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Stopping Bedwetting

By Helen Finch

If your child wets the bed, don’t despair.

  • Over half a million children in the UK aged 5+ years wet most nights
  • Surprisingly, 12% of 6-year olds and 5% of 10-year olds regularly suffer wet beds
  • 98% of cases have a genetic cause
  • Only 2% of cases have a medical or emotional cause
  • Lifting or limiting drinks will not cure a child
  • Modern bedwetting alarms are medically proven to cure up to 90% of children aged six plus

We all want our children to spring happily out of bed each morning eager for a new day, unfortunately one in seven children between the ages of 5-18 wake to find their pyjamas soaked; for them the morning, like all those before, starts with disappointment and embarrassment.

The good news is a great deal can be done to cure bedwetting!

The vast majority of bedwetting is genetically based. If even one parent, or even a relative, was a bedwetter, it is more likely that your child will be a bedwetter. Three factors combine to produce a bedwetter – heavy sleeping, under production of a urine reducing hormone, and a failure of the brain to recognise a full bladder when asleep.

For parents, the concern is what to do for the best. If your child is producing too much urine, should you limit drinks? Unfortunately this doesn’t help, the brain steadfastly continues to send out the message to produce urine.

Should you lift during the night? No, because that doesn’t help to teach the child to wake on their own to the sensation of a full bladder.

Could medication help? The main drug prescribed is Desmopressin; this reduces the volume of urine produced at night. But, while Desmopressin can be effective when being taken, many children return to wet nights once the drug is stopped.

So what can you do?

For over 50 years research has shown that a bedwetting alarm is the most effective method of treatment. In fact success rates have risen to the point where today up to 90% of children over the age of six using a hi-tech electronic alarm are cured of bedwetting within 3-5 months.

An alarm attaches to the shoulder of the child’s pyjamas and a moisture sensor to the pants. The instant urination starts this triggers a loud ‘bleeping’ noise, waking the child.

Over a short period of time, the child’s brain begins to associate the sound of the alarm, waking up, and the ‘need to wee’. Once this link is firmly established, the feeling of a full bladder is enough to wake the child, who can then control his bladder and use the bathroom.

Listening to your child gleefully shout out, ‘Mum, I didn’t wet the bed again!’ and watching your child’s self-esteem grow morning by morning as the bed remains dry is something only the parent of a bedwetter can appreciate. Finally your patience through all those wet sheets to be washed, all those beds to be changed at midnight, and all the worry wetting has put you through, has been worth it.

Alarms have been in use for 50 years and are used as the primary line of treatment by enuresis (bedwetting) clinics throughout the UK. A DRI Sleeper bedwetting alarm costs just £39.99 from www.dudleyhunt.co.uk.

Is My Child Overtired?
My Five Year Old Still Wets Himself




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