Real Stories
Click below to read:
Ben's Story: Bedwetting returns
Josh's Story: Bedwetting and daytime wetting
Sara's Story: Soiling
Ben's Story
Ben is 10 and next September he will be going to the secondary school with all his friends. He is popular and has lots of friends and because he is good at football, he is captain of the school football team.
This year was going to special; with the year six camp planned in the spring and, before that, the weekend football tour in February.
Then a few months ago something started happening that Ben really couldn’t understand. He began to wake up to find he had wet the bed - not just a little wet patch but a whole flood!
What was wrong with him? This hadn’t happened this since he was a little kid. What if his friends found out? How could he go to camp now?
Secondary enuresis
Mum suggested that the nurse at school or doctor might be able to help, but Ben really didn’t want to talk about it, he felt so embarrassed. He even wondered if he could pretend he had a injury to avoid the football tour. Mum knew that they should try to find out why it the bedwetting was happening and searched the internet for some information where she found the ERIC website.
Reading through the information on bedwetting, Ben and his mum found he had something called ‘Secondary Nocturnal Enuresis’. That sounded better than bedwetting!! He felt better already.
They read that it can happen to anyone and it sometimes starts when there are lots of things happening, or changes going on. Ben was certainly busy with school and football training - and perhaps the thought of changing schools was also on his mind a bit.
Treatment
Ben then read something very interesting! There are treatments to help, like an alarm, or medicine. It would be worth talking to the nurse after all so that he could have a proper assessment done. This would mean that the best treatment would be chosen just for him. There was time to sort it out before the spring.
Before he did anything else Ben was going to start drinking 6-8 glasses of water spread out over the whole day and make sure he didn’t skip toilet breaks at school. There was something on the website saying that the problem could be made worse by the bladder being a bit overactive, this was a good way to help the bladder work properly so he was going to try.
Ben could now get on with football training and look forward getting dry at night again. And even IF he was not completely over the problem in time for the trips there were lots of ways to cope away from home, there were special sleep shorts, sleeping bag liners and other things to use - he could be prepared!
This year WILL be special!
Josh's Story
Bedwetting
Hello. I am Josh and I am 9. I wet the bed at night and I used to use an alarm but I found it didn't work with me because I kept thinking it was a fire alarm. By the time I realized what it was it was too late. Now mum or dad gets me up in the night, this works and I can now keep the bed dry most nights.
Daytime wetting
Occasionally I wet during the day which is quite an improvement as I used to wet most days. At school I was afraid that the teacher would be angry with me and so I kept it to myself for a week or two.
Finally I spoke to mum and dad and the next day I told the teacher and she was fine with it and she said I could leave the classroom to go to the toilet when I needed to. I am now in year 5 and my new teacher was fine with it too. I now realize that you should always tell an adult as soon as you can and that's some advice for you all.
Sara's Story
School toilets
Sara is eight now and is a very happy girl. But when she was six she was not very happy at school because she didn’t like going to the toilet on her own. The toilets were always noisy and smelly and there were always other children around, and so she would try to wait until she got home to go for a wee or a poo.
Poo in her pants
The trouble was that sometimes she couldn’t hold it in and she did a poo in her pants. She couldn’t do a thing to stop it! The teacher seemed cross whenever it happened and would phone Sara’s mum up at work. At first this was great because mum would take her home early. Then after a bit, mum started to be annoyed about it too. Some of the other children would laugh and hold their noses when she sat near them. It was horrible. She hated school and pooing and everything!
School nurse
One day Sara’s mum said that they were going to see the school nurse at the clinic because of her pooing problem. Sara was glad to miss school but didn’t really want to see the nurse, she would probably tell Sara off about it and she was really fed up.
When they saw the school nurse it was not at all like she imagined, she told Sara it was not her fault and showed her books with funny pictures in about poo and how the body works. The good news was that Sara could do something to help stop pooing in her pants and the school nurse would help her.
Constipation
She explained that Sara was constipated and poo was leaking out because there was some hard poo inside which was blocking her bottom. Sara got some medicine from the doctor to soften and help clear out the hard poo; she would need to take the medicine for some time, but Sara didn’t mind because it tasted OK in her drinks. Sara started pooing a lot more, but although it was a bit scary the poo was coming out easily.
Rock ‘n’ pop exercises
Sara sat on the toilet after every meal and did some rock’n’pop exercises. These exercises helped poo to come out easily and they really worked (ERIC has a leaflet on how to do the rock and pop exercises).
Getting back to normal
Most of Sara’s pooing was now being done at home, but she still worried about what would happen if she needed to go at school? She was learning to recognise when she needed to go for a poo now but she still felt worried about those school toilets. Her mum had a chat to the teacher about letting Sara go to the toilet without a fuss when she needed to and in private. Things did take a while to get back to normal but now she feels much better about everything.
|