The Day I Wished For The Ground To Swallow Me Whole...

Have you ever been so embarrassed by your child's behaviour in public that you almost want to disown them? Or at least lock them in their bedroom for the rest of the day?
Yep! Well that was me yesterday.

Miss 5 is a bed wetter, always has been. No matter what I've tried, nothing seems to motivate her to be dry. During her day time sleeps she's always been dry, so I know she CAN be dry, she just isn't at night time.

Finally after being on a waiting list for 4 months we went to our local community hospital to join the program for the special mat/alarm system thing that seems to work for most kids.

Miss 5 had the morning off school (she asked to go to school after her appointment). So off we went.
I must say I was pretty excited. Having a bed wetter kinda sucks, it's a lot of washing and pull-ups cost a bloody fortune!

When we got into our appointment Nurse Mary told us that most of her communication would be with Kaitlyn, she's the one with the 'problem,' she's the one that needs to take responsibility and be in charge of what was to come.
I was cool with that. It should be her job, she's the one that needs to know what's going on.

BUT...and this is where it gets embarrassing. Miss Kaitlyn decided she wasn't going to play ball. She doesn't want to hear about bed-wetting as a problem and has never let me speak to her about it with her.
So of course this was no different. Nurse Mary started by asking the basic questions "what's your name" it took 8 times before Miss 5 answered.


Then when we got on to the bed-wetting topic, she decided 'nope, you can all get stuffed' and refused to speak.
She wouldn't answer any questions. So Nurse Mary asked me to ask her the questions and try and make her answer, so I tried and all they accomplished was Miss 5 shoved her head in her hands and ignored us. I asked her to lift her head off the table and speak to us and I noticed while her head was on her arms she had been biting herself!! Seriously kid, what are you doing?

We tried for a good 30 minutes with different questions, showing her pamphlets etc etc and still nothing. So Nurse Mary said we can't do the program. If Miss 5 refuses to listen and respond we can't do it now.
I was so angry at her, she's the chattiest kid ever most of the time but whenever it comes to something like this she refuses to listen and apparently she now becomes a mute a well!
I asked Nurse Mary what we do now, I really don't want a bed-wetter anymore!

She told me for the next two weeks to make a few changes: start with those super expensive waterproof sheet things on the bed (goodbye $100), no more pull-ups EVER AGAIN, if she wakes in the night and wets herself she has to change the bed herself and put the old sheets in the laundry, if she doesn't put the sheets in the laundry then I have to leave it and wait until she remembers (so she lives in the stink and can realise how gross it is), every night for the next 3 nights she needs to walk from her bedroom to her toilet 6 times straight before bed (to get her brain in the habit of where she needs to go), and when she gets up/wets the bed mummy and daddy have to stay in bed-she does everything her self! She also needs to be responsible to write her own diary of what date it is, if she s wet/dry and how it made her feel (feeling wet is supposed to gross her out)
While Nurse Mary was kindly explaining all this she was directing most of her speech at Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn refused to make eye contact and more than once yawned in the lady's face!! I was so embarrassed I nearly decked her!! I could not believe that not only was my daughter refusing to speak but now she refused to make eye contact and was actually yawning in someone's face! I wanted to ground to open up and swallow me whole. This wasn't my daughter! This wasn't the little girl I
raised! And those definitely were not the manners I had taught her!!!

So for two weeks that's what we are going to do. And hopefully she might start to talk to me a bit more and then maybe next time we go back we can go onto the proper alarm program.
Last night we tried all of the above, Miss 5 seems to think its all a big game though, she thinks the new sheets are great, she asked how many I would buy her because she likes them and wants to use them all the time. She also thinks changing her bed by herself is fantastic, she can't wait to get up and change her blankets every 5 seconds. She laughed at all of it and jumped happily into bed.

I was literally expecting all kinds of crap to happen last night. I thought she would be up and down playing stupid games and changing her bed all night.
For once I actually slept really well last night so I didn't hear anything, but this morning, there was one giant wet sheet and she had remade her bed. Although I think she spent a long time going through her cupboard as all her sheets and blankets have suddenly been rearranged, Kaitlyn style! She happily skipped off to the laundry to deliver her sheet and asked me to wash it ready again for tonight.

I'm turning blue in the face trying to tell her the goal is to stay DRY not to use the sheet as many times as humanly possible in a 24 hour period.

Even though our next appointment is not for another 2 weeks I'm already crossing my fingers that my little Kaitlyn girl comes back, not that snotty, bitchy, rude, teenage-style version that I saw yesterday!
Over the years my kids have of of course done their fair share of embarrassing me in public, but usually it's because they are being silly, NOT because they are being so outwardly rude to someone else. We had a special chat last night about how disrespectful that behaviour is.

Hopefully we make progress over the next two weeks-keep your fingers crossed for us.


And for hothouse newbies to my blog check out my Facebook page. The Currie Way Of Life-I post photos and funny little stories throughout the day, it's also where I post my Thermomix cooking photos. Once I get more used to this blog I'll start posting some photos on here as well :-)