posted
Fortunately my son has begun to have independent awareness of his bladder control. Unfortunately, he has suddenly started wetting the bed at night. Has anyone else observed this? It's like he no longer can hold it.
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posted
I don't know how old your son is and I'm not a parent, but when I was growing up, two of my brothers, my three cousins and I all wet the bed at night for a long time at a relatively late age. We were all between 4 and 10 or so and most of us did it for years. We were all taken to doctors to determine why it was happening but they could never figure it out. The best they could come up with was sexual abuse, which never occurred for any of us. It was something that we just had to grow out of. It was embarassing and still is a little embarassing to admit. Posts: 378 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
My 7 year old still wets at night, almost every night. Once in a while she'll wake up and get to the bathroom. We buy those GoodNights panties (I think they're made by Huggies, they should be in the baby goods section of the grocery store/Walmart/Target/wherever you shop) and come in two sizes: S/M is rated for 40-75 lbs, L/XL for 70 to 125 or more. The commercials claim they are "just like underwear", but I do see a little difference when Missy is wearing these vs. regular panties. But since it's only the overnights that are the concern because of the kids being asleep when it happens, the kids don't have to be embarrrased about extra bulk when at school or out with friends.
I've heard of children as old as 11 having nocturnal control issues, no abuses or anything like that as a cause, just parts of them growing up faster than others. While not typical, it's not abnormal, either.
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posted
My daughter is 6, and she wet the bed every night until about 3 months ago. We just used pull-ups and tried not to worry about it. We'd had her checked, so we knew that there weren't any medical issues. Some kids are just late developing bladder control at night; my daughter was such a sound sleeper she just never woke up.
posted
I wet the bed at night well after I was out of diapers during the day. No idea why. Luckily, I've grown out of it. Posts: 2149 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
We recently studied enuresis (involuntary urination) in my psych class. According to the book and my professor, the most effective way to treat bed-wetting is with a bed alarm.
posted
I was one of the "late bladder control" people. If I remember correctly, I eventually stopped through pills/me finally developing, or something like that. The pills worked pretty well, making it so I woke up during the night when I needed to go to the bathroom. Don't ask me what they were, though, because I don't remember. It was really embarassing for me before I stopped, because I couldn't go on sleepovers.
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posted
My son (now five) wet the bed, but then he started getting over it. We were finally able to stop using the GoodNights (pullups) and let him sleep in underwear. Then school started. The combination of being a little more tired and having a little more stress in his life completely threw him off. He still isn't quite back to where he was before school started, but he's getting better.
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posted
I had issues with bedwetting when I was younger, too, but I don't recall it being a control thing. As I remember it, I was just too stinkin' (appropriate term, it turns out) lazy to get out of bed to go. I don't remember when I stopped, but I know I was already going to school.
posted
My middle son had the problem of enuresis until almost age 12.
We tried several different programs, but for us mainly found it was related to sleep disorder. Not going through sleep stages right, or sleeping so deeply that they could not wake from the sensation. He has always had sleep disorder problems.
We tried everything out there in every textbook and product known to man. None really totally "worked" but one day it just stopped happening and never happened again. Whether it was a physical maturity thing or what, I don't know, but it quit with puberty.
Farmgirl
(by the way, Mrs. M. -- having personally used the bed alarm, it is not my favorite way of treating it. While it does work to a point, it really takes effort of the whole family)
quote:. . . when I was growing up, two of my brothers, my three cousins and I all wet the bed at night for a long time at a relatively late age. We were all between 4 and 10 or so and most of us did it for years. We were all taken to doctors to determine why it was happening but they could never figure it out. The best they could come up with was sexual abuse, which never occurred for any of us.
o_O
The best I can come up with is that those doctors are idiots. There are lots of reasons for kids to wet the bed until that age or a little later that do not involve sexual abuse. So--imnsho, given that I am not a doctor, but I am a parent--you don't share hypothetical diagnoses of this sort until you have something a little less circumstantial to go on. If you think this may be something to explore, explore it obliquely . . . recommend counseling, or ask the parents probing questions, or whatever. But don't say, "Gee, maybe your kid was molested." Can you imagine the trauma a parent must go through when they get blindsided by the thought that their kid may have been molested? This would be very destructive (and I'm not talking about being considered a suspect, just being faced with the thought that you failed to protect your child from something society considers this horrible). Lots of parents have to face this knowledge, but there's no reason to suggest this as a cause for enuresis without a lot more to go on.
Hatrack doctors--or parents--am I out of line on this one? This strikes me as irresponsible. Please tell me if you think I'm wrong. This seems similar to like if you called a Dial-A-Nurse over a severe headache, and she said, "Well, maybe you have a brain tumor. Or cancer." Conceivably you could, but the right advice then is to send you to a specialist who can investigate the possibility, not to put that traumatic fear in your mind.
This reminds me of when we first took the girls to the pediatrician upon adopting them at the age of one. The pediatrician looked at their lack of progress relative to their age and said, "I think they might be retarded." She didn't have nearly enough to go on to be making that assessment. Certainly not at the age of one.
-o-
::breathes::
-o-
pooka, in regard to your original question, what I found both as a parent and as a sleepover camp counselor for quite young boys is that a lot of bedwetters were more likely to wet the bed--or, more accurately, they wet the bed in greater volume--when we made them got to the bathroom right before bed. The explanation I got for this from a nurse was something along the lines of, sending them to the bathroom right before bed wasn't going to avoid the bedwetting in their cases because the urine wasn't in their bladder yet. However, iirc, it did set into motion the circulation of waste fluid within their bodies, or something like that. It doesn't make much sense to me as I type it, but I remember it being vaguely like that, and I definitely do remember that sending them right before bedtime often had the opposite of the desired effect. I know that's not precisely what you asked about, but it seems related . . . like going more often might make him need to go . . . more often.
-o-
Both of my girls wet the bed for a little while. Banana outgew it fairly quickly, when she was about four or so. We did the frequent wakings during the night, reducing the frequency each time she was successful. I'm not saying you should do this, because I understand that in a lot of cases this does not work, and kids come to rely on their parents to wake them up rather then developing sensitivity to their own bladders. I'm just reporting what we did, and our outcome. We made progress at first with Mango this way, and then she backslid. We decided to table the issue, because we needed our sleep, and it was causing too much stress in the family. Another few months in Pull-Ups at night was not too much to deal with. A year or so later, we tried again, with no more success. Whenever we tried anything it would work for a few days and stop working. Late last year, we were fixing to try one last time, and then we had plans to by an enuresis monitor and use it over the summer. Turns out, we didn't need to. She was finally ready.
I know the frustrating part is that he used to be dry at night and now he's not, but really, bedwetting is not a big deal. In this day and age, it's easy to cope with and kids typically stop when they're ready to. I know a lot of kids stop on their own . . . this doesn't seem like it ever would have happened with Mango, but waiting and trying again when she was bigger, without being too concerned about it, worked fine.
(That being said, Goodnights and Pull-Ups can be detrimental to training your child out of bedwetting--as they can be to potty training in general--because they do too good a job of wicking moisture away from the child. Many if not most children need to feel some discomfort from wetting themselves, or there is no reason for them to want to change, and not much likelihood of them learning to associate the full bladder sensation with needing to get up. However, we could not deal with washing sheets every night, so we kept her in Pull-Ups, but when we were ready to try again, then we switched her into panties--with much fanfare. )
-o-
I think I stress more than most over each developmental milestone not reached--and we reach pretty much all of them very late. Because of that doctor, every time something doesn't happen when it "should," I wonder deep down inside whether this will be the milestone we never reach. What if they never get potty trained? What will my life be like then? What if they never become able to be dry at night? What if they never learn to read? What if they never learn impulse control? What kind of adulthood and career will they have then? What if they never pass kindergarten? What if they never pass elementary school? What if they never graduate from high school?
Sooner or later, or rather, later or much later, developmental milestones have been reached, so I really should learn to know better. But I always think about how alarmed their first pediatrician was by their lack of progress.
(And before I get jumped on for being callous or whatever, of course I would still love my kids even if they were "retarded," whatever that means. But it's not wrong of me to say that it's not what I would prefer.)
posted
Thanks, everyone. I guess the greater concern I should have with this kid is that he really likes to wear training pants. I got him some real underwear as an incentive to get trained last year and he only wears it if all the training pants are in the laundry. So just putting waterproof over the training pants worked.
I guess I've set my self up for the "go more often" idea because I won't give him juice or punch more than twice in a row unless he has gone. I guess weaning him off the punch and diluting the juice would be a good idea, as I know the sugar probably hyperstimulates the kidneys or something. We've had more salty food around the house as well. He was actually dry this morning. :cross fingers:
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quote: ... when I was growing up, two of my brothers, my three cousins and I all wet the bed at night for a long time at a relatively late age. We were all between 4 and 10 or so and most of us did it for years. We were all taken to doctors to determine why it was happening but they could never figure it out. The best they could come up with was sexual abuse, which never occurred for any of us.
o_O
The best I can come up with is that those doctors are idiots. There are lots of reasons for kids to wet the bed until that age or a little later that do not involve sexual abuse. So--imnsho, given that I am not a doctor, but I am a parent--you don't share hypothetical diagnoses of this sort until you have something a little less circumstantial to go on. If you think this may be something to explore, explore it obliquely . . . recommend counseling, or ask the parents probing questions, or whatever. But don't say, "Gee, maybe your kid was molested."
....Hatrack doctors--or parents--am I out of line on this one? This strikes me as irresponsible. Please tell me if you think I'm wrong. This seems similar to like if you called a Dial-A-Nurse over a severe headache, and she said, "Well, maybe you have a brain tumor. Or cancer." Conceivably you could, but the right advice then is to send you to a specialist who can investigate the possibility, not to put that traumatic fear in your mind.
I dunno, Icarus. It really depends. I don't know what "the best the doctors could come up with" means. It could be an honest and accurate report of anything from good medical practice to some pretty questionable stuff, as you so rightly mentioned.
I can see myself in an office situation, once all medical reasons had been exhausted, faced with questioning and concerned parents still looking for answers. I might well say, "I know this is a difficult situation for you, but at least we've ruled out any scary medical reasons for this happening. I may not be able to explain why this is happening, but I can give you that reassurance. Sometimes we don't find any real cause for this, but we do know that about 8% of eight-year-olds continue to wet the bed despite not having a medical cause, so you aren't alone. The number goes down as children get older, of course. Now, if you read up on this on the internet [I assume everyone does this, and I haven't been wrong that I know of yet, at least not in my clinic], you might find that bed-wetting is sometimes associated with a history of molestation. I want to reassure you that absolutely nothing that I've seen on physical examination or in interacting with So-and-so has given me any reason to suspect this is the case, and I want to remind you that this is not what has happened in the vast majority of kids who still are bedwetting at this age. So don't freak out if you see that -- it is something I've already thought about because that's part of the workup, but I feel certain in my own mind that this isn't the case here. However, if you are worried about this or have any information I don't already know about, feel free to let me know anytime. Again, though, it would be very unusual."
I think you kind of have to bring it up because the likelihood of someone running across the information is pretty high and you have to think about whether someone might not be associating the two. It means a lot to catch one or two kids who were left with an uncle with a questionable history or at a daycare with prior issues (one that maybe is unlicensed, in-home, the best the parents could afford, run by a woman with a husband who stayed home during the day and who was responsible for physical abuse of a child -- which is a true case from my practice).
But you are absolutely correct that raising the issue is no light matter at all. I think I would do it in a way that is well-couched in both reassurance and an accurate perspective about the unlikeliness of the matter. Still, the above could be construed as "the only other reason the doctor could come up with was abuse," even though the unstated part of it was that it was clear that it was most likely by far that there would be no reason we could find.
I don't know, though -- maybe my thinking is out of line on this. I'd like to know what people here think, too, as it could be very helpful to me and those I work for.
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posted
I guess I've seen more than a few cases of parents who were sincerely and clearly outraged that "The doctor didn't even mention that such-and-such was a possibility. Can you believe that?"
It's a really hard balancing act to get right.
Byt the way, this is one of the huge reasons why emergency room primary care just has to be suboptimal care, by definition. A physician who has a good working relationship with the parents of a patient has a much better sense of what the parents want from him or her, what is going on in the family, and how and when to broach things. If there is good continuity of care, then sensitive issues don't all have to be brought up and packed into on 7-minute visit. You might make a note to talk about this at the followup visit in a week, and meanwhile encourage the parents to do some reading on their own and bring questions to that visit, it they like.
On the other hand, if this one visit is the only time you are likely to see this patient, then a whole bunch of stuff has to get awkwardly and crudely stuffed into the time you have, now, with little to no preparation.
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posted
I'm okay with what you said, Sara, because of how you couch it as not being probable based on the absence of evidence for it. I don't know how it was actually presented to Uhleeuh's parents, so I was responding on the assumption that it was presented exactly as described, and exactly how I was told (actually, how Cor was told), based on five minutes of informal observation in a doctor's office, that maybe my kids were retarded.
I think that sometimes (and I can be guilty of this too, I guess) porfessionals can be thinking aloud, and blurting out whatever thoughts pop into their mind, forgetting that for them, perhaps, the question is academic, or not much more than a momentary conundrum to be puzzled out during the workday, but for the people profoundly invested in every breath their children take, the issue is not academic.
-o-
I was hoping you would weigh in on this, and I'm glad you did. I value your opinion on things medical, and was curious to know if my reaction to this was too extreme.
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quote:I'm okay with what you said, Sara, because of how you couch it as not being probable based on the absence of evidence for it.
Whew! I very highly value your opinion on things parental.
quote: I don't know how it was actually presented to Uhleeuh's parents, so I was responding on the assumption that it was presented exactly as described, and exactly how I was told (actually, how Cor was told), based on five minutes of informal observation in a doctor's office, that maybe my kids were retarded.
This could be taken the wrong way, so I'll try to be careful. Let me know if I get out of line.
In my training and as I trained others, you pretty quickly come to realize that patient's recollection of what has happened in prior clinic visits may not always be the same as what the physician recalls. Sometimes this is error on one person's part or the other (physician or patient), sometimes it is a matter of perspective, rarely is it ever remotely intentional or malicious. But it does happen.
I myself have given out a pamphlet for child restraints in cars, gone over it carefully, documented the questions the parent had and my answers given, even had a videotape of the office visit (with permission, as this was a study on intervention in the ED), and have had the parent completely not remember the discussion on a followup questionnaire.
Of course, being told your children are retarded or that they may have been molested is much more emotionally charged than a child restraint discussion, and it is quite likely that every moment of that meeting was immediately etched into your brain for good. On the other hand, we know that in giving a dire diagnosis (like cancer -- this was portrayed eloquently when Buffy learned of SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER her mother's brain cancer END SPOILER), almost everything else mentioned at that visit will often go completely over that person's head. It's a very human reaction and perfectly normal. Sometimes the emotional weight of a comment can skew the memory -- mind you, this is true for both parties involved.
And I'm sure Suneun and Theca can relate to the experience of being in training, going in first to ask a list of questions you have right in your hand, writing them down, and afterward having the patient say something completely different when you come back in the room with the attending physician for his or her interview and examination. It is so freaky! The very same patient that five minutes before told you "No, I haven't been having any chest pain at all" will later say (straight-faced, not at all maliciously, perfectly innocently) "I can't even get a flight of stairs because the chest pain gets so bad." (Sometimes it is the way you ask the question differently, sometimes -- I think -- the first asking of the question triggers some thoughts that then come out with later questioning.)
But it is such a known phenomenon that I always mention it to my students and tell them not to worry about it. Otherwise, they tend to be almost in tears thinking that we will think they lied to us about the information given to them by the patient.
quote:I think that sometimes (and I can be guilty of this too, I guess) porfessionals can be thinking aloud, and blurting out whatever thoughts pop into their mind, forgetting that for them, perhaps, the question is academic, or not much more than a momentary conundrum to be puzzled out during the workday, but for the people profoundly invested in every breath their children take, the issue is not academic.
Oh, yeah, absolutely! That is so so true. At least as much of my training was spent noting who I didn't want to be like as who I did. Unfortunately, physicians do hold a lot of power in this culture and in these relationships in particular, so they are even less likely to be held accountable for being jerks than other professionals are.
quote:I was hoping you would weigh in on this, and I'm glad you did. I value your opinion on things medical, and was curious to know if my reaction to this was too extreme.
Hey, cool. I think your reaction to that interpretation is entirely appropriate. It's hard for me from my perspective to tell whether the interpretation was the "right" one, and I'm also saddled with all my own biases and insecurities about this. But I can definitely see your point.
I wanted to find some resources for pooka, too, but that will take longer than just voicing opinions.
[ October 21, 2004, 03:12 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
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posted
In our family, late bedwetting seems to be genetic. I had trouble until I was about 7, my cousin, a another redhead, wet the bed until he was 7 and John, my redheaded son, stopped when he was 7.
When I asked the pediatrician about it, he said that there is a hormone that develops as the child ages. He said that it's not until the hormone reaches a level high enough to turn off the body's need to urinate during the night, that the bedwetting disappears. He said that it's not a case of being "lazy", so much as that people who have the proper level of this hormone don't need to urinate during the night. My pediatrician offered to give me pills that elevated the hormone level for specific periods of time, say if John wanted to go to a sleep over. I never took him up on the offer, so I can't say first hand if the pills work or not.
John has accidents every so often if he drinks too much too late, sleeps too late in the morning or is taking a medicine; even cold medicine seems to cause his body to not supress his need to urinate. Jacob, my blonde 5 year old, was potty trained at 2 and never had a bedwetting problem, yet he reacts the same way to medicine as John does.
Though completely anecdotal, I hope this helps.
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The endocrinologists I trained under would recommend it for spot needs, like sleepovers, but as it was expensive and didn't treat the underlying need like alarms could, they recommended training instead of long-term DDAVP use.
However, it is definitely effective and quite safe, as far as I know.
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I very highly value your opinion on things parental.
