Brolly Sheets

I would like to introduce you to a really nifty invention.  Well, it is if you have preschoolers at least!

Preschoolers who have those little accidents, who are trying to toilet train (or resisting being toilet trained, depending on their current frame of mind!).  Preschoolers who you WANT to be toilet trained, but who aren’t quite ‘there’ yet.  And if you’re like me, you just aren’t quite sure how to go about it all…

Munchkin toilet trained just fine during the day time.  He’s pretty brilliant with taking himself off to the loo, doing his business, flushing the toilet, washing his hands, etc.

But night times?  Ugh.  A totally different scenario.  He is a VERY heavy wetter.  I means, seriously  HEAVY.  Like, three times as many nappy inserts as people said he’d need.  To the point he could hardly move.  Plus a ‘nappy pants’ cover over the top (the pyjama pants sort for older kids) to stop leaks in the top front.  Before that I was having to change him before I’d go to bed, and he’s still often be wet from bum to neck in the morning.  So you can probably understand my fear of night-time toilet training.  We don’t have a dryer.  We don’t even have our very useful conservatory any more.  We do have a mattress protector, but if he wets, we have to change the protector, the sheets, and somehow try and get the protector dry again before night.  Then there’s how hard it is to get the nappy cover down, the nappy unbuttoned, etc then put it all back on again afterwards in order to encourage getting up and going to the toilet mid-night, I’ve been very reluctant to even try nights.  He had a few nights months back where he was dry.  But I didn’t capitalise on the moment.  In retrospect, I’m sorry I didn’t.  I’m learning more and more as I continue this journey as a parent how important it can be to optimise the ‘moment.’  You know, that point in time where the kid seems to ‘get’ something or be on the verge of ‘getting it?’  Hmm.

He was going dry about 6 day sleeps out of 7.  Yes, my son still has a day sleep at three years old.  Or at least, he did.  This week he seems to have decided it is time.  Three nights of 1.5-2hrs to get to sleep, after busy days that should have worn him out, and we decided to try one day without sleep.  The preschool teachers agreed.  He was very proud of himself.  I expected a wiped out son.  He nearly fell asleep in the car on the way home.  But he made it through dinner and bath and bedtime without any undue tempers or otherwise.  And went to sleep in about five minutes.  Ahhh.  Today I thought he’d need one, seeing as he didn’t have one yesterday.  I duly put him to bed.  He did not sleep.  Mummy did.  We were up a few times last night – threw out the dummy in the big rubbish bin for the rubbish truck to come and take it to the rubbish tip yesterday!  Munchkin was quite happy with his decision during the day – he’s been threatening to do it for ages as he really desperately wanted the police van we’d bought him as BBC, but of course it is a VERY different matter in the middle of the night.  One cannot suck a police van to calm and soothe one-self, now can we??!!  So Mummy had to do.  Not that he sucked me, just lay all over me till he went back to sleep!  Anyway, today, Munchkin blatted round in his room (with his beloved police van!) while Mummy had a half-hour kip.  Thank God for small mercies.  And a trip out for a walk and hot drink with my mum this afternoon!

So back to the toilet training…

I was talking with friends about getting some Brolly Sheets.  One of them happened to see them on sale at Belly Beyond the following week.  We got two for $70 (free postage!).  Very happy.  (We had to sell a few things on Trademe to cover it!)

Here’s the basic idea:

It’s a sheet.  But it’s also a waterproof cover.  And an absorber.

All in one.

A nice looking, tidy, sheet-come-mattress-protector.

Easy to take away with you.  Munchkin took his to preschool this week instead of a nappy.

Easy to whip off the bed.  Wash in the machine.  Even throw in the dryer!

I thought about making an imitation myself.  But I so do not have the time.  Or inclination.  These are fabulous.  They have extra absorbency, which for us is really important.  The theory is that come spring, we can start working on nappy-free nights.  Hopefully the Brolly Sheet would absorb any accidents so we wouldn’t even need to change the top sheet.  Hopefully.  In the meantime, we are going to slowly stock up on Pull Ups.  Now that Treasures has seen the light and finally produced them in the Junior (biggest) size, we can use that as an option!  I think we’ll end up throwing out the old fabric nappies (which are hanging together almost by threads, they are so well-used) and using the pull-ups, together with getting him up when I go to bed for a quick toilet stop (IF I can without too many tears), making him go first thing when he gets up (gotten a bit slack with that lately and I suspect the nappy is often getting wet early morning).  Combine these with the safety net of the Brolly Sheet, and I’m hopeful we will make it through to nappy-free forever in the not-too-distant future!

With a Brolly Sheet duly installed on his bed, Munchkin is proud to now wear undies during day sleeps.  Haven’t had a wet since putting the Brolly Sheet on.  But it’s just the reassurance that IF he does (which will probably happen one day or another), all I have to do is whip off that Brolly Sheet, throw it in the wash, and put the other one on.  Done.  Amusingly, he likes to tuck his hands in under it, under his pillow.  Grin.

So there you go, if you’ve been worrying about getting your baby to go dry through the night, consider a BROLLY SHEET!

A friend first told me about these, raving about hers.  As she’s from the UK, I assumed they must be a UK thing, not having heard about them before.  But lo and behold, Brolly Sheets are a genuine KIWI INVENTION.  Wahoo.  Something fabulous that I can claim as our own.

Amy