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Good Mornings
Bedwetting and Your Child
By Carma Haley Shoemaker
A child wakes in the middle of the night, removes her sheets from the bed and places them in the laundry, then returns to sleep on the floor to avoid embarrassment, ridicule or humiliation. This child also avoids attending sleepovers with her friends and does not invite others to spend the night at her home. Although for most children it is not an every night problem, the unpredictability of bedwetting can be enough to affect self-image and esteem, confidence and social interaction. But what can be done?
Nocturnal enuresis – the medical term for bedwetting – is the "involuntary discharge of urine after an age by which bladder control should have been established, which in children is normally presented by the age of 5," according to Taber's Medical Dictionary. Most commonly, the involuntary discharge of urine occurs at night, while the child is sleeping, causing them to wake.
According to the National Kidney Foundation, bedwetting affects approximately seven million children in the United States alone. The condition is more common in boys than in girls and tends to occur more frequently in first-born children than in younger siblings. A distinct family connection or inheritance tendency is also present.
Bedwetting may be caused by one or more factors. These factors include poor bladder control, spastic bladder conditions, stress, trauma, urinary infection, increased fluid intake, diabetes mellitus or, in a small percentage of cases, a serious disease or illness involving the spinal cord or muscles of the pelvis. The most common cause of bedwetting, however, may typically be due to a child's bladder not growing as fast as the rest of his body.
