Enuresis

Callum wets the bed. He is eight and I can probably count the number of dry nights he has had on my fingers. The medical term for this is Enuresis.

We had an appointment with the school nurse this week. In our area, the school nurses run the clinics and service. I think it might be different in other areas. This is following an appointment last month with a paediatrician where we were told no more pullups.

We have tried no pullups several times in the past but Callum has begged me to let him wear them again after waking up wet every morning for a week but the Dr explained that while he is in them he'll never be dry which is a fair point.

Going back to the appointment with the school nurse then.

She was lovely, straight away putting Callum at ease, reassuring him that he was doing nothing wrong and his situation was really common. She explained her son was the same and I could back it up with a couple of other examples of boys I knew who were 7 or 8 when they were finally dry.

We then had about 15 minutes when she found out I used to train her colleagues on the patient information system she was using and I ended up giving her a brief training session - lol. Then seeing how Callum was getting bored, attention was back on him.

She explained how his body was working and that there were a number of reasons why he could be wetting the bed and after asking him a load of questions it appears his body isn't producing a hormone that reduces his urine production at night, combined with his brain not telling his body to wake up when his bladder is full. Much of this we knew or suspected but she was very good at explaining it to Callum.

We have come away with updated rules (we got some from the Dr which are similar), a mat and an alarm. The mat is super sensitive and triggers the alarm at the mere hint of a drop of wee.

When the alarm sounds Callum has to pull out the cord that links the mat to the alarm, go to toilet and mop up mess, reattach the alarm then go back to sleep.

The theory is that at the start the alarm will wake him up after he has weed. Then as time goes on he'll wake up sooner and sooner until he wakes up without the alarm sounding. Body training.

The alarm is very sensitive though that it has gone off a couple of times unnecessarily.

Last night was his first night. Stuart and I didnt hear it but the alarm went off, Callum stopped it but forgot to plug it back in.

I may be mad but figure we may as well train Millie at the same time as she has had a few dry nights.

So you can picture our house in the morning having to wash 2 lots of bedding, including duvets, every day!

Hoping this will be a short phase and doesn't take the full four months that we have the alarm for but if it does it does and at least this time in 6 months it could all be sorted.

It's so hard as a parent not to beat yourself up. Maybe if I had made him not wear pullups sooner. Maybe we should never have have put him in them. But I just don't know whether it would have helped or whether I would have had 5 years of daily bed washes. There have been lots of 'my children were dry since...' comments too which are never helpful to another parent.

I can't change the past or the approach we have taken but at least we are now moving in the right direction towards being dry at night. Wish us luck.