Our Bedwetting Story

I’m a mum of 4 with no history of bed wetting on my or my husband’s side of the family. However, how would you know? It’s not exactly something we all talk about is it!

Our first child had no issues and he was dry at night by 3.5 years (although I did wonder if it was ever going to happen!).

Our second child, dry both day and night from 2 months after her 2nd birthday. Easy Peasy, this stuff!

Our third child was easy to toilet train and dry during the day at 2, what a legend she was and very rarely had any accidents but no matter how hard we tried she couldn’t go dry at night. She was our good sleeper, in fact people used to ask if we even had a third baby! She slept through a storm, could be transferred anywhere whilst asleep and although she went through a stage of me holding her hand through the cot bars until she went asleep, even that phase didn’t last long.

Roll onto our fourth child and yes dry again by the age of 2, both night and day.

Suddenly, our fourth child was out of nappies and had overtaken No 3 child to dry nights. It was disheartening for No 3 but we stayed positive, thinking it will be a matter of time. 6 years later our now 8-year-old, was still wet every night unless she was ill and dehydrated.

We tried no nappies and some nights I would be up 3 times a night changing bed sheets. We tried reducing fluids after dinner, it didn’t work. I carried her to the toilet at 2 am in the morning, most times she wouldn’t wake enough to even go to the toilet and most nights it ended in tears. I went to the Doctor and was told “it will happen” “give her time” “it’s quite common”.

Well, that maybe true but I found myself talking to more and more people about bed wetting in search of a remedy and suddenly realised there were A LOT of children and young adults with the same problem. I recall being in a bank one day and overhearing two bank tellers discussing their 16-year-old son with a bed wetting problem. One thing was for sure, the Doctor was right “it’s quite common”! I didn’t know where to go to next.

Suddenly my 8-year-old was nervous about buying nappies when we had guests, having sleepovers or discarding her wet nappies in the morning without all members of the family seeing. She was anxious about other stuff too and that was getting worse and although I have no direct proof that it was related to her bed wetting, I felt in myself that it could have been. It was hard to see her sad about this issue and it didn’t matter how much we reassured her that it was just a matter of time, she didn’t understand that, and she felt different. At the time we didn’t even know her best friend also suffered from wet nights.

Out of the blue Dr Sagie from THERApee contacted me via email asking if we would look at his product. The timing! Quite obviously sent to save the day for our third child and I immediately asked if we could trial. Jacob Sagie, Ph.D., and his son, Tal Sagie, M.A., have treated more than 30,000 bedwetters in the past three decades. They have created program called TheraPee. What we love about this concept is that it does not require your child to go to embarrassing Doctors appointments to discuss their bedwetting. The plan includes a bed wetting alarm and an online component which is truly what made our little one engage with the program.

We were sent a bed alarm and a “logon” for the online course. I sat down and talked to No 3 about the program and weirdly she was adamant, that she was NOT going to give it a go. I’m not sure if she thought she was going to be face to face live with someone or whether she was scared to fail. We finally watched the video together and read all the positive letters from children, written to Dr Sagie

The online program consists of a reward chart and 100’s of brief video clips that enable that personalised Doctor to Patient experience (without the embarrassment). Her charts were monitored closely and the video clips given to us every fortnight were tailored to our child’s situation and progress. No 3 loved hearing Dr Sagie tell her how well she had done!

We watched the video for a second time and discussed the reward chart. I thought at the age of 8 that she was past reward charts and I didn’t really think she would take ownership of it the way she did. She saved it to my favourites, and we set her bed up with the alarm pad. She chose the volume and the tune she wanted. She understood clearly about visiting the toilet if she wet the bed, regardless of whether she had finished or not. The alarm pad was not attached to our child like a lot are which turned out to be a life saver when we traveled and it allowed our Number 3 some privacy about the matter with her younger sibling who shared a room with her. The mat was simply placed under her bottom sheet.

Day 1
I heard her get up at 1.23am and I went to check on her. She had got up and gone to the toilet. She was dry and the alarm had not sounded. She woke up 4 hours later, still dry. This was the first time this had ever happened as she would normally wet the bed several times during the night

Day 2
She admitted to me that afternoon that she hadn’t slept that well the night before as she was worried about wetting the bed. It was the first time in more than a year that she had gone to bed with no nappy and on the occasions that she had, she had always woken wet.
She was tired on Night 2 and I reassured her that it was ok if it didn’t happen the same way as the first night. I checked her at 1am and she was still dry. She did not get up to go to the toilet and woke up dry. She told me that although she had slept differently on the first night, she had her normal sleep on Night 2. Two blue stars on the Chart!

Day 3
Our Saturday movie night and a 9.30pm bed time. Maybe too tired and the alarm sounded at 2.38am and although it didn’t look like a full wee, she was not woken by the alarm, even with the high-volume setting. She was grumpy but knew she had to take herself off to the toilet. Changing was easy. As suggested, I had sheets by the bed ready. I took the bottom sheet off and wiped the pad over with the dry part of the sheet (the pad was washed fully over the edge of the bath the next morning which was very easy too). Pulled the top sheet over, using it as the bottom sheet and placed a new top sheet. She changed herself and plopped back into bed. The whole change took 5 minutes. She was still happy to fill out the chart the next morning and discussed when she could next get her red star, you need 3 blue stars to get one red star. A big red star, may I add.

Every 2 weeks, a session would play that was customized to her pattern of dry/wet nights and we were given a couple of exercises that were explained fully and easy for her to do. Don’t let the exercises scare you, they were as simple as counting to 3 during a wee, stopping and repeating.

We continued for several weeks, with more and more dry nights than wet. We went away on holiday during this stage and the bed alarm was easy to pack, we saved her chart on our laptop, although I’m sure we could have completed it on a mobile too.

We are now 4 months on and Number 3 is dry! For me the result speaks for itself but it’s also clear from these amazing reviews on Amazon that it’s working for so many children in the world.

Yes, it is quite expensive but not compared to face to face appointments with Doctors and Specialists and that money is well and truely well spent for my little girl to have her confidence back.

Just recently we were at the grocery store with guests we had staying and No3 leaned over to me and whispered “Mum, at least we don’t have to buy nappies in front of our visitors anymore”