Sunday, October 26, 2008

Sleepless Nights


What do you do when you have a child that, no matter what you do will not keep their pants dry at night? I am not talking about a 3 year old here, I am talking a 10, 8 and 5 year old. Yes, I had three children that could not keep their pants dry. We would take them to the bathroom before we went to bed, and they would still wet. We would limit their drinks. Still wet. We tried about everything.

With three kids wetting several times a night, laundry was a beast! I finally put aside my fear that this silly little alarm would scare my children, and bought two of them. They are not cheap, but I figured I would recoup the cost in savings on laundry. We used the alarm for the 10 and 8 year old. It worked like a charm on the older one, but the younger one -- not so much. We gave up for a while and now we are back at it. But now my 8 year old is 9 and my 5 year old is 6.
We have made temporary beds outside our bedroom door so we can get up easily to help them during the night. We have had a few long nights... Have you ever heard one of these things go off? They are horrible. They vibrate, flash and let off a siren (you can choose one of 8 siren sounds)
Anyway, it is now working pretty well for my 9 year old. But my 6 year old is having a crazy time of it. This thing sounds off so loudly, you can hear it in several rooms in the house, and yet, he sleeps deeply through it. When I try to wake him, he gets SO mad... talk about grumpy. I suppose I could wait until he really wants to stay dry then try again at that time. But if he is anything like my other boys he will be 9 or 10. I really don't think I can deal with three more years of smelly pullups in the trash and extra laundry because they leaked.
So, as we head into this 7th night of "Potty Alarm Madness", I can only hope for a full night of siren free sleep. Wish us luck!
If you want more information on these (don't worry, I am not selling them) or you just want to hear the horrible noise they make (scaled down a few decibels) follow this link.

1 comment:

Connie said...

Oh Kathy, I feel terrible for you! One of my friends wet her bed until she was around 12...finally her mom took her to the doc and found out that the lining of her bladder was thin, making her "go" the instant she felt the urge... might be worth checking into. Her other siblings had the same condition, which they all took a simple medication that solved their problem. Best of luck to you!