Today is Aiden's last day of Summer Camp and even though his schedule will stay the same when school starts, his days go back to much more structure and curriculum oriented activities.
He's been such a chatter-box lately, and a little know-it-all to boot, that I am not worried at all about his academic performance this year. So instead, I have decided to occupy my little mommy-self with things that we need to work on at home.
The big one is bed-wetting. While I take time every day to be grateful that Aiden is potty trained and I am diaper free (for some undetermined but indefinite amount of time), there are all sorts of joys that come with big-boy under pants.
For instance, the need to visit every bathroom in every public location we stop at. Aiden has even verbally admitted to me that he does this quite often just because he wants to know what the new bathroom in the new place looks like.
Surely this is no reason to wish to convert back to diapers, but the point is - each new accomplishment brings a new set of less desirable behaviors to deal with. Now, part of my mommy mantra is to pick battles carefully. Is it worth an overhaul in disciple or routine to keep us from seeing every bathroom in metro Denver? Not really. Is it worth a little change and struggle to end unwanted bed-wetting and sheet washing every day? Absolutely.
Every night, we have a bed time story. Then Mommy rubs Aiden's back while she sings a song. Then he asks for a cup of milk. Then he asks to go potty but really doesn't do much before climbing back in bed with another request that will put off bed time another couple minutes.
I would suspect that any Mommies out there with advice for me might jump directly to saying "No milk at bed time" - or any other drink. But I don't believe this is my solution, because in the morning, he has only had one to three gulps from his cup when I go to get it from his room. Yet, about three times a week he and the bed are soaked by or before morning.
This means I need to do more laundry - not because he doesn't have extra sheets but just because it smells bad. And it means he needs a bath/shower in the morning which we may or may not have time for.
I haven't done much research on this yet, because I just really would rather some veteran mommy advice, but I was comforted by some of the stats on this:
Fortunately I don't have any reason to believe this is caused by some sort of emotional trigger for Aiden but it worries me terribly that it's one of the top 3 fears of young kids to wet the bed.
I certainly don't think it's a HUGE deal when it happens, I don't get mad or frustrated with Aiden - it truly is one of the easier messes to clean, but I have noticed that he gets upset more often than not about it and I'm not sure why. Any ideas on comforting this would be helpful.
It seems like we are stuck somewhere between staying dry and that final stage where bed wetting stops completely but it could take another year or so - as with all milestones, I just need to remember that Aiden is going to do it at his own pace.
I think I am definitely going to have Aiden start helping clean the messes though, not in any negative way, I just don't want to brush it under the rug for him, especially if it's upsetting - if we can clean it up together, we can talk about it together and it's much less frightening.
Other than telling Aiden that he can go potty whenever he wants or needs though, I am not sure how to go about getting him to do so in the middle of the night - Veteran Mommy Advice Wanted Please.
2 comments:
Ugh, such a struggle! Sounds like you're doing it right, too: not making a big deal of it, not humiliating him. I know it's supposed to take much longer for boys than girls (although not in our case). Have you thought about nighttime pull-ups? I didn't require them, but offered them to Vi when she was upset about wetting; she only took me up on it a couple of times, but it seemed to make her feel in control. The thing that worked best for her, though, was to wake her up in the middle of the night to go pee. (I usually get up anyway so it was easy to go ask her.) Even if she said no, it seemed to get her enough out of the deep sleep cycle that she wouldn't wet. Often she would get up to pee with me, and eventually she started waking up on her own. Good luck!
That's a good idea! I'm usually up 4 hours after aiden goes down but I don't even think about waking him up, I'll try tonight ad see what happens!
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