Are you worried about your child wetting the bed? Primary nocturnal enuresis is the most common form of bedwetting. Between five and seven million children in the United States, over the age of six years, wet their beds every night. However, research indicates less than two percent of children will still wet the bed once they reach puberty, or the age of fifteen years. Children under the age of five years will wet their beds as a part of their normal development.

Boys are more likely than girls to wet their beds, which was true with my own children. My boys all wet their beds until they were about seven years old. Bedwetting tends to run in families, it has genetic factors, so try not to blame the child. Funny, I don’t remember seeing a question about childhood bedwetting, on the birth parent information sheet we were given, when we were matched for our daughter last year.

Contrary to popular thinking bed-wetting isn't caused by having too much to drink before bedtime. It isn’t usually caused by emotional problems or done just to irritate parents. The child isn’t too lazy to go to the bathroom; it could be just too difficult to wake up from sleeping or the child’s bladder could be small. Other causes of bedwetting are urinary tract infections, abnormalities in the spinal cord or ureter, or abnormalities in the urethral valves in boys. Hormones can also be a factor in bedwetting or having a slower than normal development of the central nervous system.

There are two types of treatment to consider if your child doesn’t seem to be outgrowing bedwetting. There is behavior therapy which will help teach your child not to wet the bed. Some types are; alarms that go off when wet, rewards for dry nights, bladder training, and having your child change the bed sheets when they are wet. The other choice of treatment for bedwetting is medication such as an anti-diuretic hormone nasal spray or an anti-depressant.

We tried the Wee-Alarm with our oldest son. It attached to his underwear with a snap. When the underwear got wet, it allowed contact between the two metal sides of the snap, and the alarm went off. We didn’t use the alarm with our other sons. We used pull-ups to avoid getting the beds wet every night. The boys took them to sleepovers and camp. They changed their pajamas in the bathroom. In the morning they put the pull-up in a grocery bag, and either packed it away, or threw it away.
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Wet The Bed Deserve to Be Treated!