Aged 9 Aspergers leaks urine during the night - help please

[Flower1983]

Hello

Has anyone else had a similar experience or can advise me on this please.

My son, aged 9, has started to leak urine during the night and occasionally during the day.

It's only a small amout and doesn't wet his bed, just his pj bottoms, which he then changes (he doesn't like dirty things).

He can go through 3 pairs of pj bottoms a night.

This only started a few months ago. He's never had a problem and was toilet trained over night at aged 3 with no accidents.

He's not good at drinking enough during the day abd has to be reminded. We are working on that.

It's becoming an issue now as its happening averagely 5/7 nights per week and will start to affect his social life (friend staying over etc).

Thank you in advance for any help anyone can offer.

[Lyndalou]

Hi Flower1983

 

I wonder if there is some connection between him drinking more and having accidents at night? My son is not fully toilet-trained at 5. He has a fear of going to the toilet to do a poo and although he is dry most of the time at night now he is still in overnight training pants. We need to take the bull by the horns and get him out of those,but that's another matter!

 

I push fluids through the day. He can ask for drinks but then get engrossed in doing something and forget about it. However, around a year ago we were having a lot of problems with him filling his overnight trainers and then the overspilling then soaked his bottoms and sheet and often as he had wrapped his legs around his duvet, it had to be stripped too. So, I started being strict about when he stopped getting drinks and tried to make sure he didn't drink past dinnertime although he got a lot of drinks up until then. This was only to ensure he didn't 'flood' in the night. I think a mixture of this and now better bladder control has got us to where we are now. Dribbling may be a bit different though with your son. Has he been checked for a urine infection for instance? Does he pee right before bed? Or is it possible he's having 'wet' dreams?

 

If there is an 'embarrassment' issue with friends staying over, I would recommend the trainers which go up to his age short-term anyway. They are very tightly fitting and if he has a long pj top on then no-one would see he was wearing them.

 

Lynda

[Flower1983]

Thank you for replying!

We have only started to push the drinks more recently as we thought there may be a connection to not drinking enough and leaking? His dad read that somewhere.

He is very stressed with school so it could be down to that.

Just unsure of what we can do - as in why such small amounts and how we can help to stop it happening.

I'm pretty sure it's not wet dreams yet.

[BuntyB]

My son was wet until 13. He used pj pants until he was too big for them. We saw a specialist who recommended start charts and an alarm to help him notice and want to be dry. He explained that if you have it in your head you want to wake up before it happens (e.g. on Christmas morning) then you can This didn't work for us at all and he really didn't want an alarm because it announced to the family when he'd had an accident. The odd thing that helped him was explaining that lots of children on the autism spectrum find this tricky but it does get better. He commented 'So it isn't my fault?' which I was surprised at as we'd always said this. Shortly after he did become dry.

I do think that helping him hold a full bladder during the day though will make it easier not to dribble at night.

[phantom sneeze]

Some medications can increase incontinence issues.

[lilbec]

First rule out medical issues-infection, medication etc. Easily done with a visit to the GP and a sample of urine. Then make sure drinking enough during day but with cut off point such as dinnertime as suggested. Overly concentrated urine is a bit of an irritant if they are not drinking enough on a regular basis and so can cause dribbling. And oddly enough blackcurrant drinks can sometimes cause it. Also agree that "pull ups" are good for preventing all that washing but have to be approached carefully. We had bedwetting issues and leaking issues for a long time in our family in all our children. Night-time was simply down to very deep sleeping especially with the child who could throw up and sleep right through it! Alarms for that one worked a treat but we had to make it a bit of a private family joke to lighten the atmosphere. And sleepovers can also be dealt with by using desmopressin on the sleepover night. They can have these things called Desmotabs which melt on the tongue which can be used before bed but need to be prescribed by GP. Doesn't sound like his problem is not waking up but waking up in time. Does he go to the toilet during the night if he wakes up with wet pj's?