Re: Night Time Toilet Trainig
Asked by Kly661

Question:
 

Hi Everyone,

I have a problem with night time toiletting with my 5 yo daughter.  During the day is no problem, but at night she is wetting the bed nearly every

night.  It's driving me mad haveing to wash every day.  We have a water proof mat that is covered with material that she sleeps on.  That makes it very easy to take off the bed and chage her in the middle of the night.  The problem is that she isn't getting any better and doesn't seem to care that she wet the bed.  We don't go mad on her for wetting the bed and encourage her when she doesn't wet.  I don't know what ealse to try.  Some suggestions would be hugely appreciated!

My Advice:

 

I have a now 6 year old daughter, who until half way through last year was still wearing pullups to bed. This to me was unbeleivable she had been toilet trained during the day since she was 2 1/2. In the 2 1/2 years since becoming toilet trained she had only been dry at night maybe 3 times?

I did quite a bit of research into what was holding her back and was quite surprised to find that it is not as uncommon as you would think. One reasoning behind bedwetting is that there is a particular hormone that the body produces which helps our bladder control when we are asleep. To me this wasn't very comforting.

I started looking towards methods to help get her out of bed and to the toilet in the middle of the night. There were a couple of options that used an alarm, which I shied away from as I really didn't need the whole house awake when she needed to go the toilet. however this was definately my second option if my first failed.

My first choice was to go and see my chiropractor who gave her fortnightly adjustments as well as some bladder exercises to do. We also layered her bed with plastic sheets. This went from the mattress up: plastic sheet - towel - sheet - plastic sheet - towel - sheet. So effectively there were a couple of layers to remove as each accident occured. I explained to her what to do if she woke up wet in the middle of the night and had a couple of dry runs during the day so that she knew what was expected of her. She had to get up and go straight to the toilet and then get changed (There was a spare pair of pyjamas beside her bed as well) Then all she had to do was to remove a layer from the first plastic sheet up. Ths left another layer of dry bed ready to crawl into. Her quilt didn't get wet but a spare blanket was on standby. I helped her for the first 7 days. After this she knew what to do and was left to do it herself. It took her a week of changing her bed herself to actually stop wetting the bed at night full time. She still kept the layers on for about a month as every now and then we would have an accident. Sometimes in the middle of the night I still hear her trying to wake up and go to the toilet, but she just can't wake up properly. I help her get up and guide her to the toilet.

The bladder exercises that the chiropractor told her to try are very simple and safe. When your child needs to go to the toilet, they should go straight away as normal. Once they are at the toilet and and sitting (or standing as the need be for a boy or girl) then they try and see how many they can count to before letting go and urinating. Once they are in full stream, see if they can stop and hold on for a few seconds. Each time they go to the toilet they are to try and see if they can count a little bit higher than the last time. They should also see if they can stop half way through and hold on for a little bit longer than the last time as well.

Withholding drinks totally will not help. My daughter has always had a bottle of water beside her bed for a sip in the middle of the night. It has never been the cause of her bed wetting.

Hopefully this helps