I have been asked to write a Dryly guest blog, so I will hereby tell you about my experiences with bedwetting. My son Pieter was potty trained from a very young age, both during the day and at night. One day this stopped and he started wetting the bed. We thought it would stop, we did nothing about it except change his sheets every day. After six months, I started to get worried. After a visit to the family doctor, I was told that it was a phase that many children go through. I did not have to worry.
Now, 4 years later, I regret that we did not take more action ourselves. I didn’t know what our options were and I had complete confidence in the advice of our doctor. Of course many children grow out of it, so I don’t blame him for anything. But I do blame myself for not doing more research about bedwetting and possible solutions myself.
Strangely enough, bedwetting is rarely discussed among parents. It is a huge taboo to talk about it. I didn’t know much about it and I wasn’t confident I could come up with a solution myself.
When we were prescribed a bedwetting alarm after muddling through for 1.5 years, we thought that it would yield immediate results. We bought the bedwetting alarm and were amazed at the simplicity of it.
The bedwetting alarm of pants with a transmitter on it. The transmitter sends a signal to the receiver when the child pees. The receiver consists of a large plastic thing that you have to put into the socket. When the child pees, the receiver starts to send an alarm. The child wakes up and has to go to the toilet to empty its bladder and change its pants.
Pieter was initially annoyed by the bedwetting alarm because it looked rather old-fashioned. The bedwetting alarm shorts were made of thick white cotton and not very comfortable. When that bump had cleared, Pieter still hated being woken up from his sleep in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. That is part of the method, so it was nice that it worked. But Pieter found a solution to this problem…. at night, he unplugged the receiver and slept on in his warm, wet bed.
We went back at the urologist and told him that the method didn’t work because Pieter sabotaged the bedwetting alarm. It was only then that we learned the most important part of getting dry: training and support, central to the bedwetting alarm method. We, as parents, had to get out of bed at night too to walk Pieter to the toilet, to immediately change his sheets and help him put on a new pair of briefs. From the moment we started helping Pieter at night things went a lot better. He was completely dry within a few weeks.
I would have liked to have known all that sooner. I would’ve liked to be taken by the hand when I bought the bedwetting alarm. I would liked to have had insight into what happened with our Pieter at night. Fortunately, we still had the desired result after “learning by doing”!
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