Enuresis

[ailbhe]

Linnea, like much of my family for three or four generations and probably longer, wets the bed.

She's luckier than we were though because she has some nice, easily washable bedding, which isn't cold or squeaky, never smells of wee before she wets it, and doesn't make her sweat. I really, really hated rubber sheets and improperly washed duvets as a child, but the bedwetters got the smelly quilts and mattresses for obvious reasons.

Rubber sheets made me sweat. Also, they were cold to touch, and the cold seeped through the sheet. And they smelled of wee even after washing. Eventually (after I'd stopped wetting the bed) we got a strange quilted one which didn't have these problems and suddenly my little sister wet the bed much, much less.

Linnea has waterproof underblankets with a layer of towelling to keep the not-really-rubber from making it uncomfortable. And her quilts fit in the washing machine. The whole thing is much more civilised.

I'm still going to ask her to wear a nappy again soon. She was very upset by it last time though.

Comments

[ai731.livejournal.com]

I found out quite recently that my younger sister wet the bed throughout her childhood. My mother obviously managed to handle it so matter-of-factly and without shame or fuss, that it made no impression on me as a child, because I didn't know about it.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

I was also a childhood bed-wetter (until I was 11 or so), as was my younger stepdaughter. I hated it so much (as did she) that I actually didn't want to let Gnome try no-night-nappies in case she ended up hating herself too. And then she went nappy-free in a week, aged less than three.

Friends have a nifty way of handling it - they triple-dress the bed (well, undersheets only) so they can just strip off sheet+soaker+waterproof in the middle of the night and have instant comfortable bed for their daughter. It's a lot of washing, though.