Bedwetting Support Group
Bedwetting (or nocturnal enuresis or sleepwetting) is involuntary urination while asleep. It is the normal state of affairs in infancy, but can be a source of embarrassment when it persists into school age or the teen or adult years. Find others who are coping with a bedwetting problem and share your experiences and questions.
Hi all, just wondering if anyone else had experienced this. It doesn't happen to me all the time but it does on occasion, and I'm wondering how common it is for others, or if anyone knows of a reason for it.
Basically, sometimes when I wake up after having an accident, I still feel a sensation almost like heaviness or fullness in my bladder -- not a sharp stabbing pain like anything was seriously hurt, but kind of a dull, tingling ache -- kind of like a dull version of the sensation of needing to urinate, even though my bladder is actually empty or close to empty. Has anyone else experienced this feeling after having an accident? I've had UTIs before and this isn't really like UTI pain (there's no burning sensation when I urinate or anything like that) although it has been awhile. Is it just a result of my bladder having been stretched out to the limit trying to hold the urine while I was asleep? Or is it something I should be more worried about? The feeling always goes away fairly quickly after it happens, like within half a day or so, but sometimes makes it difficult to fall back asleep after changing myself and the bed in the morning. I also sometimes experience bladder discomfort and increased urgency to urinate in the early hours of the morning after having had an accident.
Can anyone else here relate to this?
Basically, sometimes when I wake up after having an accident, I still feel a sensation almost like heaviness or fullness in my bladder -- not a sharp stabbing pain like anything was seriously hurt, but kind of a dull, tingling ache -- kind of like a dull version of the sensation of needing to urinate, even though my bladder is actually empty or close to empty. Has anyone else experienced this feeling after having an accident? I've had UTIs before and this isn't really like UTI pain (there's no burning sensation when I urinate or anything like that) although it has been awhile. Is it just a result of my bladder having been stretched out to the limit trying to hold the urine while I was asleep? Or is it something I should be more worried about? The feeling always goes away fairly quickly after it happens, like within half a day or so, but sometimes makes it difficult to fall back asleep after changing myself and the bed in the morning. I also sometimes experience bladder discomfort and increased urgency to urinate in the early hours of the morning after having had an accident.
Can anyone else here relate to this?
What you have described is very similar to what I experience, and the description is exactly as I would describe it, including the dulled sensation of needing to urinate and the "heavy" feeling. It almost feels as if I had strained very hard to urinate and my bladder was irritated or somewhat sore as a result.
Here are some thoughts about what happens to me. Maybe they'll be of some value.
First, I don't have accidents every night or even every week. I do have them in what I'd term "clusters" of occurrences, meaning it will often happen for more than one night in a row.
What I highly suspect, is that my bladder contracts at a certain stage of sleep, and that my body is unable hold in the contents of my bladder if more than X amount of urine is in my bladder at that time. If it's only a couple of ounces, I'm usually OK. If my bladder contains more than a couple of ounces, I urinate in my sleep. I don't know if my bladder empties entirely, or just empties enough to remove the pressure created by my bladder while it is contracting.
If my bladder contains a large volume of urine, the resulting accident is large. If my body continues to produce urine throughout the night, I will have another accident a few hours later. Obviously as sleep progresses, the antidiuretic hormone is in full swing, so multiple accidents in one night for me, are rare. Occasions when multiple wetting accidents might happen, are when I'm sick, or have consumed liquids shortly before bed. Alcohol worsens the issue.
What I have discovered is that I have had some accidents with a very small volume. From what it looks like, they may be only a few ounces. Once I noticed that I was having these small volume accidents, I paid much closer attention for signs of having had an accident, than I had before. I suspect I missed them entirely in the past, either writing them off to perspiration, or because they dried before I woke up. The small accidents may be a result of anticholinergic medication prescribed by my urologist (perhaps they were reduced in volume), or they may have happened for a long time. I don't know. My urine doesn't have much color or smell, so it's possible that I could have been wetting slightly in the past, without seeing obvious signs on my bedding or in whatever I wore to bed.
Although I'm far from having this issue "figured out", I have done a lot of research on it. It seems as if the entry into stage IV sleep is the point at which my bladder empties. This is consistent with smooth muscle contractions that take place during this period. Because sleep patterns are predictable, this might explain why I have never awakened wet less than 90 minutes into my sleep, but I have awakened shortly after wetting the bed a number of times, and it's been almost exactly the same time. Other times I don't wake up for some time. If I am wearing protection I may not wake up for the rest of the night.
I believe that for whatever reason, my bladder contracts very strongly, and even more so if it contains liquid. This would explain the small loss on some nights, and obviously a very large loss of urine on other nights, if my bladder is more full by that point. To me it explains why my bladder feels heavy or sore, because I almost always have the feeling of needing to urinate very often, the morning after, and even later in the night that it happens.
Given all of the above, I still don't know why it happens, nor do I know how (or if) the above symptoms and results are related to each other. I also don't know what triggers this to happen at some times, but not at other times. I suspect that the feelings in my bladder after one accident, make it feel more full (or increase urgency or frequency) on subsequent days, which may explain why I have accidents for days or weeks at a time, but then experience dry periods.
I've always imagined that the feeling was simply due to my bladder being "stretched out" in order to hold urine past its normal volume, up to the point of not being able to hold anymore and "overflowing", as it were. It's been awhile but I did some tests a number of years ago and found out that my bedwetting always happens when my bladder fills to about the same volume -- somewhere between 300 and 350 mL, I'm pretty sure those numbers are right. Oddly I could hold somewhat more than that during the day when I was awake -- but that was the volume that triggered my bladder's "contraction" reflex and at that point I would have to consciously use my abdominal muscles and such to hold it in. After holding it like that for any length of time though, my bladder would become REALLY sore, and after finally peeing I would get that lingering "stretched" feeling even more intensely than when I had wet in my sleep. I imagine when I'm asleep those other abdominal muscles aren't available for voluntary contraction, and so in that case when my bladder contracts, there's nothing left to stop me from wetting.
I wonder if when the bladder is already stretched and then contracts, if that doesn't intensify the "stretched" feeling. It would make sense since the stretching puts pressure on the bladder muscles in the one direction, and then contracting moves them in the other direction, pushing against the pressure that is already felt. The physical sensation afterwards feels like my bladder is empty, but still stretched out -- kind of like a floppy empty bag instead of a tightly contracted balloon like it would normally be. Then over time I think the stretching gradually subsides and my bladder returns to its normal "empty" size and shape (although it may fill and empty a couple more times before getting to that point) -- at which point the dull "stretched" feeling also subsides and my bladder sensations start returning to normal again.
Any thoughts on this? Sounds like possibly our conditions may not be exactly the same, but there seems to be a lot of similarity, and it's interesting how we seem to arrive at the same sensations in different ways (or least what we feel like are different ways!). Anyone else experience anything like this?