Hi there

I've also 'posted' this in the parent's board - trying to get maximum coverage!!

I'm wondering if anyone out there has some advice or tips. Noah is 12 and has TS, with SLD, ASD, fits which are fairly well controlled with Epilim as well as hemiplegia and very poor motor skills (although he's sitting next to me now managing to eat a bowl of ice cream with great coordination!). He also has fairly challenging behaviour and at 12 is the size of an average 13-14 year old.

Noah is mostly dry during the day - with a couple of accidents (especially when he's absorbed in listening to music or using the computer). He's always been in nappies at night and because the nappies provided by the (in)Continence Service locally were so poor we've been using Huggies Dry-Nites and Pampers bed mats in combination with waterproof mattress protectors which up to a couple of months ago worked well.

However Noah is now a big, big boy and each and every morning his bed is soaked. This has meant though that he is now voicing an interest in not wearing nappies at night - and we want to support him with this. He is taking off his nappy at least every other night now. The problem is that he's very uncooperative if I try to get him to go to the toilet in the night and anyway, he seems to wee all through the night. So even when I've successfully got him up before I go to bed, his bed will be wet within two hours. Noah had problems sleeping until he was 8 years old and I'm slightly (but not very) worried about disturbing his sleep too much in case we revert to sleepless nights again, although I think this is unlikely.

I've successfully replaced his evening tea time milk drink with water - as I've been told that this should help - but this seems to have had little impact on his weeing so far. His bed time is quite early (as we've found that he fits more if he goes to bed late). I've asked the school nurse to refer us to the Continence Clinic but other parents at his special school were not very encouraging about the support they've received and anyway the referral seems to be taking forever.

Has anyone successfully used bed-mat alarms or got any useful practical tips?