7/21/10

There are so many wonderful things about being a parent that I never expected. There are also a few not so wonderful things. One of those not so wonderful things we deal with at our home is bed wetting. I was never a bed wetter. My parents have said that I was fully potty trained with no night time accidents before I turned 2. So dealing with potty training and bed wetting issues was not something I ever anticipated.

We have seen 2 different doctors and have tried several different methods to try to resolve the bed wetting issues our children struggle with. Unfortunately, our kids seem to have been born with tiny bladders and they are all heavy sleepers. This is a bad combination when it comes to staying dry at night time. We have been told there are medications that can help but my husband and I are both reluctant to medicate our kids. Not that we don't ever give our kids medication, we just prefer not to unless it seems absolutely necessary.

One of the mysteries of bed wetting that I have not been able to explain is how our kids can go a week without any accidents then the night after I have put clean sheets on their bed one of them wets the bed. This just happened the night before last. Our 4 year old went to sleep on clean sheets then woke up in the morning with a wet bed. I took the sheets off his bed the second day in a row and put them in the washer. I then went about my day, forgetting that he had no sheets on his bed.

I should also explain that we are in the process of removing nap time from our 4 year old's schedule. He has one more year before he starts all-day kindergarten and since he has been the child most resistant to change, we have started the transition now. Yesterday was one of the days that he did not take a nap. He didn't act very tired and seemed to be having fun playing with his older brother so I told him he didn't need to take a nap. Things were going fine until I started to make dinner later in the day. He was sitting on the floor in the kitchen one minute and the next he was face down on the floor asleep. I figured he could take a short nap before we had dinner. Since I had forgotten to put the clean sheets on his bed and since I was already in the middle of making our dinner, I decided he could nap in mine and my husband's bed.

Our kids all have waterproof covers on their mattresses to protect the mattress from accidents. Our bed does not. So when our 4 year old woke up from his nap in our bed looking like he had just been rescued from falling overboard a boat, we knew there would be problems. Not only were our sheets, blanket, duvet and cover soaked, so was our mattress. I don't know how it was possible but it looked as though the bathtub had drained all over our bed. My husband and I stripped the bedding off as quickly as possible but this was not enough to recover the mattress. We poured baking soda on top of the wet spot hoping to wick out most of the wetness. We hoped the mattress would be dry by the time we went to bed. It was not.

My husband and I were right out of college when we got married and did not have a lot of money to buy furniture. Our first child was born just a couple of years later and we still did not have a lot of money to buy furniture. We are now in the process of slowly replacing some of our college era furniture but we still have some old classics around. Like my husband's futon that once resided in his fraternity. I would like to push it off a cliff but there are not a lot of cliffs around. We joke that we keep the futon around because it is the only place for overnight guests to sleep and that way our guest don't stay very long. The futon was also the only alternative for my husband and I to sleep on last night. Let me tell you, being almost 6 months pregnant with a pinched sciatic nerve and sleeping on a futon are not a good mix.

Thankfully, our mattress now seems to have recovered so my husband and I should get a good nights sleep. That's if we don't hear crying in the night by another child with a wet bed.