Peeing in the stroller!

Maybe this has never happened to you, I don't know. But if it has, I'm sure you know where I'm going with this. Our son wakes up in the middle of the night because he wants to get in bed with us. But we don't want him to pee in our bed, so we say, "Go use the bathroom first." He gives us this blank stare, so we say once more (rather crabbily, I might add), "Go use the bathroom!" He says, "OK," turns around, walks to our daughter's baby doll stroller, pulls down his underwear, and begins to pee! "Nooooo!" we yell, now fully awake! "What are you thinking, son!?"

Well, as it turns out, he wasn't "thinking." He was sleeping. And at that time we had no idea that we had encouraged this behavior! Once again, we go back to the professionals (you know, the ones we're paying $2,000). I'm sure you understand how parents of enuretics try all kinds of things. You know, like setting an alarm, waking them up in the middle of the night, and dragging them to the bathroom to urinate in the hopes that they won't pee in the bed, only to find them wet in the morning? Well, those high dollar professionals let us in on a little secret. In addition to the fact that you can never be sure when you should get the child up in order to avoid the wet sheets (which, by the way, we were able to figure out on our own!), taking the child to the bathroom to pee when they are still asleep merely compounds the problem. How's that? Well, to the zombie-like child, peeing in the toilet while asleep is no different from peeing in the bed while asleep. Peeing is peeing, and asleep is, well, asleep! The stroller looks like a toilet, the sink looks like a toilet, a paper bag...anyway, you get the point.

So, back to those pros and their methods. Our son gets to lay down on a nifty little alarm pad, connected to a little black box that has this strange aversion to moisture, which when applied to said nifty little pad causes the aforementioned little black box to let out this piercing, high-pitched tone that doesn't stop until someone gets up and flips it's little toggle switch (or throws it across the room). Be forewarned that the only one allowed to flip the switch that will relieve the terrible ringing in your ears is the aforementioned zombie-like child! And believe it or not, he can sleep like a baby right through the whole ordeal! They instructed us to take a cold, wet rag and run it across the little darling's face, neck, and shoulders. We recommend ice water splashed on the face. It works much faster!

Okay, in all seriousness, the point of all this is to wake the enuretic up completely. In my next post, I will give you all the details of what to do next. I hope you'll be back for more, cause this is where we get to the really helpful stuff. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, our son (who had wet the bed almost every night for his whole 9.5 years) has been dry for more than 2 weeks, and before that was dry for a week and a half. This is quite a leap for us!