid of the goodnights. He wet his bed for about a week then he started to have dry nights. A few weeks later he started being dry every night. I think in his mind he new he had the goodnights, he went to bed knowing that he was protected. He needed to train his body. Good Luck

Answer 4

search online, there are lots of diffrent kinds of youth pullons that work very well. i am 17 and i think that my bedwetting is finaly coming to a stop, as it happens less and less, but i did a lot of looking online and found tons of sites that sold these kinds of things. you can find terrytowel pullups for youth at some sites.

Answer 5

There is medication out there that my daughter was on at 11yrs old. It helped her ask your doctor about it. Good luck!

Answer 6

one thing you might try is to figure apx. what time at night he is wetting the bed, then wake him up about a half hour before and have him use the bathroom. or you can try waking him up every couple hours and get him used to waking up himself to use the bathroom.

Answer 7

I'm not sure what other products to suggest for them to wear at night. I assume you've tried Goodnights? Have you checked the different brands and sizes of the adult diapers? I have no idea on the size range on those.

Have you tried chiropractic and DHA supplements to help solve the problem?

Here is my son's story, written earlier this year.

Our stuggle with enuresis

Keithen turned 7 years old in February and still wets the bed at night and sometimes has accidents during the day. Here is a little about our journey with enuresis.

When my son turned 5 he was bedwetting every night and having at least one, usually more, accidents each day. Our family doctor did a urinalysis to make sure he didn't have any infections or anything and that came back normal. He referred us to a urologist. The urologist put him on Ditropan. He also ordered an u/s. I filled the perscription and waited a bit, unsure if I wanted to give it to him. We decided to wait on the u/s, feeling pretty sure that this was not physical but instead a discipline one. (Didn't care if he was wet...wouldn't stop what he was doing to go...engrossed in play...we saw a pattern to when accidents happened...etc.)

That wasn't working so we tried the meds - I think we did a total of 3 doses of Ditropan. He HATED it. There was no pretty color or flavoring to it to make it palatable to kids. It smelled very strong and tasted nasty. The side effects were horrible. He would get dizzy and he fell asleep in the middle of the day. With the start of Kindergarten coming up soon, I felt the side effects were unacceptable. I didn't want him getting sleepy like that when he was in school and he was simply not himself on the medication. We stopped them - like I said I think we tried 3 doses. We struggled through the rest of the year on our own.

Around his 6th birthday, someone on the Mothering boards suggested chiropractic to me as a treatment for enuresis. We were open to the idea and decided it was worth a try. Through a network of local mothers, we found a chiropractor with special training in treating kids.

We started treatments 3 times per week. This did seem to help. The first time that he woke up dry, I honestly cried. I was so happy for him to see that he was making progress. And I was so relieved that maybe we had found an answer. At our next appointment I had to choke back tears of joy and relief as I told our chiropractor our good news. I even asked to give him a hug because I was so deeply grateful for the help he had given my son.

Shortly after staring treatment, he was waking up dry about once every two weeks - a huge accomplishment compared to how things had been! And his number of daytime accidents decreased. Around this same time we had a checkup with our family doc and with his urologist. We refused to try the meds again because of the side effects. We reported that the chiropractic treatment was helping and agreed to do an ultrasound. The ultrasound came back normal.

As his chiropractic scans got better and his accidents decreased, his visit frequency decreased. After a couple of months of chiropractic treatment, our chiropractor suggested that we try DHA supplements. These made a HUGE difference for us. This was probably the point that nighttime accidents went down to once a week or so. Daytime accidents at this point were reduced to ones that seemed undeniably behavioral (only wetting while playing on the computer). We were doing so much better!

You may wonder why the DHA supplements were recommended and how they help. Children with enuresis have increased levels of prostaglandin E2 and nitric oxide. Omega-3 fatty acids are known to inhibit the synthesis of prostaglandin E2 and renal nitric oxide. Bed-wetting children have an underdeveloped region of the brain that controles nighttime micturition (as noted by their inappropriate startle response). Omega-3 fatty acids play a critical role in the development of and function of the CNS including micturition control and startle response. Nations with the lowest prevalence of bed-wetting children consume more than double the fish/seafood as compared to the nations with the highest prevalence of bedwetting children.

A week before his 7th birthday, I was frustrated once again. He had backslid. He was no longer cooperating with taking his DHA and he was wetting the bed almost every night. (He still wears pullups to bed.) He had been having a daytime accident several days per week again. I still think those are mostly behavoral - tied in to computer/gameboy/etc. - activities where he is super focused. Chiropractic visits are now only once every 2 weeks as his body looks good, so I don't think the increase in accidents was due to a physical problem.

We have gone through periods of taking his Gameboy away waiting for him to go a week with no daytime accidents. A month after he turned 7, things seemed to be looking up. He was having occasional dry nights and was having more dry days than wet ones.

I think I do need to get him back on the DHA on a regular basis as the drop in the DHA levels in his body may be creating some of our problems (at least the night-time part). I may have to find ways to sneak it into his food if he continues to avoid taking the pills. We had to stop seeing the chiropractor back in April because we couldn't afford it anymore. He has definately regressed since then. :-( I wish we couldn afford to go back to regular adjustments.

In Kindergarten he only had 2 or 3 accidents at school all year long. This last year, in first grade, I think he had 2 or 3 accidents at school which were "giggle pees" when he was laughing too hard with a friend in gym class and at a class party. He's had a couple of accidents this year in 2nd grade as well. I'm relieved that it hasn't been a BIG problem for him at school. I remember that my cousin was "that kid" in grade school who was always being sent to the class for clean clothes. I remember the stigma that it can carry to be the "stinky kid" who wets his pants. I am thankful that he doesn't seem to be dealing with that at school.

I hope our experience helps some other families out there who are struggling with this problem. I know I am eternally grateful that we found chiropractic and the DHA supplements to help our son instead of going the traditional medical route with the prescription drugs.

Answer 8

Stop them from drinking all day.