Bedwetting: Introduction

Bedwetting should not be thought of as a psychological condition, rather it occurs because of a number of factors related to the development of the child’s body and nervous system.

While wetting the bed is sometimes considered just part of growing up, our understanding about it has improved over the years. We now know that bedwetting occurs because of a number of medical reasons. Bedwetting should not be thought of as a psychological condition, rather it occurs because of a number of factors related to the development of the child’s body and nervous system.

Firstly, children who wet the bed have difficulty rousing from sleep when their bladder is full. The bladder and the brain don’t communicate properly so that, when the child is sleeping, the brain doesn’t get the message that the bladder is full and needs to be emptied.

Some children who wet the bed have what is called an overactive bladder, where the bladder muscle is twitchy or overactive. Overactive bladders can only hold small amounts of urine. The bladder muscles may spontaneously contract during sleep, so the child wets the bed.

The third cause of bedwetting is a low level of a naturally occurring substance called vasopressin, which the brain normally produces during the night to reduce the amount of urine produced and allow an uninterrupted night’s sleep. If the child has low levels of vasopressin at night, they may produce a lot of urine, more than their bladders can hold, and if they don’t wake up, they wet the bed.

Bedwetting can be caused by one or a combination of the above reasons.

Causes of bedwetting

	For more information about overproduction of urine view the video: Causes of bedwetting- overproduction of urine.
	For more information about how the bladder and the brain communicate and what goes wrong when children have difficulty rousing view the video: Causes of bedwetting- difficulty rousing from sleep.
	Learn how an overactive bladder can cause children to wet the bed by viewing the video: Causes of Bedwetting: Overactive or Twitchy Bladder.

More information on bedwetting

For more information on Bedwetting, including risk factors, prevention and treatments, see Bed Wetting (Nocturnal Enuresis).