If you’ve wet the bed, the first step is straightforward: strip the sheets, clean your skin, and blot the mattress before the urine soaks deeper. After that, it’s worth understanding why it happened, because bedwetting in adults and older children almost always has a treatable cause. About 1–2% of adults experience it, and while it can feel deeply embarrassing, it’s a medical issue, not a personal failure.
Clean Up the Mattress Right Away
Speed matters. The longer urine sits in a mattress, the harder the stain and smell are to remove. Start by pulling off all sheets, blankets, and mattress covers and tossing them in the wash. Adding a cup of distilled white vinegar and a box of baking soda to the laundry load helps neutralize the odor.
For the mattress itself, blot (don’t rub) the wet area with clean towels or paper towels to absorb as much liquid as possible. Then spray the spot with a mixture of cold water, a small amount of laundry detergent, and distilled white vinegar. Blot again. Once the area is as dry as you can get it, sprinkle a generous layer of baking soda over the stain and let it sit for at least eight hours. The baking soda draws out remaining moisture and breaks down odor. Vacuum it up afterward and check whether the smell is gone. Repeat if needed.
If you’re dealing with a pet accident on the mattress, skip the homemade solution and use an enzyme-based cleaner designed to break down the specific proteins in animal urine.
Take Care of Your Skin
Urine left on the skin, even briefly, can cause irritation, redness, and rashes over time. Wash the area with mild soap and lukewarm water, rinse well, and gently pat dry. Avoid scrubbing. If you’re experiencing repeated episodes, applying a barrier cream containing zinc oxide, lanolin, or petrolatum after cleaning creates a protective layer that shields the skin from moisture. Avoid products with alcohol, which can dry out and further irritate already sensitive skin.
Why It Happens
Adult bedwetting typically falls into a few categories: the bladder muscle contracting when it shouldn’t, a blockage or structural issue affecting urine flow, the body producing too much urine at night, or sleeping so deeply that the brain doesn’t register a full bladder. Often, more than one factor is at play.
In men, an enlarged prostate is one of the more common contributors, because it partially blocks the flow of urine and changes how the bladder empties. Urinary tract infections can cause sudden bedwetting in anyone, and diabetes can contribute through nerve damage that reduces bladder sensation, making it harder for your body to signal that it’s time to wake up. Kidney conditions that affect the body’s ability to concentrate urine can also lead to higher nighttime urine volume.
The Sleep Apnea Connection
One of the less obvious causes is obstructive sleep apnea. When your airway repeatedly closes during sleep, the effort of trying to breathe against that closed airway creates strong negative pressure in the chest. This pressure shifts blood volume toward the heart, which stretches the heart’s upper chambers. In response, the heart releases a hormone that tells the kidneys to dump extra sodium and water, essentially overriding the normal nighttime slowdown in urine production. The result is a much fuller bladder than your body would normally have overnight. If you snore heavily, wake up gasping, or feel exhausted despite a full night’s sleep, sleep apnea could be behind your bedwetting.
Practical Steps to Reduce the Risk
You don’t need to restrict your total daily fluid intake, but shifting when you drink can help. Try to get most of your fluids in the morning and early afternoon so your body has time to process them before bed. This reduces the volume of urine your bladder has to hold overnight.
Caffeine, alcohol, and carbonated drinks have long been considered bladder irritants, and many providers recommend cutting them out. The research on this is actually more nuanced than the standard advice suggests. A large study from the Symptoms of Lower Urinary Tract Dysfunction Research Network found no significant difference in carbonated or acidic beverage consumption between people with and without incontinence, and the authors concluded that blanket advice to avoid these drinks “does not appear to be warranted.” That said, some individuals are clearly sensitive to caffeine or alcohol. A reasonable approach is to try eliminating them for a couple of weeks and see if your symptoms improve. If they don’t, the drinks probably aren’t your trigger.
Other habits that help: empty your bladder right before getting into bed, and set an alarm for roughly halfway through the night to use the bathroom if nighttime volume seems to be the issue.
Bedwetting Alarms
Moisture-sensing alarms are one of the most effective tools for bedwetting, especially for children and teens. The device clips to underwear or a bed pad and sounds an alarm the moment it detects moisture. Over time, the brain learns to recognize the sensation of a full bladder and wake up before an accident happens. The alarms also appear to increase the bladder’s functional capacity at night, meaning the bladder gradually learns to hold more.
Success rates are strong: 50–80% of users achieve dryness within 10 to 12 weeks. For the best results, plan on using the alarm consistently for 16 to 20 weeks, or until you’ve been dry for 14 consecutive nights. Relapse happens in about 12–30% of cases within the first six months, but a second round of alarm therapy is usually effective.
Medical Treatment
If behavioral changes and alarms aren’t enough, a doctor may prescribe a synthetic version of the hormone your body normally uses to reduce nighttime urine production. This medication is taken about an hour before bed. It’s effective for many people, but it comes with an important safety requirement: you need to restrict fluid intake for one hour before and eight hours after taking it, because the medication prevents your kidneys from excreting excess water. Drinking too much fluid while on it can dilute the sodium in your blood to dangerous levels, a rare but serious side effect.
For people whose bedwetting is caused by an overactive bladder muscle, other medications can help calm involuntary contractions. And if an underlying condition like sleep apnea, an enlarged prostate, or a UTI is driving the problem, treating that condition often resolves the bedwetting entirely.
Protecting Your Mattress Long Term
If bedwetting is happening more than occasionally, a waterproof mattress protector is a simple investment that saves significant cleanup hassle. Look for one that fits like a fitted sheet so it stays in place, and choose a material that doesn’t crinkle or trap heat. Keeping a spare set of sheets nearby also makes middle-of-the-night changes faster and less disruptive.
Signs That Point to a Medical Cause
A single episode after a night of heavy drinking or extreme exhaustion isn’t necessarily a red flag. But certain patterns suggest something deeper is going on. Pay attention if bedwetting starts suddenly after months or years of dry nights, if it happens alongside daytime wetting or urgency, if you notice pain while urinating, a weak stream, changes in the color of your urine, or if you’re also experiencing constipation or mood changes. In adults, any recurring bedwetting is worth a medical evaluation since a basic urinalysis can rule out infections and other common causes quickly. For children, providers generally treat bedwetting as a clinical concern when it occurs twice a week or more after age 12 and has continued for at least three months.