Bedwetting - 3 Year Old

What B said. Pull-ups at night. I call them sleep-pants. My guy is almost 7 and he's almost ready - we get about a week of dry. I expect he'll be dry soon. The pediatrician says this is normal. His confidence will be fine, just tell him that his bladder doesn't know he's sleeping and when he's it's ready, he'll be dry at night.

Your son is NORMAL.
Nighttime bladder control is NOT the same as daytime.

Get a waterproof bed pad to put under him when he sleeps.
I have 4 of them, that I rotated. The sheets do not get soiled that way. I got mine from Amazon. It is fabric. Not plastic.

With my kids, I simply explained to them, their BODY is still... developing. Nighttime is different. It is NOT about age, of the child. And my kids both understood completely. And until then, they wore nighttime diapers. No problem.

Ditto "B" below.

Also know that, EVEN if a child is fine at night, and older, they DO have pee accidents. It is, childhood. Children, have accidents. And as they get older they have it less.

Some kids wet the bed till they are 7, 9, or even 12 years old.
Any pediatrician will tell you the same thing.
It's completely normal.
Our son was finished with pullups at night when he was 7 1/2.
When he woke up dry for 2 solid weeks in a row then we threw the pullups away.
I just didn't want to deal with all that laundry.
We didn't shame him about wearing pullups at night and he was ok with it.
There is NOTHING you can do to mature his bladder any faster.
He won't be going off to college and still be wetting the bed.
Be patient and relax.
He'll grow out of it hopefully sooner than later but you could be in for a few more years of dealing with it.

Lol. I asked this EXACT question about my daughter a while ago. The general consensus is that you can't really nighttime train kids this age... It's a hormonal development that will come on it's own.

My daughter also hated pull ups. I just put plastic underwear over her regular ones. (They are sold in the cloth diapering section.) It works great, I have never had a leak from them in the year and a half that I have been doing it. A perk is that she feels when she is wet, and has learned to wake up when she needs to go. So now she very rarely has accidents.

This is the problem with using the "big kids don't wear diapers" comments when potty training a kid. They sense our desire to have them grow up, and they feel the sense of pride but also our sense of urgency. We are so sick and tired of diapers, and when our kids show interest in, and competence with, the toilet, we regale them with praise.

But we aren't so good at communicating to them in 3-year-old terms, the concept that this just isn't about training! It's totally developmental. Feeling the urge when awake is totally different from waking up to pee and from having enough bladder capacity to go all night. We really don't want our kids to get up several times to pee - we want them the sleep! They need their rest.

Your son is already caught up in the "big boys don't wear diapers" or "pull-ups" so I don't know if you can convince him that there are different rules or goals for nighttime vs. daytime. Nobody's going to sleep well if there are wet sheets - never mind the nightmare of laundry the next day!

If you can work some compromise with pull-ups for night, great. Otherwise, the rubber pants will save the sheets but not keep him comfortable because he will stay drenched. There are pads you can get to put in night-time undies (for those kids who wet through them) so maybe he will allow that to be slipped into his underpants, or maybe you can do it after he falls asleep if he's a sound sleeper.

We put a fitted sheet on our son's bed, then a waterproof pad, then a second fitted sheet. It at least left a clean, dry sheet on the bed we could use after we stripped off the wet stuff and wiped him down, but it wasn't ideal.

So I'd show him the pictures of the big boys on the packages of Good Nights or whatever brand you use, and tell him this is specially for big boys like him, as an in-between stage. Maybe there are photos on their websites too.

I would try pads to just put under him. I just used puppy pads since I had a package left to use up that way I could just toss the pad and the sheets would be fine.
I also forgot to add that until recently we would wake our oldest(almost 7) to go potty around 11:30-12 to go potty.

We use a sheet system from http://cloudsandstars.com/ (they also have an outlet store) that is a base that encompasses the mattress and a zip off top sheet (under your body). So when our daughter has an accident, or the cat vomits all over her bed. You zip off the top and zip on another. Takes 20 seconds and you wash the soiled one at your convenience. We have 4 tops that we rotate through as needed.
We also put large (like 24x24) plastic 'puppy' pads under the zipped-on top sheet to keep the mattress pad clean and dry. The zipped top sheet holds them in place and makes the change SUPER easy. They have saved my life!!
That said, it took our daughter sleeping naked to get her to have the most dry nights. Good luck!! :-)

Kids don't stop wetting the bed until they are much older than when they stay dry during the day.

So if you're really ready to do pee sheets and bedding every single day for years please go by some overnight pullups. They are about $15 per month and you will spend double that on laundry. Plus, isn't your time worth anything? Is all that you are a laundry lady? Wouldn't you like to play with kiddo? or go to the library for kids hour? Sitting at home doing laundry every single day for years is redundant and silly.

He's not ready to wear underwear during the night. He'll be getting ready to try underwear when he's stayed dry all night for several weeks.

BTW, kids are supposed to go to bed and sleep all night. They are NOT supposed to get up to go pee. I don't get up several times per night to go pee, that's a sign of diabetes. Going to bed and staying asleep all night is what our bodies are supposed to do.

Our body is not supposed to produce urine during our sleeping hours. We're supposed to sleep, then wake up, and have a filling feeling in our bladder. That's why we have to go pee right after we wake up.

Same with kids. Waking them up during the night to go to the bathroom only makes them clinch up the muscles in that region so they don't go pee. Then as soon as they go to sleep those muscles relax again and the urine comes out.

My oldest is three. She just tackled night time training. I bought her a bed pad. It looks just like what hospitals use on the beds. It works great. I lay it above the sheets, so I never have to wash the sheets if she has an accident. Was he sick recently or is he sick now? Is he having something to drink within the hour before bed? Is he going pee before he lays down at bedtime?