An Alarming Bedwetting Experience

 With the seven kids we’ve had our fair share of experience with bedwetting. And no, I’m not referring to myself each time I found out a new child was on the way.

To protect the identities of the innocent and the soggy I’m going to be intentionally vague in this column. I could be talking about a current 2-year-old or a kid who was two eight years ago -- or I might just make up an age. You’ll never know and don’t need to spend time trying to sleuth out who I may be referring to. You know who you are.

Anyway, we’ve been through many variations of night time diapers, pull-ups, rubber pants, rubber sheets, and the cold turkey method of potty training.

Every kid is different and the age-range and effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the methods was all over the place.

For a particularly deep sleeping child we even did the method where we woke them up a couple times a night to try and get them into the habit. It wasn’t particularly effective. Partly because when you’d wake the child up (after many tries) and said it was time to go to the bathroom they’d respond, “I don’t need to go” and then roll over and promptly fall back to sleep.

My wife got a bed wetting alarm for one of the kids thinking this would be the solution. If, like me, you didn’t know what that was it’s a sensor that clips onto the kid’s jammies that sets off an alarm when it detects moisture. The goal here is that after a short time it conditions the kid to wake up themself when they start to go potty.

The alarm we had flashes a blue light, plays a tune (Fur Elise), and vibrates to wake the kid up. In theory.

That’s not how my experience played out in real life however.

It’s 1:30 a.m. and I awake to the sounds of Beethoven playing across the otherwise silent house. I recognize Fur Elise as the selected pee alarm music and think to myself, I’ll give it a few seconds the 4-year-old will surely wake up to this.

Two minutes later, I pad across the house to his room and the source of the ever-increasing-in-volume music. The kid is 100% asleep and unaware that his jammies are flashing blue, buzzing, and playing music. Must be nice.

I gently shake him a few times until he stirs and wakes up and then we have the most ridiculous interaction. This entire time the alarm continues to flash, buzz, and play music.

Me: Hey, you need to go potty.
Boy: What?
Me: You need to go potty, your alarm is going off.

Boy: What?
Me: Your alarm is going off
Boy: My arm?
Me: Your alarm – turn off the alarm you need to go pee
Boy: [with rising anxiety] Turn off my arm? What??
Me: The alarm – the thing that’s flashing blue on your pants – turn it off
Boy: [looking around wildly] What is on my pants!?
Me: [taking the flashing, buzzing, music--playing alarm clip off] This alarm.

I then attempt to turn it off in the dark without my glasses on and fail. I do succeed in making it play louder however.

Me: Do you know how to turn this off?
Boy: What??
Me: How do I turn this alarm off?
Boy: [In bewildered despair and falling back onto his bed] I have no idea!

I’m telling you, this interaction was like something straight out of a Hank the Cowdog book. The best part is the next day I asked him about this interaction and – despite him getting up, changing out of his clothes, and me getting clean bedding for him, he had zero recollection about any of it.

So I can say I’m a fan of the bed wetting alarm. But I can say it’s a good way to get Fur Elise stuck in your head.