How long before you dared leave off the pull up at night?
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Anonymous
| My 3yo has recently started being able to stay dry at night (for about the last week she's had a dry pull-up in the morning). I'm struggling with conflicting impulses: avoid disrupted sleep/unnecessary cleaning by keeping pull-ups for a good long time vs avoid unnecessary landfill contributions by disposing of them as quickly as possible. What are other people's experiences? Anyone have a good process (e.g. plastic sheet/layers of sheets/whatever) for preparing for the possibility of nighttime accidents? |
Anonymous
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I let my DS decide when he was up for dropping the pullup routine (which is what our ped recommended), which was right around 4. He had stayed dry at night for months before that but when I asked if he wanted to try undies at night he was nervous. I'd probably wait until it's been more than a week that she stays dry though. One day he just asked to try sleeping w/o a pullup. I got waterproof sheets (they're not plastic, I just looked for ones with good reviews on amazon) and bought two of these and put them under the fitted sheet: https://www.target.com/p/waterproof-sleep-anywhere-pad-blue-pillowfort-8482/-/A-75569207 (these are also great for when we sleep elsewhere so I don't have to worry about other people's mattresses)
He's had one accident since then and the mattress didn't get wet. |
Anonymous
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My 3yo is nowhere near ready despite being potty trained fully for daytime. I am not going to push it until she's been dry for two or three weeks straight.
Btw--I'm a hippie who bikes everywhere but saving the earth has 0% of a role in my potty training plans. The landfill can handle it for another year or two. |
Anonymous
| Both my kids went dry overnight cold turkey. But once they were dry overnight for a week or so, I stopped the pull ups and made sure their bed was waterproof. I used some of those blue/cotton pee pads you get at the hospital - put one under the sheet and kept extra sheets and pads close by. |
Anonymous
| One week straight. If you want to save on landfill, this is what we did. We put underwear on first, then pullup. That way, the pullup is clean and still unused. We used those pullups for a few nights. |
Anonymous
| Mine absolutely refused the pull-up at 4. He was only dry about half the time before that, but I decided to roll with it. It’s been a couple months and he still has an accident about once a week, but I have multiple layers on his bed and a routine, so it’s not a big deal. |
Anonymous
| Matters cover and then one of the larger washable incontinence pads for adults on top of their sheet. When you feel the time is right give it a go and see what happens. |
Anonymous
|
Thanks for the responses! A couple of points of note:
1. She wants to do no pull-up at night! I would not push it if she wasn't interested, but she's been asking to try without a pull-up and I have been saying no because she usually wasn't dry in the morning/it's only been a few days and I don't want to deal with middle of the night messes. I'm figuring I'll at least finish out the pack we have open, I'm just trying to start planning ahead because I wasn't expecting the dry pull-ups (she went from having maybe one dry one every few months to every single night consistently just last week). 2. I don't think buying a few months or even years of pull-ups is going to have even a noticeable effect on climate change, realistically. But they're expensive and bulky and super annoying to get home (I don't have a car) and I feel vaguely guilty putting them in the trash effectively unused anyway.  Honestly both competing factors are largely trivial in the grand scheme of things.
3. Thanks for the waterproof sheets link; I will check them out! |
Anonymous
| After two weeks dry |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
#2-buy them online |
Anonymous
| 5 nights dry. My kid was a lot older than yours though. Not that that makes much difference. |
Anonymous
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One consideration is whether you have any upcoming reasons why you might regret having gotten rid of the pull up. We waited a few extra months to eliminate them because we had a ton of travel planned and while I am fine dealing with nighttime accidents at home, I really did not want to worry about them at an AirBnB, hotel, or friend/family house. And I explained that to my DD -- "you're probably ready to go without the pull up, but we are going to wait until after we get back from these trips so that we can have your first few weeks wearing underwear to bed in your own bed." She was fine with it, it did not undermine her confidence at all. Plus during that travel, she continue to stay dry despite being on weird schedules and in unfamiliar locations with different bathroom set ups, so we knew she was REALLY ready.
Oh, and also in the midst of all that travel, she got a stomach bug one week while we were at home and definitely did not stay dry when she was sick (at night or during the day when she was resting -- she was really sick), and I was not only glad I had kept her in a pull up for that but also got to try out our waterproof mattress cover situation and realized the benefits of keeping that on when your kids are small, in case they get sick in bed. Now I tell people to do the mattress cover as soon as they move into a big kid bed and just leave it on for years because it's one less thing to have to deal with when you are caring for a sick kid who keeps throwing up. |
Anonymous
| My son will be 6 late this month and still wears a pull up. I know, I know. |
Anonymous
OP here. All kids/family situations are different and valid. You do what works for you and thank you for sharing your experience! I have a younger son too, and I want to keep in mind the large range of normal for things like potty training so I don't get caught up in expecting him to meet the same milestones in the same order his sister does. |