6 year old still wetting the bed, please help!

[Kayla1989]

Hi, my daughter is still wetting the bed at night. She has been dry in the day since she was 18 months old and is finding it hard that she can’t be dry at night- her sister has been dry at night since she was 18 months and is now 4 so this is upsetting for her too.

She has to have movicol every other day because she bleeds when she poos otherwise. In February she was dry on and off most of the month and the beginning of March but the last few weeks she’s been wetting the bed every night. She doesn’t drink the recommended 6-8 glasses of water/cordial. I try to encourage her but we can never get it close to 6 glasses. If I don’t remind her (we tried this yesterday) and she had one glass and a tiny bit all day but still wet the bed. She doesn’t drink after 6 and goes to bed at about half 7/8.

Please help!

[AMOGO]

I'm sorry she's getting upset and that it's made harder by the younger sibling being dry. I can't offer much advice except that hormone levels differ between children and it takes (even siblings) different amounts of time for that to kick in. Some children wet the bed until they're in secondary school with no underlying causes. My husband and I were both wetting until 8/9 and my younger daughter was the same. My eldest is the one with OAB - so different for her. Unfortunately you probably won't get a lot of GP support until she's 8 and particularly not at the moment because it's so normal to wet at night until that age.

What I can say that helped was those bottles with the times down the side (at 6 you may want to get a sharpie and shorten the amount to drink in a given time). They have worked wonders for the water intake with my two. They get a special snack if they stay on target till 3pm. Then they have one more glass of water with dinner and then very rarely are they thirsty before bed. Then they are both asked to wee twice before bed. Once before teeth and then after, or just before lights out. Good luck and you can tell her that on average two children per class in our school are still wet at night aged 10 - so don't be embarrassed; it's just one thing her sister can do that she can't. And neither of them can help it. Stay safe and healthy x

[Health365]

Bedwetting and/or daytime wetting in kids who are already toilet trained is nearly always down to constipation. We’re in this same situation with my 4 year old since she was 2, it took a long time to diagnose the constipation, it can be a hard to spot the signs even for mums and dads, poos every day doesn’t necessarily mean everything is ok. We are seeing a Paediatrician now and are treating it with Movicol but it is a long process and it does seem to regress a bit every now and then for no obvious reason. Once the constipation is resolved the wetting will gradually end as well. In the meantime my paed recommended getting a bed alarm, it wakes them up with an alarm when they are weeing and eventually they automatically wake and go to toilet when they need to wee. We are using one for the last couple of weeks, so far she isn’t waking herself but we were told it can take a number of weeks to work. Good luck, I know it’s so frustrating for everyone in the house!

[Saffietula]

Hi my AD wets the bed every night and she’s 10 now, she is also under bladder and bowel for her condition, the nurse specialist told us that we produce a hormone at night to reduce our wee down so we can sleep all night, this kicks in sometimes at roughly 2yrs but can be as late as 12-14yrs!! Also we have to stretch her bladder with drinking 1.5 litres of water a day, and holding on for longer in between wees in the day, she showed us with a balloon representing the bladder and how before you blow it up it’s smaller and that after it’s been blown up (bladder holding full wee) and air let out (emptying bladder) the balloon is stretched. When the bladder has stretched this means it will hold more wee at night before needing to empty. In theory holding in till morning! I have a large water bottle, holding at least a litre from smuggles which I fill up with her own ‘Special’ squash that she needs to drink throughout the day (water for school) also we were told cups of decaf tea are fine to add to fluid intake! Good luck it’s hard