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Sleep Potty Training a 7 year old

So in addition to our normal craziness around our house we’re having to do something I never thought I’d have to do. Jayson has had delays since 4 months old. Potty-ing has been one of the major ones. He was almost 5 years old when he got out diapers. At one point we even had a parent trainer come to our house to help him understand better. He wasn’t very verbal until about 3.5 years old. Mostly grunted….major signs of Autism. Thanks to the help of some teachers in Keller he progressed very quickly. Then we threw a wrench in our family and moved to Seattle. He regressed a little but quickly caught up. He’s still a little behind on social interactions but we’re getting there (reason we’re out and about a lot!).
 
So….back to my post about something I never thought we’d have to do. He still wears diapers to bed at 7 years old. But I’m very happy with the sheets I have got for myself and him. Most of the time they leak because well he’s 7 and has a lot of pee! He sleeps so hard he never wakes up at night. He usually can sleep 10-12 hours straight (maybe that’s why the bugger is so happy all the time). He also gets the best mattress from https://eva.com.au/pages/bed-in-a-box, which improves his quality of sleep. The owner at his swimming lessons facility and I were talking and she told me about the potty alarm. I’ve heard of it but never heard feedback first hand from someone. She used it on all 3 of her boys and it worked quickly.
 

So of course I bought one right away! Me being me I didn’t want to put him in undies because well…you guessed it…the clean up!!  I HATE messes and if I can keep them from happening I will.  So we started using it with a pull-up.  We used it that way for a whole week and it worked!  I figured I’d be up all night but turns out he only pee’s twice a night.  And one of those times is around 7am so he’s just been staying up for the day.  Well all of a sudden the potty alarm quit working…sort of.  It was working as in it was constantly beeping.  But his pull-up was dry!  But it was after a large pee that soaked his pull-up so I thought maybe the sensor wasn’t dry.  So I shelf it and email the company.  They flat our asked me if I was using undies or a pull-up (uhhh, I haven’t responded to their question yet).

The instructions didn’t come right out and tell me to not use a pull-up but since they asked like that I decided to put him in undies that night.  And you know what?!  It wasn’t beeping non stop.  About 2am it went off.  I was still watching tv on the couch (ok ok…and playing Pokemon Go) and heard it so I ran upstairs to assist (you will need to assist your child with this contraption!).  The drill is….put dry undies on, attach sensor, alarm goes off when the sensor detects moisture (mom freaks out because of the possible mess….extra laundry), child is to stop pee’ing as soon as the alarm sounds, detach sensor, turn alarm off, go finish peeing in the bathroom, parent helps get clean attire on/clean bedding/etc.  So back to that night at 2am.  It goes off (I do think the sensor was just too wet btw).  I go upstairs.  He’s already heading towards the bathroom.  He finishes and comes out to his room and his clothes are dry…his bed is dry.  I look real close and I see a dot…yes a dot!  You know that dot after the man goes and puts it back in his pants…that dot.  That dot was enough to set the alarm off and stop him from peeing.  He gets new undies on, attaches the sensor and alarm and put him back to bed.  I also decide now’s a good time to go to bed myself.  I know this could be a fluke so I was prepared to wake up a lot.  And because I know this I kept waking up all night long thinking I was hearing that damn alarm.  It was like having a baby in the house again, but not.

So fast forward to 7am.  I wake up and check the time…no kid coming in my room.  So I’m like OMG did he really just sleep the entire night in undies w/out peeing the bed?  Well, no.  About 30 min later he comes in asking for help to button his shirt up (we call them day clothes).  I’m all…did your alarm go off again?  He was like yup.  I said was there a lot of pee?  He’s like well kinda.  I’m all here dragging this info out of him so I decide to get my sleepy butt up and go check it out.  He did everything he was suppose to do.  Detached sensor, turned alarm off, put wet clothes in the wet spot on the bed (so i’m not cleaning multiple wet spots up), cleaned himself up (wipes in closet), and got dressed for the day since it was daylight outside (thank god he didn’t wake up at 6am when it’s daylight outside).  I then threw a load of laundry in the washer and went back to sleep for a bit.

So another wrench got thrown at me.  The master bathroom shower has to be redone here at our apartment.  It’s leaking into the downstairs neighbors apartment and causing electrical issues (knocked their cable out…what’s next..OMG!!!).  So we have to stop using it and put 4 people in 1 shower (no, not all at once you weirdo).  Luckily we have 3.5 baths in this apartment.  So we decide to put all 3 boys in the older kids bathroom and then me and the hubs just use the little boys bathroom.  Cause I’m the only girl….let’s face it…I don’t want to shower where my tween is.  So at the same time I’m struggling with the trip I was suppose to take out of town.  So with all this change and uncertainty the hubs and I decide to hold off on the potty alarm until we know what’s what.  I didn’t want to put extra laundry on family and friends that we planned on visiting.  So back to my story……instead of putting underwear on and completely stopping the potty alarm I decided to try the pull-up again.

Of course my brain is racing with everything going on right now so I couldn’t sleep.  Also because I took a good nap since I didn’t sleep the night before.  So yah, i’m stuck in that damn cycle (well until today….3 hours of sleep and appointments all day will cure that for you).  ANYWAYS!!!!  I put him to bed with the potty alarm on a pull-up and I move into the bedroom from the living room about 2:15am.  I’m still playing on my damn phone and at 2:30 Jayson walks in the room asking which bathroom to go potty in (remember the bathroom switcheroo?….this is why I told you).  I told him to use the 1/2 bath toilet if someone’s in the shower…but his sleepy self couldn’t remember that.  I tell him to use the one upstairs and he goes.  I follow….knowing I’ll need to help him change his pull-up.  But then I see that the sensor was still attached to the pull-up.  But the alarm wasn’t sounding.  I asked if he turned it off.  He said no, it didn’t go off.  I woke up to go pee.  OMG OMG OMG!!!!  Say that again!!!!  So I put him back to bed, I go bed and lay there until I fell asleep and only got 3 hours of sleep.  I get up at 6:30am, no kid is up…no pee issues.  I shower in their bathroom.  I get ready for the day and no kid still.  I had to wake him up for swimming lessons at 8:15am.  Sensor still attached, not beeping, I check pull-up, NO PEE!!!!  He seriously made it an entire night with a dry diaper.

Today I figured out my traveling plans and pushed that out 2 weeks.  So we’re going to continue with undies and go with it.  You all know I’ll tell you how it ends.  But so far I’m quite impressed.  Here’s the product we’re using if your interested.

Wet-Stop3