Cautiously optimistic
Written: Jun 18 '09 (Updated Nov 20 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Works very well, worth not having to wash sheets several times a week
Cons: Alarm could be louder, child must understand this doesn't work by itself
The Bottom Line: Frustrated parents, I feel your pain. Give this one a shot along with changing the way you and your child deals with this problem.
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| orioles35's Full Review: Potty Md Wet Stop3 Bedwetting Alarm, Improved Stop... |
My step daughter has been through a lot in her 9 year life. Loss of a father, moving here, moving there and finally settling in with our "blended" family. She was potty trained up until she was three, then for some reason or another, started wetting the bed again. Enough was enough and we picked up this Wet-Stop Bedwetting Alarm to try and do something about this situation.
All the experts say not to make a big deal out of bedwetting. Certainly that's the case when the child is under seven. After that it becomes more of a concern, whether its a physical problem, UTI, emotional or social factors or heavy sleepers. Part of the problem in not making a big deal out of it, is just that...not making a big deal about it! What would happen in our case is she would come downstairs with her sheets in the morning, announce that "she had an accident" and that was it. Something had to be done, along with using the wetness monitor, we had to change our entire attitude about her problem.
We introduced the monitor to her as something that was going to help get her past this problem so we wouldn't have to continue to wash sheets and she could start having sleepovers. At first she simply thought she'd wear it and like magic, her bedwetting would stop. We had to explain to her that she had to make the effort to fix this problem and it was completely up to her and the monitor was going to help. We also explained that it was no longer acceptable to "pee in the bed" (not using the gentle term of "having an accident") as a nine year old. Keep in mind we weren't punishing her or making her feel she had done anything wrong, but she understood that she was old enough to get past this.
The Wet Stop monitor comes with "The Complete Bedwetting Book" on CD, calendar, sticker reward system and instructions in 6 languages 5 Variable Alarms, alarm and/or vibration capabilities Magnetic Shirt Fastener Easy-To-Dry, Easy-To-Attach, Replaceable Sensor PottyMD 1-Year Warranty Against Defects Uses 2 AAA batteries
To use the alarm, one end fastens to your child's underwear, the other to the main unit that stays attached to clothing (preferably the shirt so your child hears the alarm at night) by a magnet. Once the unit senses wetness, it goes off with an audible alarm and vibrations to wake up your child to tell them they need to stop the flow of urine and go to the bathroom. That's the kicker in this whole system...it only detects wetness AFTER your child has started to "go". This will help your child develop that feeling of their bladder being full with waking up when that happens, which will lead to them waking up BEFORE they start to "go". This is why a wetness alarm isn't some magical cure...your child needs to play an active part in this process.
There typically will be issues when you first use the Wet Stop alarm. In some instances, the unit and the magnet did not stay attached to our daughter's shirt. This shouldn't have kept it from functioning, but that particular night it did. That only happened once, however. Our daughter is one of those hard sleepers, so much so that she'll fall asleep in the car and you'll have to call her name rather loud to get her to wake up. This seems to be a frequent concern with some kids. While they may be hard sleepers, at the same time they have to be able to recognize when their bladders are full and CARE that they might urinate on themselves. My suspicion was that our daughter really didn't care one way or another, so that was an obstacle we had to overcome. Children's sleep patterns change over time and as they get older, typically they don't sleep this hard. Another issue we had was of the alarm going off, but our daughter turning it off instead of getting up. I was up late one night and witnessed this first hand...it was the first time I had heard the alarm and thought that it might be better if the alarm was louder, but we had it set as loud as it would go.
Probably the biggest hurdle we had was that our daughter simply did not want to wear the bedwetting alarm. Granted, she's nine (meaning 90-95% of kids are fully trained by that age) and felt like it was for "babies", but we had to try something. Sitting around and waiting for her to decide she was ready simply wasn't working. So despite her resistance (and the grandparents uncooperativeness towards our requests to have her wear it when she spent the night over there), we made her wear it with the understanding that when she was able to get up in the middle of the night BY HERSELF WITHOUT the monitor going off to go to the bathroom, she could stop wearing it. That was the goal out of all of this. There were several nights where she used the bathroom before bed and was dry through the night, which is good...but not the complete solution to the problem. At some point kids have to wake up, recognize that feeling and make it to the bathroom.
As of today, we're cautiously optimistic. Our daughter has informed us that she has been able to get up in the middle of the night and use the bathroom and we haven't had an accident with or without the monitor for weeks now. She also understands that one accident means she'll have to put the monitor back on again and since she doesn't like that, we hope that will provide her with the motivation to kick this problem to the curb for good.
I know there's as much if not more in this review about bedwetting in general, but a big part of using something like the Wet Stop monitor is changing the attitude about wetting the bed between you and your child.
11/20/2009 update: Funny how things like this work. About two months ago our daughter, who will be ten in April was still having occasional issues. We really didn't know what to do, other than require her to take care of her sheets at night without waking us up and to wash them the next day, thinking that might be some detriment towards peeing in the bed. Well, one week she was having some sinus problems, so we gave her some children's benadryl. Lo and behold, that very night she peed in the bed. Next night, more benedryl and another accident. Our daughter blamed it on the benedryl (which resulted in a lecture about taking responsibility for your own actions and not blaming something else or others), but this rang a bell...given how hard she sleeps, given that she falls asleep in the car within a matter of minutes and given that she would sometimes have an accident on Sunday nights after spending the weekend at her grandparents house, we realized that part of the issue came from just not wanting to get up in the middle of the night!!!!! Sure, there's a lot of "I don't care" involved, if you're sleeping in urine...but she was able to sleep through the night enough that it gave her enough confidence to ignore the feeling of having to pee at 2am or 3am, rolling over and going back to sleep.
The benedryl clued us in and we started reminding her each night to get up when she has to pee and not try to sleep through it. We also kept her on a fairly consistent bed time, as it appears at her grandparents she was staying up very late, which made her extra sleepy the next night. Since that time we've only had one or two issues, but by and large we think this was the problem all along.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
orioles35
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Location: Nolensville, TN
Reviews written: 58
Trusted by: 29 members
About Me:
I review stuff I like, music, movies or whatever.
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