Bedwetting

Description: This is common in younger children, but less common as they get older (although still more common than you would think).  There may be underlying causes, so do see your GP if you have any concerns.  The ERIC website is a very helpful resource.

Tips

Alarm

After several years of getting nowhere with trying to crack bedwetting, we decided to try a bedwetting alarm.  Just to warn you, this is torture for the whole family!  The alarm is VERY loud, and there is a lot of bedclothes washing involved.  You may be able to borrow an alarm from your GP or local continence service, but otherwise they are pretty expensive too.  We got our alarm from the ERIC website (which has lots of other handy hints) – we chose the Astric Dry Bed alarm, which is one that goes over the mattress rather than one that is attached to the pants.  The alarm says it can take up to 16 weeks to have an impact (it took our family 12 weeks of no sleep and constant washing).  It might be a good idea to decide to wait until the summer holidays to try this out…

Dr Sagie

This is a bedwetting alarm with additional support.  It’s pretty expensive, but worth looking at the promotional video on Amazon if nothing else.  It does have great ratings on Amazon.

Be careful about drinks

We found that being careful about drinks doesn’t really solve a bedwetting problem.  You’re told to avoid giving drinks too late in the evening, but this didn’t help us.  But there are definitely some drinks that make it worse.  Ribena is  a drink to avoid, but we found orange juice was a problem too.  Milk and water are the best drinks to give whilst your trying to get the bedwetting under control.  Our child has been mainly dry for quite a while now, and we’ve tried cranberry juice too, as it’s supposed to help maintain a healthy bladder.

Probiotic yoghurt

It might have just been a coincidence, but this seemed to really help with the problem. Bedwetting can be linked to constipation (which wasn’t a problem for us), but it does suggest that keeping the bowel happy helps to keep the bladder healthy too.  We tried a daily probiotic yoghurt or two (Actimel) alongside a bedwetting alarm, and it seems to have done the trick.  We have kept up with the yoghurts for another year just in case.

Pjama pants

Our child was getting very down about not being able to go on sleepovers due to bedwetting, so we tried out these pyjama bottoms.  The idea is that you can pee during the night, and the pee stays in the pyjamas and doesn’t leak out.  They do work, in as much as they don’t leak.  But if your child pees a lot during the night, then the pyjamas become so full that they are really uncomfortable and very hard for a child to take off discretely in the morning, which kind of takes away the point.  They are pretty expensive too, so you are probably better off sticking with pull-up nappies.