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Why Get Your Child Out of Disposables at Night

  • 3 minute read

Your child will normally become dry when they get the message from their brain they need to get up and go to the toilet, or when their bladder has grown to a size that they can sleep through the night without having to wee. (If a child is a deep sleeper and being wet doesn’t wake them, then an alarm may help).


There are a lot of questions about the process of a child becoming dry at night and the best way to go about it.  


Here at Brolly Sheets we believe a lot of the answer about becoming dry lies within your child’s brain. With a disposable on, when your child wets, their brain doesn’t get any signals. The wee is absorbed away and they are left feeling dry. So the brain doesn’t get any message to say “I’m wet, I don’t like this, what I can I do to make it stop?” If a child is allowed to wet in a nappy and stay asleep, then there is little incentive for them to learn to wake up and use the toilet.


It’s almost like the first couple of times we fall out of bed in the night as a child. The answer is, that after we fell on the floor a few of times, we associated the edge of the bed with falling, and thereafter kept away from the edge of the bed, even though we might be deeply asleep. But we had to wake up each time we hit the floor in order to connect the edge of the bed with falling. This was how our brain got the message; we needed to wake up on the floor. The same with wetting in the night. When your child wakes up wet, the process starts. Of course with some children it will take longer than others, but it needs to start.  


This is especially noticeable in winter when it is quite common (especially in boys) for a child to wet first thing in the morning. Quite often they can be awake and it’s just too chilly to get out and go to the toilet. So they will just do a wee in their nappy where they can stay warm and cosy.


A Brolly Sheet Bed Pad with Wings isn’t going to miraculously get your child dry at night, but it will help both the process and your laundry.


Some products wick away the top layer of wet on a bed pad and so your child doesn’t feel wet. This initially sounds like a good idea- you as the parent doesn’t need to get up. But they will have wet pyjamas (or the manufacture may suggest your child sleep naked????) so not really a very good solution. Plus, again your child is not feeling wet and so the messages are not getting to the brain.


The bottom line is, whilst your child is learning to go dry at night, you will have to get up and change their wet pyjamas and their bed at the same time. At least with a  Brolly Sheet Bed Pad, both you and your child are back in bed, and back to sleep a lot faster.


Brolly Sheets were designed by a Mum, to make other Mums (and Dads and carers) lives a little easier.


They really do take the hassle out of a wet bed. It may not happen overnight, but it will happen.