The Pee Pads You Need If Your Kid Wets the Bed

When my older child was little, around 4 or 5 and, thus, already thoroughly potty trained, they struggled with wetting the bed. It became so common that my husband and I developed a system of keeping a change of sheets ready before bedtime each night so we wouldn’t have to stumble to the closet to find clean sheets in the middle of the night.

Eventually, their body grew to learn the cues, and the issue resolved itself, but before it did, we discovered a product that was a lifesaver for us—Underpads, aka piddle pads or pee pads, which miraculously kept their mattress dry and odor-free despite regular bedwetting.

Bedwetting is a common issue for children, even after they’re potty trained in the daytime. In fact, according to Healthychildren.org, there are around 5 million children who wet the bed in the US. And while it’s perfectly normal for growing kids, it can lead to embarrassment, frustration, and lost sleep.

I first encountered pee pads when my dad and stepmom brought home a new puppy. They lined the hardwood floors of their house with piddle pads to protect them from any accidents. Years later, when I was waking up every night to change my child’s bedclothes, a little voice in my head whispered, use the pee pads, and I made a trip to Walmart the very next day to buy some.

These pee pads include a fluffy top layer and tissue below to absorb moisture quickly. So, while the sheets themselves will need to be changed, you have a shot at protecting the mattress below. You may even want to double them up for extra protection. This was a huge upgrade to the old bath towels we had been using under their sheets, which soaked through quickly. The pee pads bought us some valuable time to get the bed changed before the mattress could get wet and develop odors.

Now, long after my oldest child has been able to stay dry consistently through the night, we still use the piddle pads under the sheets in my younger child’s room to protect the mattress against any possible blowouts or full Pull-Ups situations. It just gives us a little extra piece of mind. We change them out whenever we change the sheets on the bed, or as necessary.

When we were struggling with bedwetting, we tried every idea we could think of to help our older child stay dry at night, from limiting liquids after dinner to incentivizing dry nights; but in the end, it was their own body chemistry that caught up and alerted them to their full bladder in time to make it to the potty. If your child is experiencing bed wetting, these pee pads might be a good solution until they can manage the issue on their own.

Buy: Underpads, $30 for 100 at Walmart

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