Teenage bedwetting – there’s nothing to be ashamed of

Today’s blog post has been written by Connor, a teenage bedwetter, who wants to share his story to help break down the stigma surrounding the problem and let other young people know they’re not alone. You can read more of Connor’s story and the experiences of other young people on the teenage pages of ERIC’s website.

I have been struggling with bedwetting for pretty much all of my life, and although thankfully things are improving now, there have been many challenges and difficult times.

When I was a young kid, I really didn’t see that it was anything out of the ordinary – I suppose I just assumed that everyone wet the bed, but obviously as I got older I realised that wasn’t the case and for a while I was very angry about still wetting the bed.

For much of my childhood I wore nappies to bed which may seem a trivial thing to get upset about, but I became very worried that somehow all my friends would know, even though there was no way they could find out. By the time I started at high school I was getting feeling very low about it all – I was convinced that I was the only teenager in the world still wetting the bed.

When I stopped wearing nappies it was good in the longer term, but hard to get into a new routine. Dealing with a wet bed is no fun, and I had many disrupted nights. It was especially worse on school nights of course – if I woke up wet in the middle of the night, there was no way I could go back to sleep without getting up and changing, which meant I had less sleep, but if I slept through until morning, it was always a rush to get changed and clean in time.

One of the biggest issues is the stigma surrounding bedwetting, which doesn’t exist with other conditions – for example I knew people at school with things like asthma and diabetes and they quite happily talked about it. However I would never even consider talking about bedwetting, and up until very recently only people within my family knew. Getting rid of this sort of stigma would be such a huge improvement – if it was easier to talk about it and know that people wouldn’t make any sort of fuss then I wouldn’t have missed out on so many things, sleepovers, school trips etc.

However I think it is important to try and see some of the positive sides. I have always had a lot of support from my parents and my younger brother.  Also recently I was staying with a friend for a few days and had the courage for the first time to tell him about my problem and that I would be wearing incontinence pants as a safeguard whilst staying there – I was very relieved that he was not disgusted in any way and was happy that I had told him.

I just want to let others suffering bedwetting that is not something to be ashamed of, and although it might take a lot of time and patience, things will definitely get better.

 Connor, 16