Everything you need to know about bedwetting(in children and teenagers)
Many moms ask herself when is time to start potty training. Doctors say that should probably happen between age of 2 and 3 years and the recommend to approach to the potty training gently and not to force the child. Parents should observe their children and see if there are some signs that the child is mature to stop using diapers. If the child is interested and it’s able to sit down on the potty, or he asks you to change his soiled diapers, you should try potty training. The best period for that is summer, when we wear less clothes and we can even leave the kid naked. We should prepare the child with talk that he should tell like the older children when he has the need to pee etc. If there is no result for few days, we should not force the child, make a break and try again after certain period of time. Some children will leave the diaper completely at once, during the day and the night. Some others will first start to use the potty during the day and continue bedwetting for certain period.
What is the upper age limit for bedwetting?
Doctors say that bedwetting can be tolerated till the age of 6 or 7 years. If it continues to happen after that, it’s time to visit a doctor. Bedwetting or called with its medical term, nocturnal enuresis, is involuntary urination that happens while sleeping after the age a person should have established a pee control.
Many people think that bedwetting happens only in little children, but in reality it’s a situation that affects 1-2 out of every 100 teenagers. It’s embarrassing situation especially at that sensitive period of life, that’s why the sooner you visit the doctor the better to see what’s causing it.
The doctor will first ask you to do urinalysis and urine culture for your child and ask about your child’s medical history, the family’s health, medicines your child is taking, allergies, sleep patterns, other urinary symptoms, bowel habits or stressful situations your child is going through.
The doctor will do this in way to exclude some medical conditions that can cause secondary enuresis such as diabetes, urinary tract infections, constipation, urinary tract abnormalities (person’s urinary tract structure problems). If some of these conditions causes the enuresis, solving and treating that condition will solve the enuresis too.
If the test results are completely normal than it’s about primary nocturnal enuresis which is the most common type and it lasts since the person was baby. These can be the possible reasons:
– Hormonal problems: the human body produces an antidiuretic hormone or ADH, which make the body to produce less pee during the night. Decreased production of the hormone can make creation of too much urine while sleeping in some people.
– Bladder problems: Some people have relatively small bladders that can’t hold a lot of urine or too many muscle spasms can make the bladder not to hold a normal amount of pee.
– Genetics: Teens that wet the bed usually have one of the parents that had the same problem at their age too.
– Deep sleep– Some teens simply sleep so deeply that they don’t wake up when they have the need to pee
– Caffeine can cause the need to pee more
– Some stressful situation a person’s going through can also cause enuresis
Bedwetting is threated sometimes with medicine, but usually medicines don’t cure the problem permanently and the bedwetting returns after the medicine is stopped. But in combination with some behavioral approaches the problem can be resolved:
– Change eating and drinking habits before bedtime: make sure your child consumes enough water during the day and drinks less water before bedtime. Also is good to avoid food and drinks that irritate the bladder such as caffeine, tea, chocolate, sodas and beverages that contain caffeine. The chances your child wet the bed during the night decrease by going to the toilet right before going to bed.
– Use bedwetting alarm: Sometimes doctors prescribe a bedwetting alarm that sounds a bell or vibrates when a person starts to wet the bed. The alarm can be turned off and the person can go to the toilet before wet the bed too much. This method requires more time, weeks and months to give result because the brain needs time to unlearn something that was doing with years. The goal of the bedwetting alarm is to train the brain to wake up earlier every next time when bedwetting and reach at the end the behavior modification for the brain to wake up on time or send signal to the bladder to hold the urine till morning.
The deep sleepers should try sleeping in colder room and leave some light on, in other words avoid creating atmosphere for deep sleep.
For the children that can’t hold a normal amount of urine, a reward can help to train them to hold more urine.
The good news is that bedwetting is not serious condition and usually it will go away on its own or can be stopped with some of the approaches that your doctor will recommend you.