How I Finally Cured My 10-Year Old Son’s Bedwetting

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If you are reading this, I imagine that you may be having a similarly miserable experience to sorting out your child’s bedwetting as I had. I suspect that, like I did, you keep the knowledge of your child’s bedwetting to a select few; that you wonder if it will ever end; that you are at the end of your tether; that you feel helpless, desperate for your child and frustrated at the same time.

You may have tried lots of different methods like I did or been to the doctor or health visitor, only to be told that your child can’t have treatment until they are seven, or that they won’t help you until your child has been tested for causes. Or, that they will grow out of it. I know a lot of parents, and I was one, who choose to do nothing rather than subject their child to medical testing when they are young.

Bedwetting is a miserable thing to happen to anyone. Although most experts now agree that bedwetting (primary enuresis) is not usually caused by psychological issues, it certainly can result in them. Bedwetting children commonly suffer from low self-esteem and behavioural problems.

I am a mother with a ten year old boy who had never been dry at night. UNTIL NOW! Never isn’t strictly true – we had had the odd dry night – but he had never gone for more than five nights in a row.

We tried everything:

Lifting him when we came to bed
Night-time alarm
Night-time pants
No night-time pants
Star charts
Restricting fluids after a certain time
Not restricting fluids
Restricting certain types of fluids
Testing his diet
Hypnosis
Homeopathy
Cranial osteopathy
Kinesiology

None of these methods worked for us. We wondered what the causes might be; was he worried, did he have a small bladder, did he produce an abnormally large amount of urine at night, did he sleep deeply? We even wondered whether he was lazy about it and didn’t mind very much.

We didn’t want to make a big fuss about it his bedwetting so we just let it be for a while. It wasn’t until he was 7 that I mentioned it to the doctor.

“Don’t worry, he’ll grow out of it” I was told. “And if he doesn’t, there are drugs”. Great. I looked up the side-effects of the drugs and decided that there was no way we would go down that route. I have since found a rather depressing prevalence of doctors prescribing these potentially dangerous and totally unnecessary drugs.

We tried all the things I mentioned above and none of them worked.

The doctor said he would grow out of it and here we were, at 10 years old, having not grown out of it.

It wasn’t OK anymore. Not for him; not for us.

He started to mind about not being able to have sleepovers and he became understandably very worried about other people finding out. One of the girls in his class found his pull-ups and teased him. He couldn’t go on school trips and friends asked him why.

It is a horrible secret to have. Children have enough pressures to deal with, without having this on top. Even though we kept reassuring him that it wasn’t his fault, it still felt like it was to him.

The good news is that our son is now completely dry and the cure was easier and quicker than I thought possible.

My questions were – how come I had to pay thousands of pounds (yes really) for the treatment? How exactly does effective treatment work? What exactly is the research that some of the tailored treatment plans are based on? How come advice differs so much from country to country? How come drugs are offered so routinely by the medical profession? What does the latest research tell us?

Why do some children still wet the bed at 5, 7, 10, 13 (and more) years old then?

In simple terms, we all start off as bedwetters when we are babies. In other words, babies make the same amount of urine at night as during the day, and are also totally unaware of and have no control over their bladder.

Over time we develop awareness and the control that we need to stay dry in the day and eventually at night. The children who continue to wet the bed have a delay in this awareness and control. The type of delay differs between children and is often a combination of several of the following:

Your child makes too much urine at night
They have small bladders
They have an inability to wake up from deep sleep
They have an overactive bladder
They have a brain/bladder communication issue
There is a hereditary element to bed wetting

I still do not know what the cause of my son’s bedwetting was. I will never know. You do not need to know what the specific cause of your child’s bedwetting is to get rid of it.

So how do we get rid of the bedwetting?

I discovered that effective drug-free treatment for bedwetting:

uses an alarm system as the main approach
treats most of the possible causes at the same time
motivates the child
is specific in instructions – “how to”
needs support from parents or carers WHO STICK AT IT

1 Use an alarm

I have to say that I was less than motivated by the thought of using an alarm. We had tried one for a bit when he was about five and he either didn’t wake up or woke up with a complete fright. However, there is a good deal of research to suggest that alarms are by far the best treatment if you stick with it and wake your child up properly when the alarm goes off.

This is absolutely critical. They need to be fully woken up, even if they have already wet the bed or seem to be awake anyway. If you fully wake them and then send them to the loo whether or not they need to go, you increase the chance of quick success by helping the brain to make the brain-bladder connection.

You need to be strong and committed as a parent because it is not particularly nice waking up your sleeping child in the night. Believe me – it is the difference between success and failure, so be firm with yourself and your child who may fight back. We certainly had a couple of occasions when Tom was very difficult to wake and got quite physical with me (he’s nearly as tall as me!)

2 Bladder exercises

a) Stretchers

Stretch their bladder by drinking approximately 300ml water quickly and holding on for as long as possible after they get the urge to go to the loo.

b) Pelvic floor exercises

Get them to do pelvic squeezes as they are brushing their teeth to improve their ability to hold onto their wee all night without having to get up.

3 Be supportive

Remember that it is not their fault.

It is also not a condition, it is something their body hasn’t learned to do yet.
Praise and reward them for doing the exercises
Encourage them when they make progress
Stick at it and it will work

I now have a child who is confident to stay with friends, he is more alert in the mornings and ready to engage at school – even his teachers have noticed a difference. What a relief.