Should I Skip Out on the Pull Ups at Night Now?

I pulled the pullups when she'd gone a week without peeing in them and we've only had a few accidenst since then. I had nighttime accidents myself until I was almost a teenager, I just slept too hard to wake up. Sometimes, and I'm 32, I still will wake up and catch myself just before I have an accident. I didn't want to assume my daughter would be the same way, but I didn't want to punish her for accidents either. (Thank the Lord she hasn't had the same problems as me!) She was probably just about 4 when we took away the pullups at night.

One trick I've learned and has come in handy the few times we've had a problem was putting a waterproof sheet, then a regular sheet, then a waterproof sheet, then a regular sheet on her bed. Then if she has an accident, pull off the top set and you don't have to completely remake the bed in the middle of the night.

Keep the pull ups. She is still young. Two weeks of being dry upon weakening, the pull ups can go.

I would wait until she is consistently dry for 2 weeks before ditching the pull ups. It can take a while longer for their bodies to kick in to staying dry at night.

If I was you I would keep her in her night time pull-up. For the record, I am one of those that believe pull-ups serve no purpose in daytime training....we went straight to underwear and dealed with a lot of messes for a month :-)

However, day training and night time dryness are completely separate topics in my opinion. During their waking hours, they need to learn to recognize the urgency cues and use the toilet instead of a diaper. It takes some practice and encouragement and they get there.

At night, they are sleeping and not aware of any of this. It really is just luck in my opinion that some children reach night time dryness early. I am actually lucky in that my son was out of night time diapers a few months before he was 3..but that is not because of anything that I did. It is just the way his body developed. If he was almost 4 before he woke up dry, same situation..he did it when his body was ready.

She will get there eventually.

I can't tell you enough that if you put this topic in the search here in mamapedia you'll find page after page after page of answers on this topic.

You will only add work to yourself if you take her pull ups. She will continue to pee during the night. She does not have control of her kidneys or bladder during the night when she's asleep. There will be a day when that chemical that stops her kidneys from producing urine when she falls asleep. She has NO control over this. When she's awake she does but when she's asleep she does not.

Kids are not supposed to wake up to go pee. They are supposed to be like adults who sleep all night and wake up dry. They are supposed to wake up then their kidneys start producing urine again so the bladder fills. That's why we need to go pee as soon as we wake up.

I say if you don't want to add at least an hour of extra work every day doing laundry then stay with her wearing pull ups at night.

Allow her to have the pullups for now. At 3 years old she's still quite young to even be daytime trained so kudos to you for getting her there. Night time training is a whole different aspect and actually our bodies do not always develop that awareness until much later in life. It is normal for many children in school to even have night time wetting issues. Follow your daughter's cues and try not to push her too hard.

Her little body just doesn't have the nighttime bladder control down yet. I wouldn't get rid of the Pull Ups. We got rid of the nighttime Pull Ups after a week of them being dry in the morning. I wouldn't rush it... nighttime training takes a lot longer than daytime.

Here's what my kids' ped told me. Day training and night training are totally different. He said that even if they want to be night trained, you cannot expect for their bodies to cooperate before they are 4 years old. Some children CAN. He told me that when he has more dry nights, then to tell him with sweetness and kindness when he doesn't, that you know he wants to have a dry night, and when he has 4 dry nights in a row, he can sleep in his big boy underwear. The doc said to hug him, clean him up, and then not talk about it. That night, put a DIAPER on him so that he can feel the uncomfortable wetness. Mornings when he wakes up dry, tell him that you know he is so happy that he had a dry night, and put a sticker on the calendar in front of him. Four stickers in a row get big boy underwear.

This worked for my son, but then again, not until he was over 4. His body simply was not ready. Incidentally, the doctor explained that it's his BRAIN that isn't ready - so that's what I mean about his body not being ready.

Dawn

Well, I raised two kids, 10 years apart.
A boy and a girl.

I never bought a pull-up in their lives and they didn't even know what one was.

They wore underwear and got up in the night to pee.

Yes, there was an accident or two, but it was not a big deal.

To me, pull ups are just glorified diapers and kids know it's perfectly okay to go in them. If you are truly trying to potty train, I believe thay are a hinderance.

Think about generations back. Babies wore cloth diapers that had to be washed by hand. There were no disposables. There were no pull ups.
Children were potty trained out of necessity.
My babies were both potty trained early, around 16 months.
It wasn't so much about "training", it was just about "this is what everybody does. This is the way it works".

I knew a 9 year old whose mother insisted he had to wear pull ups at night. Father was furious being sent out at 9pm to buy some. The boy spent the night at my house a million times and his mother always sent pull ups.
He not only didn't use one, he didn't wet anything. At home, his mother still put him in pull ups for another year.

This is just my opinion, but pull ups aren't necessary at all.
You know when you wet your panties and you have to help mom put them in the washer. You learn to get up and pee in the toilet.

Can I ask this?
Did the moms who use pull ups wear them as a child?

My bet would be a resounding NO.

Just my opinion.

Best wishes.

My son wore pull ups at night until 4 and even then he could really still wear them on occasion. My daughter has been dry every night for at least a month but feels secure with her pull up on. I just told her last night after we finish this pack of pull ups she's going to wear big girl pants to bed. If your daughter's still waking up wet - regardless if it's because she's playing in the morning - I'd hold off for a bit. I have a friend whose daughter still wore them at 5 and would wake up wet a few times a week. Every child is different.

give it a try.. if you think laziness has a role in this put her in panties and put her to bed.. if you have wet sheets in the am... then you know she is not ready and go back ot pull ups..pull ups are expenive but so is laundry..

by the way my daughter is 7 and still in pull ups.. she has made great progress lately and is dry 4 or 5 nights a week.. but I do not want to wash sheets 2 or 3 times a week.

You can try it. We ditched the pull ups with my son and he started waking up dry less than a week later. We did with my daughter and she just never seemed to get the hang of it. We tried for over a year. She is just really, really inconsistent. In fact, we went back to pull ups this week...the laundry was exhausting. She's 4 and it was tough to go back.

The point is, go ahead and try. She may be like my son. Pull ups, for him, were "permission to pee". But don't be upset if she is like my daughter and just a later bloomer in the nighttime potty training arena.

Night-time readiness can really take a while.... only you can determine if it is laziness, or if she is urinating when she is asleep, and then wakes up.

You can try a few nights to see what happens, but don't be surprised if she is still wetting at night.

Most times people recommend waiting until they are dry WHEN they wake up...

Just curious... what happens if YOU wake her up in the morning? Is she dry then, or is she wet?

I have two daughters and they both pretty much had the pull ups on until about age 3- 3 1/2. I would put the Pull-Ups on and out their underwear over them so they could be "big-girls" and still have the underwear that they liked. I also had moved one of our tiny port-a-potties into the girls bedroom and put it right next to their bed. I had a night light on and a roll of toilet paper there as well. If they had to go....I encouraged them to use their little potty. Slowly, I moved the potty closer to the bedroom door and finally I just left the nightlight on in their bathroom so they could get up and use that with no issues if they needed to go. I had a safety seat on the toilet to prevent any midnight kerplunks into the toilet bowl....LOL! I always had them go to the bathroom right before bedtime and I also cut the drinks out after 7:30 p.m. until they were proficient at using the bathroom at night and not having the pull-ups anymore. I know that both girls were completely in underwear and dry through the night with no accidents by 4 years old. They were unbelievable with the potty training and all that. I got very lucky. :D

My daughter had been day trained for almost a year, and night trained for almost 6 months. If I put a pull up on her today she would start to go to the bathroom in the pull up. For my daughter, I just had to take the pull up away and see what happened. In 6 months she's had maybe 8 accidents at night.

I would take them off. Make sure you have a plastic cover on the matress. My dd knew when she had a pull up on and would use it. No pull up, no problem - no accidents.

Once my son was dry for seven consecutive night, we ditched the Pull Ups and it was all good from that point on.
But if she's got an element of head games going on...you'd be the best judge of that! Lol
Good luck!

Why don't you check to see if she is dry before she wakes up in the morning? Then you will know for sure. (Do pull-ups still have the stars or something that fade or change colors when wet?)

My daughter was in 2nd grade and still needed a night time pull-up. One night she had an early shower and we were sitting talking and I noticed her pull up was wet before she even went to bed. I was shocked and would never have believed she would have done that if I didn't see it myself. She told me it was just easier and that is what you do with a pull-up:). Having said that it was still a while before she was dry at night.

My DD is 4.5. About 50% of the time she is wet in the AM. I feel that unlike daytime training, nighttime training is a lot about things they cannot control, like how deeply they sleep. My DD has started waking to use the potty occasionally and I think that as that trend continues, she will wake up dry more often and we will be done with the pull ups when she is consistently waking.