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!

Incorrect sleep patterns and bedwetting

I don't claim to understand all the aspects of how sleep affects enuresis, but here's what I do know. People who wet the bed don't follow normal sleep patterns. Once they fall asleep, they plummet into stage four sleep where they remain for longer than they should. The amount of REM sleep they receive is not even close to what is necessary for normal functioning in day to day activities. For this reason, these children seem lethargic or "spacey" and have a difficult time maintaining their focus. Often they are diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Disorder. Is it any wonder? How easily do you stay focused when you are sleep deprived? I feel certain that this one issue was the most frustrating for our family personally. We knew that our son was bright. But sometimes even the most simple school problems just stumped him. He would give us this far away look, as though he were thinking about nothing at all. I could never figure out the reason for this behavior, and I honestly thought that maybe we were doing him a disservice by not putting him on some kind of medication. Most days I wanted to pull my hair out (we homeschool, so I am the one who has to try to teach him through all that brainfog!).

Enter the enuresis professionals, with their $2,000 fee. They have taught us several lessons with regard to how to change our son's sleep patterns. First of all, we were told to put a plywood board under his mattress to make it more firm. Next, we were instructed to put a flattened out cardboard box on top of the mattress, under the sheet. All of this, we learned, is to keep him from sleeping so deeply.

More instructions, as we received them, on how to change those faulty sleep patterns will follow! Keep up, cause I'm gonna reveal the problems with another widely used method for keeping the child from wetting the bed in my next post!!

Drink lots of water!

What every parent is told not to do...that's what the enuresis professionals are telling us to do. Give your son all the water he can comfortably hold before bedtime. Makes sense to me! How long have we been doing it the other way (you know, nothing to drink after dinner) without any sign of the bedwetting letting up? At this point, I'm willing to try anything humane.

It sure did make my son feel a lot better. No more waking up with his mouth so dry that he was puckered! So did he pee a lot more? You betcha. This is meant to accomplish a couple of things. First of all, remember what I said about the bladder being like a balloon? Well, putting a large amount of water into it before bedtime starts to train it to be stretched. Bird number 1: better bladder development.

Next, when a full bladder empties, it makes the alarm go off while still giving time that the child can wake up before he finishes urinating. This helps train the brain to wake up as soon as the wetting starts. Oh, I didn't mention the alarm before? Okay, so there's an alarm. More about that later...Bird number 2: brain training to wake for wetting. What is it that they say about killing 2 birds with 1 stone?

Now, my hubby is after me to get to the part about how all this is related to sleep issues. So guess what? That'll be tomorrow's blog. I'll start tackling not only the why, but the how. Be blessed, and be sure to stay tuned. It just gets gooder and gooder! ;)

what doesn't work for bedwetting

Restrict fluids before bedtime...that is about all I learned from my pediatrician about ending the bedwetting. Well, there was also the assurance that he would eventually grow out of it. I'm not sure where this advice originated, though I understand that it can reduce the amount of urine on the sheets. But let's get to the truly important question...why is it bad advice? Well, we all know that there are many disadvantages to bedwetting, but one of them is often overlooked by parents who are absorbed in the duties of cleaning it all up. It is this: when we sleep all night without going to the bathroom, we stretch our bladders out on a regular basis. Just like a balloon that has been filled with water and left overnight, when the fluid is released the bladder empties but remains somewhat stretched and wrinkled. But if you fill up a water balloon and then empty it sooner, it will not be very stretched but regain its original size rapidly, and so it is with the bladder. This just perpetuates the problem. So restricting fluids can actually make the problem worse by keeping the bladder from being stretched and keeping it accustomed to being emptied when there is not much in it. Okay, and the second problem is very obvious. Our bodies need to be hydrated. I can remember on more than one occasion our son crying because he was thirsty, and we would make him swish a little water in his mouth and spit it out or even tell him he could have a tiny drop. And it never helped him stay dry! I've heard that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.

The first thing that they (the company to whom we are paying $2,000 for teaching us to become dry) told us was to make sure he drinks all the water he can comfortably hold before bedtime. WHAT?! You read right! Flies right in the face of everything we were told previously. But this made him pee lots more! See that was one of the goals, and I'll explain more about that tomorrow. Make sure you stick with us to find out more, and as always, feel free to contact me with any direct questions. I'll do my best to answer them from what I've learned so far.

why are we here?

Wet beds, wet sheets, wet clothes... It seems like my life has revolved around cleaning up pee in one way or another for the last 9 1/2 years. Nocturnal enuresis, or bed wetting, has disrupted my sleep, filled my days with extra work, and caused all kinds of headaches that never seemed to relate to this one root problem. And we never knew why until someone came to our house to educate us (and, not surprisingly, make money in the meantime) about how we had gotten lots of wrong information from everyone, including our pediatrician. We are paying $2000 to learn how to keep our nine year old son dry. Well, actually $1,995, but who's counting? So here's the deal... Everything I learn for $2K, I'm going to blog so you can learn it for free!!! Why? Because none of those other websites on health issues (even kids health) gave us the correct information. Because what we are doing now is working. Because I don't want your child to have to go through this anymore (or you, if you are the enuretic). So stay tuned. I can't promise that you will get the same results as we are getting, but I can promise that I will share with you everything I can to get your beds dry and your lives back to normal! Lets do this together. Our kids can stay dry!!

Oh, yeah, one more thing. Feel free to search around. I haven't found anyone else who is willing to truly help us for free. And if you have any specific questions, please ask. There is too much information for me to share all at once here with 5 homeschooling kids, but I'll do what I can!