Bedwetting

I didn’t know when I stopped wetting on my bed, but all I can remember is that my piss was starting to smell like an adult’s piss when I stopped wetting on my bed.

In the Philippines chronic bed wetting is not a big deal. It is considered normal especially for active children. I read that in the US they consider chronic bedwetting as a clinical disorder but in my experiences and with my childhood friends experiences and how our parents think of it, bed wetting is considered part of growing up and it would be unthinkable for parents to have their children psychoanalyzed for a simple case of bed wetting.

I and my hyper-active childhood friends wet our beds almost daily. It’s normal to see our mothers sun drying our urine soaked and urine smelling beddings, talking with each other, shaking their heads, sometimes smiling sometimes frowning, surrendered to their fate—taking care of their incontinent children.

How did parents dealt with the problem?

It is common belief that bedwetting is caused by hyperactivity. I don’t have the information to say whether this is medically true or not, but experience tells me that there is some truth in this because the more I and my friends play hide and seek, gun fight and tag the greater the chances that we will wet our bed. With the belief that hyperactivity causes bedwetting, my parent and as well as most Filipino parents try to rein in their children-- the children are told to relax hours before they go to bed. Of course this is an exercise in futility.

Not drinking water before going to bed is another solution.

None of these things worked.

My father tried providing me with a pissing can. But most of the times, I was already soaking wet before waking up to piss in the pissing can.

My old room is on the second floor of our house. The room has a steel window that opens wide. One night, maybe because I’m already growing up, my bladder woke me up. Since I’m a little afraid of the dark, what I did was to open the steel window, pulled down my pants and pissed. Of course it was embarrassing, in the silence of the night, the piss falling on our corrugated tin roof, I mean, it was like it suddenly rained.

I was pissing in a half dream, half awake, somnambulist state when something cold brushed my…er…tweet tweet and a bat flew past my eyes.

After that incident, my bladder always woke me up whenever it is full, but I till wet my bed. The reason was...

I mean…I think psychoanalysis would have helped that time.