Enuresis is the medical term for uncontrolled bedwetting. It is the unintentional sleepwetting by a healthy child above 5 years of age. For bedwetting advice, the first stop should be to your pediatrician or qualified medical practitioner. When behavioral therapy is recommended, the DryBuddy child-friendly moisture alarm alerts the parent AND child. The parent can then follow the proper hygiene and other recommended procedures. This process reduces the incidence of primary nocturnal enuresis (PNE).


Enuresis: Historical Background
(Numbers refer to informational web sites at the bottom of this page)

There was a time - AD 77 to be precise - when boiled mice were thought to be the perfect medicine for children who wet the bed. Other cures through the ages have included eating hare and hedgehog testicles (but not together), licking the hooves of a newborn lamb or standing naked over a burning bird nest. (1) Historians uncovered ancient Egyptian records from 1550 BC, when the suggested "cure" was a combination of cypress, juniper and beer! Needless to say the results were far from reliable.

The 1893 publication of P.C Remondino, History of circumcision from the earliest times to the present: Moral and physical reasons for its performance. Dr. Remondino was one of the most ardent crusaders for universal infant circumcision before Terry Russell and Brian Morris, and just as scientific. His lengthy book on the subject, stressing moral as well as physical reasons, was a diatribe against the foreskin as a "moral outlas", as well as a pathogenic feature of the male body which nature ought to have abolished. He claimed that the foreskin caused and circumcision could cure just about everything from syphilis and tuberculosis to night terrors and bedwetting.

From the 1930s to the 1960s, people thought emotional problems caused bedwetting. (2) Most children wet because their bladders haven't matured. Their bladders still function like an infant's bladder, which basically contracts whenever it wants. These are called uninhibited contractions. So, very often the real problem is simply that they don't have a warning sign that tells them their bladder is filling. Only a small percentage of children - less than 5 percent - have an anatomical problem that causes their wetting. Their bladder may be too small or too big, or very commonly, it empties when it is not supposed to because of voiding dysfunction. That simply means that the child isn't urinating correctly. When there is nighttime only wetting... and the absence of daytime wetting... a specialist or pediatrician will typically start the child on a treatment program involving behavioral therapy and/or medication.


Enuresis: Today

Fortunately, bedwetting is highly treatable, often with behavioral techniques and, if needed, medication. But the question most parents have is how long will it take for their child to stop wetting? The first stop for help is your pediatrician or qualified medical practitioner.

Parents talk of waiting out until a child stops bedwetting. Few speak publicly about it. However, bedwetting is remarkably common. It affects as many as 7 million children in the U.S. and one-half million in the United Kingdom. It exists in all societies, in all cultures. One in six 5-year-olds, one in eleven 9-year-olds, and one in every 100 teens struggle with the embarrassment of nighttime bedwettingknown as nocturnal enuresis. Most will outgrow the problem, even if the parents have a genetic history of enuresis.

Kegel exercises can help to strengthen weak muscles around the bladder. The exercise involves contracting and relaxing the pelvic muscles. A specialist may use biofeedback to tell them if the patient is doing the exercises properly. The procedure is noninvasive. Two sticky patches are placed on the child's bottom and connected to the biofeedback machine. If the child does the exercises properly, the machine lights. A child usually goes for therapy every two to four weeks over the course of three to six months. To be effective, the child must practice at home, three times a day.

Behavioral modification - essentially the use of a bed alarm - is often added to the regimen. The uniqueness of the DryBuddy system is to alert the caregiver, sleeping in the comfort of his or her own bedroom and privacy. The effective wetness signal (alarm) can be an automated light, radio music, an alarm clock, or any other alarm. A parent or caregiver often has to supervise the child when an incident occurs. Various studies suggest that enuresis or bedwetting alarms are the preferred method for treatment. Committment on the part of the patient and the caregiver is essential to improving the success rate of alarm therapy.

Aside from the laundry loads, bedwetting can become such a big self esteem issue that the child will bypass sleepovers, daycare naps, camping trips or family vacations. It may be time to try a new therapy. Wetness alarms, sometimes called moisture sensors, can help to increase the number of dry nights... or remedy bedwetting sooner. Typical success with wetness alarms (behavioral therapy) is 25% success to stop nighttime wetting in 30 days, 50% in 60 days, and 90% in 90 days.

(1) observer.guardian.co.uk/life/story/0,6903,683942,00.html
(2) www.jfponline.com/Pages.asp?AID=2759
(3) www.aafp.org/afp/20060501/bmj.html
(4) www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/expert.q.a/01/05/bed.wetting.alarms.shu/index.html
(5) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturnal_enuresis