<p>My boyfriend and i have been living together for a year now and we are about to move into a new place and before we do i want to throw out the mattress that i inherited from my parents (its almost 25 years old and seen its way thru my own childhood bed wetting and if i had more money available, it would have been gone a LONG time ago)
but i am nervous to get rid of it because my 20 year old boyfriend still wets the bed on a very regular basis.
I hate trying to approach him about it because i dont want to hurt his feelings. We know that he is a VERY deep sleeper and has a small bladder, but there are no psychological reasons why he cant stop wetting the bed.
I feel discusting waking up covered in his urine and then having to strip the bed and wash the sheets all on my own bc we never discover we're "wet" until its time for him to wake up for work. and once i've stripped the bed, -I- smell like pee and i cant get the smell off me or out of the house. And i would just get a plastic sheet but i cant sleep on one.. the noise and the discomfort keep me up like you wouldnt believe.
so, how can i help him stop? what other solutions do we have?
<br>As one who has been in the same boat as your boyfriend, I very much appreciate the efforts you have been taking to bear with him and try to help him stop. Stripping the bed and washing the sheets all by yourself is really going above and beyond -- even as one who has a bedwetting issue myself, I would think that the two of you could make plans to get up 1/2 hour earlier (or something) so that he could at least throw his own wet sheets in the wash for you. No one wants to handle someone else's pee. That said, you do have a heart of gold for sticking by him and I really hope you're able to come up with a solution to this!
About the mattress -- you definitely need to get rid of the old one and protect your new one with some kind of cover! There are things you can do in the very short term (like immediately on the following morning) to prevent the smell of pee from soaking into a mattress -- but once it's in there, there's pretty much no way to get it out, and each additional wetting will bring back the smell of all the previous ones at that point. For covers, they do make quilted mattress pads now that have plastic underneath and a thick layer of cotton on top so they don't feel nearly as much like an old-fashioned plastic sheet. They are even machine washable (just so long as you dry them on low heat!) If you still can't sleep on that, there are also non-fitted absorbent pads that are felt on one side and very thin plastic on the other, that come in various sizes so you could just get one the right size to stick on his side (depending on how large an amount he wets) and that way you won't have to sleep on it. You can find either of the above products in the bedding section of your local K-mart or Target store.
Having more layers between yourself and the protective sheet also reduces the amount you will feel it, although those newer varieties really don't have nearly as much of a "feel" to them as just plain plastic (and believe me, I've slept on all different kinds!). Also, if you do have a "leak" where pee gets below the protective layer onto the new mattress, clean it up IMMEDIATELY with a weak acid like white vinegar, apple cider vinegar or lemon juice -- these will neutralize the ammonia in the urine that gives the "pee smell". You need to do it while the bed is still freshly wet, though, because once it soaks into the mattress and dries, it's pretty much ruined.
As far as helping him to stop the bedwetting -- well, that's hard. I write this as a 31 year old guy who has the same problem as your boyfriend (deep sleeper + small bladder) and although it's gradually reduced over the years (and has gotten MUCH better since I was 20, which I hope gives you some hope!), I still struggle with the occasional accident at night. You mentioned that there are no psychological reasons why he can't stop, but the way you describe it the problem is almost certainly biological -- his bladder simply can't contain the volume of urine his body produces in a whole night, and so if he doesn't wake up before it gets too full, simple physics dictates that the pee has to go somewhere, and the result is a wet bed. I'm sure you've been through the whole bit about restricting fluids, peeing before bed, etc, so I won't burden you with that again. The reality is that the body produces a certain amount of urine during the night no matter what you do -- and if the bladder isn't big enough to contain that amount (some people's aren't) then you either need to wake up and go to the bathroom during the night, or you wet the bed.
So, the simple answer (although there are no easy solutions) is that if his bladder is that small -- and small bladders do exist, I have one also -- then in order to stop wetting the bed he will HAVE to learn to wake up to go to the bathroom during the night before it gets too full. That's really all there is to it. How to do that? There's no easy way, of course, especially with a deep sleeper, but it can be done.
[EDIT -- I see there's a space limitation so the rest of my answer got cut off -- but if you want I can tell you more about what did and didn't work for me -- email or IM me through my profile...]</p>
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