10 year old bed wetting

[Lisa697]

Hi everyone,

I have a 10 year old daughter who is intermittently wet at night. She has never been dry at night for more than 3 weeks (this was last year). She was under the pediatrician a couple of years ago and has been re referred. (Waiting time is long). I’m not convinced it’s constipation as she goes daily/every other day, no pain/discomfort, eats a good diet and only drinks water (lots). We are still using Rodger bed alarm but she never wakes up and I have to get her up to wee. Has anyone experienced similar? What was the cause? Many thanks

[halftime]

Hi Lisa. Our experience tells me that the pain/discomfort assumption for constipation is not reliable. Kids get used to their normal and don't know what normal truly is; they don't operate with adult reference points. Therefore they don't tell you or comment unless they feel really uncomfortable and even then are less than clear and reliable witnesses. I would get a Bristol poo chart stuck up in the loo if you haven't already got one and you and your daughter familiarise yourselves with that and insist you want to look before she flushes for a few weeks. She'll constantly 'forget' because she is old enough to be embarressed ( I had to sneakily disconnect the flush so a bucket had to be fetched for our 'broken' toilet in order to get a peek at what was really going on at one point with my son). If she is not going everyday, good long sit down(20 mins at least, good foot position etc) and emptying her bowel fully then she is constipated to a degree. Have you asked GP to prescribe Movicol (stool softener) whilst you are waiting on appt to do what you can to eliminate the obvious by establishing good regular bowel habit (Perhaps senna also ??) It's so frustrating when you and your child are doing all the right things (good diet, avoid fizz, lots of water). Personally, I wonder if older children who wet the bed have something else going on and the common constipation factor is a symptom rather than a causal factor standing in isolation. We have had very positive results on wet beds with vitamin supplementation. There is some interesting stuff on effect of VitD on bedwetting and B12 (role in nervous system development makes sense) out there. Search it online. Also recently watched some U.S dr on you tube (name escapes me for the min but I can check if you can't find it by searching topic) which had a vry interesting counter intuitive message about increasing effectiveness of bed alarms by persisting in fluid (yes more fluid) intake right up to going to bed (still obviously with final pee )as would be normal for anyone. Sounds mad but did work. Notion is to make a massive 'need to pee' brain /bladder/alarm link to make our heavy sleeping kids wake. Tried it. Finally properly woke to alarm and that was it. do think that wildly abnormalising our kids behaviour (eg no liquid for 3 hours prior to sleep as we were told a while ago) in order to produce a facsimile of 'normal' response is where madness lays.

It seemed to be the factor (fingers crossd) to finally push our 16 yr old firmly over the wire, although without B12 supplementation, for him, it has unravelled in the past. So ...watch this space. I would keep a very clear ticklist diary and try to think back to what was different during the dry weeks last year.

Sorry that is long. Hope it helps.

[Lisa697 in reply to halftime]

Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a long reply. That has really helped. Thank you.

[Sophhall33]

Hi yeah my daughter is exactly the same it’s really bad at the minute doctors have put her on some medication hopefully it works