Dr Catherine
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Girl
8-15 years

hello, so anyway my sister (9) wears your night nappies and had been wearing them for like a few years and I always thought it was weird. Anyway so out of curiosity I tried one on a couple times after she said i was teasing her about it. this was like 3 months ago. Not too long after that i wet the bed one night and decided to keep wearing them just in case but now I wet like 4/7 nights. shes pretty immature as well and had one of our cousins dummies for a while which she sometimes uses at night and now im doing the same thing, using a dummy to sleep at night. what im asking is did I start wetting the bed due to a kind of mental regression in my head? Sorry

It sounds like you are experiencing secondary enuresis (SE) – this is simply the term used to describe the condition experienced by individual’s who experience bedwetting after six or more months of being dry at night. When it comes to SE the first thing we need to think about is what has caused this change. There are a number of possible medical causes - this can be as simple as a urinary tract infection - so it is very important that you or your parents make an appointment for you to see your GP for a full medical assessment. A return to bedwetting can result from emotional stress, which can be due to a number of things like bullying, concerns over a family member, disrupted sleep patterns or in response to the current bushfires. If you think stress may be the cause, which after reading your question I think may in fact be the case, it is important to talk with someone about this - we generally find the bedwetting stops when whatever is causing you to be overly stressed or upset is dealt with or disappears. Kind Regards, Dr Cathrine