Wetting the bed

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Embarrassing confession - I remember wetting the bed and it really didn't bother me to lie in it. My sister was so disgusted.

Lying in it was the easy part because it was still warmed by my body heat and I didn't have to smell it as much. It was getting up out of it that was awful because immediatley I'd be cold and nasty and smelly -- everything that had been somewhat hidden by the covers before.

And no matter how much I showered in the morning, it had soaked so much into my skin before I woke up that I would sweat urine in gym class later that day. It didn't matter if I got right up or laid there - I'd still smell awful and as a result get treated awfully as soon as I sweated. So why not lie there a little longer in the still-warm bed before I got up and faced the awful day that was to come.

Two suggestions - first, layer your bedding and a waterproof sheet (cheap at walmart) - place the waterproof sheet on the bed, then a clean sheet, then another waterproof sheet, then another clean sheet. That way, when he wets it in the middle of the night, all you have to do is strip the top layer off, not re-make the bed.

Second - we consulted a chiropractor out of desperation (I thought they were all quacks), but friends of mine with serious back pain swore that after nothing and nobody could cure their pain they had resorted to a chiro and had been cured. So we tried a reputable one. He told us he could stop Simon's bedwetting. (In my head I thought, "sure you can" snarkily).

2 weeks later - bedwetting cured.

Now I use "cured" to mean that we no longer had nightly bedwetting which we had until then - we now only have occasional bedwetting and only when we aren't careful about how much he drinks before bed. Prior to the chiro, it wouldn't matter if he hadn't had a drop of liquid for 4 hours, he'd still wet the bed. It's very infrequent now.

Thanks, Caitlin. Will talk the chiro idea over with my husband. It's worth a shot, eh?

Im not saying this is the case, but it is worth looking into. My daughter had awful times with wetting the bed and she is 8. I took her to the hospital one day because she was complaining of terrible headaches and they found that she had seizures. They were harmless, but they were disrupting her sleep. She never got to REM sleep. She always had twilight seizures. The docs there and the behavioral specials as well as many researches that I found said that this is as common as 80% in people on the spectrum. Anyway, after learning about her affliction, I realized that she had been having these for more than 3 years at that point.The discovery came in March this year, so it is all still new to us, but it may be worth getting the kids checked out for petit mal seizures. If they are really that common and that unoticable unless you know what you are looking for, it may stand to chance that this could be the cause. Not scary, but better to know. She gets them and it is just like she is having an AS spaceout. I thought that was what it was. Who knew? What helps her is to try and eekp her from overheating and to play something auditorily relaxing, like spa music. Works like a charm, most of the time. She knows and it helps her not get so down on herself.

I only skimmed the other replies, but:

My son (now 12) was a bed wetter. My husband and his father were also both bed wetters. My father in law says he wet the bed til 13 or 14. My husband's parents went the bed alarm route and he thinks it worked around age 9, but he had that alarm for YEARS. I'm not sure how that happened since my father in law is now so clearly in the camp that it's just developmental.

Anyway, with our son, my husband was adamant that there is something developmental and we would not push it. Around 9, at my son's request, we tried a bed alarm for a couple of weeks and had no lucksuccess. About a year later, 10ish, we tried it again and within a week he had quit wetting the bed.

He was in goodnights all that time.

I don't think this is terribly uncommon in boys and I also really believe it's something developmental. Mine simply did not wake up. He would wet the bed and sleep there until morning, waking up wet and freezing hours later. we could have stuck with the bed alarm at an earlier point, but it would not have worked in a week. I'm glad we waited until he was really ready for it.

It's a total non-issue now.