Coping with Bed-wetting...

This is not about female ejaculation (squirting) nor male nocturnal emissions (wet dreams) but susu-ing on bed or how to cope with bedwetting. Almost everyone goes through this during childhood but most grow out of it quickly. For those who cannot, why? One Sunday morning, I overheard a mother shout at her son, “Today, I’m going to take you to your teacher and tell her to put you in front of the class so that children can sing, ‘Shame on you!’ You are seven years old but wet your bed everyday.” Can that really solve the issue? When I was that kid’s age, I used to also wet my bed. I would see dreams where I was apprehended along with others by a teacher on duty for late coming. We would be made to pick leaves around the school and when nature called, I would ease myself behind a tree or in the grass. When I woke up, there would be urine on my bed. My father threatened to cane me if I did it again. He never really did but I continued wetting my bed even up to boarding school which I started at age 11 in Primary Six, about four years later. The matron would take my wet mattress out and hang it on the wire fence; I wondered how she found out the first time. Between P.6 and 7, I slept about three times above someone, if I can remember well, and it’s only a mat under my mattress that stopped urine from dripping to the bed below. Since this was something I could not control, I never really cared what people thought. After P.7, I went to an all-boys O-Level school but never slept above anyone for four straight years. Even in a new school in S.5, I slept on the lower deck but in S.6, I told the guy below me that sometimes I wet my bed. He understandably told me that it’s okay. Those days I had made up my mind to put a red urine-tight sheet on my mattress before the bed sheets, so the worries were minimal. The frequency had also reduced and I never took my mattress out to dry. In fact, during holidays, I rarely wetted my bed maybe because academic stress and boarding school fatigue were non-existent.

My worst bed wetting experience was between S.1 and 2 whenever I left my mattress out to dry on the high walls of our showers. Housemates bathing at the washing bay would probably unconsciously splash water on it or tip it over in the path of dirty water used to scrub the showers and toilets. Consequently, it would have to dry for more days. Meanwhile at night, I had to sleep on metal springs, only cushioned by my blanket. It was a cold period in my school career I badly wished would end. I wondered why GOD allowed this. My mother said she was praying for me but nothing changed till S.3. She advised me to always relieve myself before sleeping but I still bed wetted. During holidays, I would be told to drink the morning dew on top of the leaves of yams grown in our compound but I still bed wetted. Another remedy was to avoid drinking liquids in the evening, but even if you don’t drink but eat sweet potatoes, matooke, yams or water melon, you will still take in lots of water. Porridge and booze are other causes. In O-Level, there was a classmate who also bed wetted. From his build, you wouldn’t expect him to have the same problem as me but when we met again while looking for an A-Level school, he told me that he had been operated on and his problem overturned.

Bedwetting is an experience so inglorious that even the girl you love and want to marry may not be able to cope with it; you literally become unreliable as a partner. Schoolmates may even say that you have no right to pocket because you bed wet. Maybe it is a status symbol for success and high society. Anyway, bed wetting should be handled with care by parents. Please do not chastise your kids, it isn’t their fault! Sometimes, it could even be demonic; a spirit takes you to a latrine and you feel you are in a convenient place to ease yourself, not knowing that you are still lying in your bed only to wake up in a pool. It makes you want to curse GOD. Maybe it’s a thorn in the flesh to keep some people humble, but keep praying, you could as well sleep late after easing yourself! Parents and teachers shouldn’t intimidate children as though they are worthless; YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHOM GOD BIRTHED INTO THIS WORLD THROUGH YOU! Wake up bedwetters in the middle of every night, between 2 and 3 AM, just in case they haven’t susu-ed on bed already or set up an alarm clock for them. Sweet dreams!