Tips & Tricks

Waking Up Dry is filled with practical tips that make the program easier to do. I included a Tips & Tricks page on the website to post tips that were not included in the book. Most of these tips will come from my pediatric practice. However, if you or your child comes up with a tip that makes the program more effective or easier to do, you may submit it for review. (Tips should be submitted on the Feedback page.)

Beating the buzzer
The term “beating the buzzer” refers to waking up before the bedwetting alarm starts to buzz or as soon as possible after it goes off. One of my patients came up with a great way to think about this. He said “beating the buzzer” was like getting off a shot right before the buzzer sounded at a basketball game.

Keeping wireless sensors out of the washing machine
Because wireless sensors do not have cords, there’s a risk that they will end up going through the wash with a child’s underwear (this type of damage is not covered by the device’s warranty). Although I have a tip about this in the book, one of my patients came up with a great way to prevent this from happening. She put a note on her washing machine that says: CHECK FOR SENSOR. This reminds her to examine her son’s underpants before tossing them in the machine.

Salty foods make more urine at night
One of my patients figured out that eating salty foods made it more likely that he would wet the bed at night. This might not affect everyone, but it’s a good idea to keep this in mind if you’re having extra trouble staying dry.

Waking Up Practice revisited
After reading about Waking Up Practice (Chapter 12), one of my patients decided to turn the exercise around. Instead of giving her brain a message to wake up at night in response to a full bladder, she told her bladder that it would get bigger at night to hold all of her urine until morning. She said the image of her bladder getting bigger worked better for her. She started having dry nights a few weeks after she began doing this visualization exercise before bed.

Pick up the phone
When I teach children how their urinary system works, I describe how the bladder has stretching nerves that tell the brain when it’s time to pee (see pages 13-14 in the book). I then tell kids that one of the reasons they’re wet at night is because their brain isn’t paying attention to their bladder while it’s asleep. One of my patients recently came up with a clever way to think about this process. When he goes to sleep at night, he tells himself that his brain will “pick up the phone” whenever his bladder calls, even if he’s deeply asleep.

Options for using underpads with the bedwetting alarm
One of my patients did not like using masking tape to keep his son’s disposable underpads in place (see page 182). Instead, he put a few underpads underneath the sheet that covered the mattress. This was helpful in three ways:

The sheet kept the underpad in place,
It was easier for him to see how wet the bed was with a sheet on top instead of the underpad.
After a wetting episode, he removed the sheet and underpad and already had another underpad in place.

Measuring progress with the program
In Chapter 22, I discussed four ways that children can monitor their progress with the Waking Up Dry Program:

Waking up on their own when the bedwetting alarm goes off
Smaller wet spots
Fewer wet episodes per night
More dry nights

One of my patients recently pointed out that there is another way to follow a child’s progress. If the alarm goes off later in the night, it means the child’s bladder was able to hold more urine before wetting episode occurs.