Wetting the bed

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I couldn't agree more!

My mother used to say things like, "no man will ever want to marry you because you wet the bed."

And once she bought these beautiful sheets with African animals all over them. They looked like a watercolor. She told me "these will be a reward for you after you quit wetting the bed. When you've been dry a year, you can have them."

Since it was three more years before I quit wetting the bed, I eventually forgot about the sheets (she hid them away). After I had been kicked out and was back visiting for some reason or another, I saw the sheets on my sister's bed. I said, "those were supposed to be my sheets." My mother said, "I don't know what you're talking about." I said, "you bought those sheets and told me they were for me as a reward after I quit wetting the bed but when I quit, you never gave them to me. They were supposed to be mine."

My mother said, "I don't know what you're talking about. I think you must have dreamed that."

It was so disheartening (even though by then I no longer slept in a single bed and had no need for the sheets. It was the fact that they were supposed to be mine and then they were given to my sister, plus all my life it has felt to me like my real life was stolen from me and my NT sister got to have the life I was supposed to have had.) Plus, it was angering because every time my mother didn't want to talk about something or wanted to pretend that she hadn't said or done something she actually did say or do, she would tell me that I must have dreamed that it happened. Grrr! Talk about a way to gaslight a kid! I *still* feel insecure and anxious about whether I remember things properly because I grew up being told that everything I remembered was really false and just a dream.

Sparrowrose, I'm wondering whether you and I may have shared the same mother?? (J/K, of course). I can relate to your feelings EXACTLY. My mother has always been a generally manipulative, dramatic person with a very "selective" memory. She's never used the "you must have dreamed it" line--she's always just flat out denied saying things, even things she said just moments prior! (So, essentially, she just calls me a liar, or accuses me of making stuff up or imagining things ). I used to get really worked up about it until, with lots of help, I started realizing she has a *real* problem that has little to do with me personally. (My psychiatrist actually believes she likely suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder). Now, don't get me wrong--I love my mom, as I'm sure you love yours, too. That's what makes this kind of stuff so difficult! I've had to learn to just 'drop the rope and walk away' with her when she tries to "gaslight" me or manipulate my feelings, etc. It's the only way for us to continue to have a relationship. It's worked pretty well--I accept my mother the way she is, flawed as she may be. I've expressed to her all of my anger and hurt inside regarding the past and subsequently let it go. She denied most of it ever taking place, of course, but I still felt better having gotten it out.

Have you ever considered doing that, or maybe writing your mother a letter to tell her your pent-up feelings, if you don't think she would listen to you or that she would chalk what you say up to another "dream"? Just a thought.

It must be terrible feeling as though your sister benefited and got "the real life" you didn't get, as you put it. But I can't help but wonder, if you asked her, do you think she would see it the same way? (I guess that's indicative of my adapting/coping skills evolving over time. Yay! I used to not even consider that other people might not see things the same way that I do).

By the way, I also wet the bed as a kid and was made to feel extremely guilty for it by my mother (among *so* many other things).

PunkyKat, we made a deal with our son a few months ago, that if he would wash his own sheets and make his own bed, he could give up wearing night pull ups. He was eager to do it, because they embarrassed him too.

So we started doing that, and also waking him once in the night to go to the bathroom. And except for a period when his dad was away on a business trip, he's barely wet the bed since.

I thought it was just developmental -- I wet the bed til I was 12 or so, my husband also wet for long time -- but reading your story makes me wonder if the stress of wearing the pull ups actually made him wet the bed!

I think this is such sound advice. My son happens to be one of the few who had the maturity and really needed the pills, but so often it's not that. The Urologist was really great. He did not throw pills at us and was all about letting my son mature and so on. I had to convince him that I'd been supportive, and that my son really was mature (he's tiny for his age so people sometimes assume he's less mature than he is). Once the urologist had given us all the standard, let the kid grow up, don't give him fluids at night advice....all of which we'd been following for years at that point, he did the ultrasound. That test showed a clear and measurable problem. That's when the prescription pad came out, much to my son's relief.

Most of the time all that's needed is some time and patience, but it is good to be open to more if there is a need. If my son had not gotten treatment he could have damaged his muscles more permanently and not been able to recover as easily and could have ended up with long term problems. As it was it took two years of pills to resolve it. If we'd started earlier it wouldn't have taken so long, but we didn't want to pressure him.

Bottom line, I think loving parents are really good at knowing what their kids need. If you love your kids and aren't all hung up on what some stupid book says kids are supposed to do, you know what's best. Go with your instincts.

An update for anyone who might be interested in the info I mentioned in a previous post in this thread regarding a medication, "DDAVP," that was prescribed to my son about 15 years ago for enuresis. (His was severe and we'd had no success after years of trying all the usual conservative measures, i.e., limiting fluids, waking him up during the night to pee, etc.). When it was prescribed back then it only came in a nasal spray that had to be refrigerated--I see now that (*gasp*) it's available in a tablet as well. That makes it an even better option, as it's easier to pack overnight. Also, back then it wasn't "officially" used for bedwetting, but apparently it now is. Unfortunately, it's still quite expensive.

Please don't misunderstand, I'm not advocating medication as a first-line treatment for even the most serious case of bedwetting. I applaud all you parents that have been successful with behavior modification and the like-- I wish we had been! It's just nice to know that when you've earnestly tried literally everything else and your child is obviously suffering emotionally that there are other viable options out there.

My son is turning 7 next week and he is still in pull-ups. He doesn't need them every night, but many he does, so to be safe he's in them all the time. His pediatrician has said that it is not uncommon in boys up to age 8, and she said we shouldn't worry about it until then. At that point, she'll discuss options with us. My son doesn't like wearing them but we've explained to him that this is just the way his body is developing right now, that lots of other boys are the same way, and it's nothing to be ashamed of. Just part of growing up.

Odds are they won't be in pull ups in high school. It's often just a matter of time and physical maturity.

There was a time when I was wondering if my mom has narcissistic personality disorder but I could never find anything that made it clear where the dividing line is between having some traits and having the full-blown disorder. I also strongly suspect she was sexually molested by her father as a child and have wondered if there could be a connection between that and the way she always tried to gaslight me throughout my childhood (and other undesirable personality traits as well.)



I have had a clue that I shouldn't bother. When I was a child, I overheard her and her brothers talking about how their mother was abusive toward them. The brothers wanted to confront my grandmother about it but my mother talked them out of it, saying, "she'll just deny everything and then she'll make it out like she's the victim and make us all feel bad for having approached the issue at all."

I take that as a strong hint of how my mother would react if I were to try the same thing with her. After all, it's said that people tend to project themselves onto others so there's a strong chance that my mother was projecting herself when she told my uncles what my grandmother would do. Of course it also might be what my grandmother would do. Or it could be a bit of both. But anyway, I take it as an early warning of what would happen if I tried the same thing. So I don't bother. I've moved 2000 miles away from my mother. I do wish I weren't so far away from my father, especially as she won't let him use the phone or the computer so I am out of touch with my father. I write him letters now and then but I don't know if he gets them because he never writes back.

Sometimes I worry that he died and no one told me but every once in a while I'll get an e-mail from my mother about dad's cancer treatment or his diabetes so I know he's still around. I hope she's taking better care of him these days. When I moved out of town, she was locking food in the trunk of her car to "starve him into getting a job." Meanwhile, he was laying in bed all day, every day, deeply depressed and told me "I'm just waiting to die." (He has asperger's and his life fell apart piece by piece starting with his only son dying and then getting laid off from the chemical plant he'd worked at for decades and then not being able to find another job and finally my mother's verbal abuse and hiding food so he was starving so bad his pants were falling off him and his shoes were held together with duct tape because he hadn't had any income for so long and it was all too much for him and he took to his bed with depression.)




I'm sure she wouldn't say her life path had been easy. And she was eager to leave home to go to university in a different city. And now she also lives 2000 miles away from our parents (and about 600 miles south of me.) I don't know if she would see it as "she got the life I was supposed to have" but she certainly does seem to enjoy her house and car and husband and two kids and regular trips to Europe and enjoyed being class salutatorian and going straight to university and being a foreign exchange student and getting her Ph.d and having a large circle of friends and cook-outs, etc. etc. etc.

Comparing that with my poverty and inability to keep a job and dropping out of high school and coming to university half-way to retirement age, and having no offline friends (and no one really close online), etc. etc. I'm sure she doesn't envy my life the way I envy hers. She probably thinks my life is pretty pitiful.

My mum does that with me, instead of admitting she was wrong she says I dreamed certian things happened. I used to think it was because she always did have a poor memory but now I wonder if she is lying.

I had wet the bed until almost puberty. My parents bought me a moisture alarm which had a loud buzzer and a light that went off at the first sign of moisture on the sheets. It worked wonders for me. The buzzer must be loud enough to awaken you with a start. I hated that initial (Psych) shock of the buzzer so much that I awakened when the urge was felt. I used to dream I was using the bathroom. The alarm soon made using the bathroom in my dream impossible - I used to dream some kind of complication that would prohibit me from using it....sometimes the bathroom was closed or other such scenarios. I then just started to awaken when I felt the urge. Remember, it is neurological. Boys often have a lag in proper physical neuronal connections. Just make sure he fully showers before school with a deodorant soap.

After I was hypnotized (age 15), I started having dreams about the bathroom I couldn't use. But they were nightmares. I'd try to go in the bathroom and it would be a dark cave with bloody intestines strewn about the floor and suddenly men would come rushing out from behind the toilets and beat me, rape me, run me through with swords. Wild animals would come running out of the toilet and start chewing me up in their teeth. They were horrible nightmares that traumatized me . . . and at first I still wet the bed through the nightmares and would wake up soaking. But eventually the nightmares got me woken up to use the bathroom instead of wetting the bed. That was how I finally stopped wetting the bed.

I still have those horrible nightmares now at age 43. I will never willingly let anyone hypnotize me ever again. That hypnotist added so much fear and trauma to my life. I stay up until I'm so exhausted I'm falling asleep sitting up because if my bladder fills in my sleep, I'll have one of those awful, bloody, painful dreams. I'd have rather kept wetting the bed.

sertriline ? its a Non-TriCyclic Anti-Depressant. I used totake those lol. They put me on them last time i was in Psychiatric Hospitol.

I wet the bed until I was thirteen. I think it wad due to stress becuase it began to stop when my parents took me out of public school to homeschool me.

My son wets the bed nearly every night. He wears the "Good-nights" but goes right outta them too. Our doctor has referred us to a urologist but we don't know how much medical to pursue or to just see if he grows out of it. Not much fun washing the bedding every other day.

We dealt with this with our oldest son. Turned out it was a hormone inbalance - simple urine test. The DR. did a sugar test (diabetes test) and the hormone test at the same time. He took 1 1/2 pills a day for 3 weeks and it stopped. He was 12 when he stopped bedwetting. His doctor had him take the pills in lower dose form for another month then stopped them. DS will be 17 next week and has had no accidents in the 5 yrs. The meds did not change his attitude, eating, ability to concentrate or have any other negative effects.

To help him (pull-ups and goodnights weren't really an option) we got him a travel laundry basket with a mesh bag liner. When he got up in the morning he stripped his bed and hopped in the shower. When I walked by I could easily glance in his room and see if he needed clean sheets. Pop the bag in the wash then get his brothers up. Him stripping his bed was NOT punishment. It gave him the power of letting us know it was a "bad" night without the embarrassment of having to say it or his 2 little brothers knowing.

It may have been a coincidence of timing, but letting my son not wear GoodNites (they were leaking all the time too) seemed to be the first step in him not wetting the bed. Within a few days the bedwetting stopped, except for a rare accident when stressed. For awhile we woke him up once at midnight to go to the bathroom, but after a time we decided to try letting him sleep through without waking him up and he hasn't wet once since.

My 13-year-old stepson wets the bed.

He slept dry through the night til he was about 6. He lived with his mother then. When he was six, she moved several times, and he changed schools several times. We suspect that he may have also been sexually abused by one of the losers she shared houses with during this period, though he has never disclosed anything of the kind.

At any rate, he started wetting the bed at 6.

After a battle in court, he came to live with us when he was 9, and his life gained stability. He has been in regular counseling ever since.

The bedwetting has not abated. There have been periods where it seemed like it was lessening, but it always comes back full-force. Currently, he’ll have perhaps 1 dry night out of 5.

We gave up on Goodnites because he pees so much that they were pointless and a waste of money. He has a double alarm clock that wakes him up at night to go to the bathroom.

We’ve always been very careful not to make him feel badly about it- his father also had the same problem, and has talked with my stepson about it many times. It stopped for his father when he was about 12.

A new and even worse facet of it since he’s hit puberty-age is the ODOR of it. OMG, the smell is just enough to knock your socks off.

One facet of this that we don’t really understand are stepson’s feelings about it. He verbally states that he wishes it would stop, but in some ways, it seems not to bother him much. For example, he’ll wake up on a weekend morning in a cold, soaking wet, stinking bed and lay there for hours, reading, if we let him. Sensory/lack of sensory thing?
His dad says that when he had the same problem, it bugged him so much that he’d change his sheets in the middle of the night, if he woke up and they were wet.

It just sucks really badly. We’re all so frustrated with it.. We wish we could outfit his bed with cool comforters and pillows and such for him, but we can’t afford to spend a bunch of money on cool stuff that won’t stand up to the almost daily washing.