Dry At Night

When Grace was nearing age 4, I began to question when exactly she would sleep through the night without the assistance of a “princess panty” otherwise known as a pull-up. As is typical of me, I began asking other mommies when their children had accomplished the milestone. I received several answers, all of which made me feel a little inadequate in the parenting department since the ages included in the answers were younger than Grace’s age at the time.

“Hmm,” I thought.

I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, but we began to implement restrictions on amounts of fluids after 7:00 p.m. Even with the restriction, the morning pull-up was flooded.

I thought again, “Hmm. Wonder what we’re doing wrong?”

So, I went to the source: The Internet. It seemed that we weren’t doing anything wrong. She just had an immature bladder and was a very deep sleeper for 12-13 hours per night.

“Great!” I thought. “We’ll just wait this out. It was no deal to purchase the pull-ups anyway.”

Eventually, Gracie began to ask me things like:

“When will I stay dry at night Mom?”

“Why can’t I stay dry at night Mom?”

I just kept telling her that it was okay, and that her body would learn how to stay dry at night. She seemed pretty okay with that explanation, but then she must have asked some of her friends if they stay dry at night. Their responses must have been to the contrary of Grace’s experiences. Her inquiries resulted in repeat conversations between us about how her body would eventually learn how to stay dry at night. Occasionally, she would cry and worry that the inevitable would never happen.

At her 5 year old check-up in May, Charlie had asked the pediatrician whether we should be concerned or not. At that time, Dr. M said that he wouldn’t worry until Grace was age 6. So, again, I figured we’d wait and see what happens, but in all honesty, I had begun to worry that her younger sister, Meghan, might figure it out before Gracie did.

Gracie and I even had a conversation a couple months ago about how she could decide if she would want to tell the other kids at school that she couldn’t stay dry at night. She opted for leaving that part out, which I said was probably for the best seeing as kids will be kids.

Well, almost 2 ½ years have passed since I felt like I was bumbling my way through motherhood and potty training. With my fingers crossed, I can now report that Grace has stayed dry at night for almost 30 days in a row. WOOHOO!

She is so quirky though. :) I hadn’t been paying too much attention to her pull-up results since she dresses herself in the morning. Last week, I asked her if she was staying dry at night. Grinning from ear-to-ear, she responded by opening a cabinet door on her desk. Inside the cabinet were at least 25 used, dry pull-ups piled high with pride. I couldn’t believe my eyes, and I immediately started to laugh and hugged her close.

Way to go Gracie!



We’ll be finishing up the package of pull-ups, and then Grace will be in the big kid world of underwear at night. Wow, and she did it before Meghan. Yes! We safely navigated away from that potential childhood tragedy.