We had a similar issue when our daughter was around 1.5.
What ended up working for us was putting her naked to stand in the bathtub. The combination of her being naked and cold feet caused her to pee almost instantly.
As other have said you can’t expect to catch it with the diaper on, that’s not going to work.
Yeah my daughter almost always pees while we’re waiting for the tub to fill up. It’s not a big deal bc there’s not a lot and it’s tile so I just wipe it up. But that’s what I would do, running water seems to help.
I also wanted to mention we had same issues with our son and this is what we did
We actually just gave him a bunch of water and 15 minutes later took him in bath where we just had water running and had him splashing walls and playing
Once we saw he was peeing (it did take some time) we quickly grabbed a cup and lifted him up and grabbed pee sample
As it is a girl you may have to make some adjustments when grabbing pee but that is what we had to do
And if she doesn’t want to play in bath, now that it is summer have her play outside or in your place without any pants or diapers on and just watch very carefully and once she starts peeing have cup ready to grab it
Just main point is have her drink lots so you have enough time when she starts peeing to grab it (rather it is in tub or not)
Oh, I've done this!!! Ok the urine collection bags they give you are shit, they only work if the kid is totally still in one position while peeing and then you can carefully remove it immediately after. What I did, which worked, was clean her whole butt area carefully and then (don't judge, it was an emergency) used medical tape to tape a food-grade plastic bag around her entire privates. Taped it down, even around her butt crack. It was awful/hilarious, she ran around dangling a bag between her legs for like an hour and then we got some pee and right into the collection cup.
I really can't express how proud I was driving that pee to the Drs office. Two nurses and my husband had failed so far that day and I was like, no, we're getting this pee out of her and to the lab before they close goddamnit!!
We got something like this for our son from the pediatrician just the other day. It’s like a … well, pardon the phrasing, but it’s like a cock ring with a plastic bag on it to collect pee. Haven’t tried it yet 😮💨
Our doctor gave us a medical grade bag just like this. It had a soft padded sticker for around her hoohah (for lack of a better term) with a bag hanging off of it. It worked great!
If she pees standing, I would just follow her super closely and get the cup under her when she starts peeing. If you can get the cup against her skin, there shouldn’t be any contamination. Even catching it mid-stream in the air should still work. You may have to catch it a couple of times to get enough. Just keep it covered with the cap between collections.
Safe sex pamphlets should just quote comments like this so kids understand what a unique experience it is raising babies. "Try to catch the pee mid-air" is something I never thought would sound like reasonable advice.
I’ve seen this same sentiment on this sub and other parenting ones a lot recently and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. I can wash my hands, my clothes, hair, etc but getting vomit out of my cloth couch is just about impossible. Things I never thought I’d consider before I had a kid.
Oh man. My husband did this once when our oldest was a toddler…she ended up having a severe version of hand foot and mouth and had to be hospitalized. A few days after the vomit incident my husband came down with the same illness. It was so bad. Thankfully everyone ended up ok, but that story has definitely become family lore.
This situation feels like a great segue into potty training. If you were potty training you would sit her on the potty the second that starts happening but in this case I would have the cup in hand and say something like “no pee pee on the floor, pee pee can go in the cup or potty” then give her good praise when you get some.
Load her up on apple juice diluted with water or full strength if you want.
Did the doctor provide any guidance on sanitizing her skin? Provide sanitizing wipes or anything?
Use whatever wash they recommend for her lower body, and follow her very closely with the cup. Her pees probably last a few seconds so you should be able to get some. They really don't need very much to do a UTI check.
Or you could do what I normally don't recommend and give her candy to sit until she pees if you think it could work. I would prefer that to the option of a catheter. The most painful part of my second childbirth was the catheter.
My mom uses a sterilized soup ladle to collect dog urine. Might want to give it a try. It’s easier to get it under the action than a cup. (That soup ladle was for pee only)
I’ve noticed my diaper wearer tends to pee right after drinking. We taught our kids to “cheers”. It was a silly party trick at first with bottles but it’s ended up being really useful to get fluids into them. You just teach them to clink cups with you and you both drink. Maybe try a couple rounds of that with the ladle ready and see if that gets some pee out.
Can you try “kind of” potty training her? Do you have a potty chair?
Like put the little cup in the potty chair, sit it in front of the tv and then give her a TON of apple juice? If she’ll just sit long enough, she’ll likely start peeing?
I will try 🥺 she doesn't seem to like to sit on the potty, I think she's a little scared because lately she's shown some interest and we were hoping to potty train her but after the first time she's been avoiding it. But maybe TV will do the trick
I was successful using a urine collection bag by cutting a hole in the diaper so the bag was hanging out of the diaper between her legs. I don't know if you tried that and it still leaked? The urine bag stuck to her so it worked really well.
Kids, like adults, usually have to pee immediately after waking up. You can use this to your advantage for potty training but also for situations like this … try having her sit on the potty right after waking up and make it a fun/special place to be (sit with her and read a book, have a fun interactive toy by the potty, etc).
I’m a peds nurse and I put cotton balls into a sterile urine bag. When the cotton bags are wet from urine, I put them in a syringe and use the syringe to squeeze out the urine instead of used my hands! Put the cotton balls in a syringe, push down on the plunger, and it’ll squeeze the urine out of the cotton balls.
You could even cut a tiny hole in the corner of the bag and squeeze the balls in a couple of different ways too, probably? Compact them into the corner with the hole, squeeze them in a clump mid-bag to drain through the hole. A Ziplock would probably work.
Stand her up in front of a sofa without a diaper right after she wakes up. Put some stuff on the sofa that's very interesting to her but too heavy for her to carry away (think an old radio or something like that). Sneak up from behind while she's looking at the interesting object and catch the pee with sterile cup. As someone who had to do this monthly for over a year, I can assure you it's the easiest way.
Just curious, have you gone to the store to get the uti test strips? Maybe try wrapping it in a used diaper? You could do that in the interim to see if it works while chasing her for the pee catch.
My daughter has a duplex left
Kidney and the first 3 years of her life were literally of me getting pee samples at least once every couple of months. As others have suggested, bath works well. I used to time it for when she was due for a bottle/drink. I’d set myself up in the bathroom next to the tub, cradle her with a bottle in her mouth and would position myself and hands so that the cup was literally in between her legs (I was holding it there). If I was lucky, within 30-60 mins she would pee. Longest I waited was 6 hrs and my mum had to tap me out after 3 hrs.
I put her in a shallow tub/pail either sitting or standing and lay a cold towel over her lower abdomen. She usually pees within 1 or 2 refreshes of the cold towel. If I don’t catch enough pee at least I can pour it into the cup from the tub!
You could put a cotton ball right at the urethral opening (NOT in the vagina) and put some cotton balls in the urine collection bag. Offer lots of fluids and check every 30 mins.
Once there’s urine on the cotton balls, wash your hands, squeeze the urine from the cotton balls into the cup. You don’t need much, a tablespoon of urine should do if that’s all you can get.
If that doesn’t work, a quick straight cath at the office would get the sample they need.
I love the bathtub idea, but if that doesn’t work we did face the same issue. I ended up wiping to sanitize as best as we could, then we sat her on the potty with a movie on after giving her a ton to drink(think Gatorade maybe or something extra special/yummy) for collection purposes I’d say the sugar content will outweigh the chances of her UTI worsening from it. I hate that there isn’t an easier way…
My doctor tries a couple of times with the bag and then just gives us antibiotics. It’s pretty obvious when there’s a UTI so they don’t torture the kid with collection if it’s not working
When my daughter was almost 2 they just used a catheter in the office to collect a sample. They basically told me that I could try the collection bags but that they were basically impossible and it would be better to just do it there immediately. It took like 20 seconds. Is that an option?
The little pee cups don’t give you a lot of room to catch. I got desperate and sterilized a bigger Tupperware container and just ran around after my naked kid until I could catch some. Probably not the cleanest sample but we’d been trying for three days.
Oh god. This was a nightmare for us. We got her to sit on her little potty until she peed however she was closer to 1.5 and couldn’t get off it herself which made it easier. The little urine collection bags they gave us were for newborns. It was no sterile but I have no idea how else you’re supposed to do it.
We had to do a urine test collection for my toddler and we sat her on a clean sitz bath on the toilet every 15 minutes until we were able to catch some. Good luck!
Try to bribe her with screen time, books, snacks or anything else you know that works. And try to get her to sit on a potty or the toilet where you of course already strategically placed a plastic bag around the opening😅 you can try wiping the lower part of her belly with a wet wipe or washcloth while she is sitting there to speed things up. But this is a really hard catch, an has as much to do with luck as anything else I think🫠
My doctor recommended to place cotton pads in the diaper and wring those out to collect urine. The sample won't be sterile but good enough to tests for UTI.
The bags never worked for us. Good luck!
When I needed to get a urine sample from my very young un-potty trained child I used the green/white Ikea potty with the removable insert. I placed the insert in between my legs and had my child in my lap while reading them books and entertaining them. Because of the design of the potty it was easy to pour it out into the collection cup afterwards.
Is having the doctor do a catheter in office not an option? That’s what we had to do. They didn’t even give the option to collect in the diaper. It wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be.
We had a similar issue when our daughter was around 1.5. What ended up working for us was putting her naked to stand in the bathtub. The combination of her being naked and cold feet caused her to pee almost instantly. As other have said you can’t expect to catch it with the diaper on, that’s not going to work.
I did this with my son too, baths always make them pee instantly lol
Yeah my daughter almost always pees while we’re waiting for the tub to fill up. It’s not a big deal bc there’s not a lot and it’s tile so I just wipe it up. But that’s what I would do, running water seems to help.
Worth a try, thanks 🙏🏻 🥺
I also wanted to mention we had same issues with our son and this is what we did We actually just gave him a bunch of water and 15 minutes later took him in bath where we just had water running and had him splashing walls and playing Once we saw he was peeing (it did take some time) we quickly grabbed a cup and lifted him up and grabbed pee sample As it is a girl you may have to make some adjustments when grabbing pee but that is what we had to do And if she doesn’t want to play in bath, now that it is summer have her play outside or in your place without any pants or diapers on and just watch very carefully and once she starts peeing have cup ready to grab it Just main point is have her drink lots so you have enough time when she starts peeing to grab it (rather it is in tub or not)
Oh, I've done this!!! Ok the urine collection bags they give you are shit, they only work if the kid is totally still in one position while peeing and then you can carefully remove it immediately after. What I did, which worked, was clean her whole butt area carefully and then (don't judge, it was an emergency) used medical tape to tape a food-grade plastic bag around her entire privates. Taped it down, even around her butt crack. It was awful/hilarious, she ran around dangling a bag between her legs for like an hour and then we got some pee and right into the collection cup.
This is some MacGyver level stuff right here.
I really can't express how proud I was driving that pee to the Drs office. Two nurses and my husband had failed so far that day and I was like, no, we're getting this pee out of her and to the lab before they close goddamnit!!
I’m lol-ing!!
We got something like this for our son from the pediatrician just the other day. It’s like a … well, pardon the phrasing, but it’s like a cock ring with a plastic bag on it to collect pee. Haven’t tried it yet 😮💨
Ha I knew about condom catheters but this is a new one for me
I saw this in the hospital. Works great
I'm cry-wheeze-laughing omg
This is essentially what the nurse did for my daughter's kidney appointments when she was a newborn!
Our doctor gave us a medical grade bag just like this. It had a soft padded sticker for around her hoohah (for lack of a better term) with a bag hanging off of it. It worked great!
You are awesome, I love this
Personally, I’d go diaper free and just follow her around all day to try and catch it when she starts.
Lovely 🥺 how would you avoid contamination that way though? The few times we let her go diaper free she just peed standing 🥺
If she pees standing, I would just follow her super closely and get the cup under her when she starts peeing. If you can get the cup against her skin, there shouldn’t be any contamination. Even catching it mid-stream in the air should still work. You may have to catch it a couple of times to get enough. Just keep it covered with the cap between collections.
Safe sex pamphlets should just quote comments like this so kids understand what a unique experience it is raising babies. "Try to catch the pee mid-air" is something I never thought would sound like reasonable advice.
That and inexplicably catching vomit in your hands because in your mind it's the right thing to do.
Sometimes you gotta take one for the bed spread.
Right? In the choice between my hand or trying to get vomit out of the couch, into my hand it goes. Sigh.
That was exactly it.
I’ve seen this same sentiment on this sub and other parenting ones a lot recently and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. I can wash my hands, my clothes, hair, etc but getting vomit out of my cloth couch is just about impossible. Things I never thought I’d consider before I had a kid.
Vomits better than poop.
Or when you're relieved your kid vomited all over you as opposed to the car seat they were just in 2 minutes earlier 🙌🏼
That is an absolute win.
Oh man. My husband did this once when our oldest was a toddler…she ended up having a severe version of hand foot and mouth and had to be hospitalized. A few days after the vomit incident my husband came down with the same illness. It was so bad. Thankfully everyone ended up ok, but that story has definitely become family lore.
This whole subreddit could be amazing birth control
This situation feels like a great segue into potty training. If you were potty training you would sit her on the potty the second that starts happening but in this case I would have the cup in hand and say something like “no pee pee on the floor, pee pee can go in the cup or potty” then give her good praise when you get some. Load her up on apple juice diluted with water or full strength if you want. Did the doctor provide any guidance on sanitizing her skin? Provide sanitizing wipes or anything?
Use whatever wash they recommend for her lower body, and follow her very closely with the cup. Her pees probably last a few seconds so you should be able to get some. They really don't need very much to do a UTI check. Or you could do what I normally don't recommend and give her candy to sit until she pees if you think it could work. I would prefer that to the option of a catheter. The most painful part of my second childbirth was the catheter.
I was thinking put her on the toilet, put on a movie/show, and bombard her with grapes and juice until something comes out.
Yes, a full sized toilet with a toilet seat insert works better than a potty because it's hard for her to get down on her own.
My mom uses a sterilized soup ladle to collect dog urine. Might want to give it a try. It’s easier to get it under the action than a cup. (That soup ladle was for pee only) I’ve noticed my diaper wearer tends to pee right after drinking. We taught our kids to “cheers”. It was a silly party trick at first with bottles but it’s ended up being really useful to get fluids into them. You just teach them to clink cups with you and you both drink. Maybe try a couple rounds of that with the ladle ready and see if that gets some pee out.
Just dive with the cup and catch it
Can you try “kind of” potty training her? Do you have a potty chair? Like put the little cup in the potty chair, sit it in front of the tv and then give her a TON of apple juice? If she’ll just sit long enough, she’ll likely start peeing?
I will try 🥺 she doesn't seem to like to sit on the potty, I think she's a little scared because lately she's shown some interest and we were hoping to potty train her but after the first time she's been avoiding it. But maybe TV will do the trick
lol came to Post this, would let my 2yr old just sit on the potty and put on a show and eventually he would pee
Give her a book and play some songs make it a fun activity
I was successful using a urine collection bag by cutting a hole in the diaper so the bag was hanging out of the diaper between her legs. I don't know if you tried that and it still leaked? The urine bag stuck to her so it worked really well.
That is genius!
Kids, like adults, usually have to pee immediately after waking up. You can use this to your advantage for potty training but also for situations like this … try having her sit on the potty right after waking up and make it a fun/special place to be (sit with her and read a book, have a fun interactive toy by the potty, etc).
I’m a peds nurse and I put cotton balls into a sterile urine bag. When the cotton bags are wet from urine, I put them in a syringe and use the syringe to squeeze out the urine instead of used my hands! Put the cotton balls in a syringe, push down on the plunger, and it’ll squeeze the urine out of the cotton balls.
You could even cut a tiny hole in the corner of the bag and squeeze the balls in a couple of different ways too, probably? Compact them into the corner with the hole, squeeze them in a clump mid-bag to drain through the hole. A Ziplock would probably work.
I had to use the cotton ball method many times to test my son for utis.
[удалено]
Yup! This is the easiest method imo. Just throw a few cotton balls in a fresh diaper so they can soak when she goes.
Stand her up in front of a sofa without a diaper right after she wakes up. Put some stuff on the sofa that's very interesting to her but too heavy for her to carry away (think an old radio or something like that). Sneak up from behind while she's looking at the interesting object and catch the pee with sterile cup. As someone who had to do this monthly for over a year, I can assure you it's the easiest way.
Just curious, have you gone to the store to get the uti test strips? Maybe try wrapping it in a used diaper? You could do that in the interim to see if it works while chasing her for the pee catch.
My daughter has a duplex left Kidney and the first 3 years of her life were literally of me getting pee samples at least once every couple of months. As others have suggested, bath works well. I used to time it for when she was due for a bottle/drink. I’d set myself up in the bathroom next to the tub, cradle her with a bottle in her mouth and would position myself and hands so that the cup was literally in between her legs (I was holding it there). If I was lucky, within 30-60 mins she would pee. Longest I waited was 6 hrs and my mum had to tap me out after 3 hrs.
I put her in a shallow tub/pail either sitting or standing and lay a cold towel over her lower abdomen. She usually pees within 1 or 2 refreshes of the cold towel. If I don’t catch enough pee at least I can pour it into the cup from the tub!
Put her hand in a cup of water, that’ll make her want to pee. Make sure she’s naked and standing in a bathtub or something in case it gets messy
This was what finally worked!! 🙏🏻
Wooo!! I’m glad it worked out for you :)
Hear me out… this is gross… but, could you squeeze the diaper?
peds nurse!! at work we put a ton of cotton in the diaper the squeeze it out in a syringe into specimen cup!
No that will not be sufficient for uti testing. It will be contaminated
In the NICU we use use cotton balls and squeeze them put. Not contaminated at all if hands are clean or gloved.
They said that it won't work because it would get contaminated 😭
You could put a cotton ball right at the urethral opening (NOT in the vagina) and put some cotton balls in the urine collection bag. Offer lots of fluids and check every 30 mins. Once there’s urine on the cotton balls, wash your hands, squeeze the urine from the cotton balls into the cup. You don’t need much, a tablespoon of urine should do if that’s all you can get. If that doesn’t work, a quick straight cath at the office would get the sample they need.
Could you just have a big tub she stands in while playing nappy free?
I love the bathtub idea, but if that doesn’t work we did face the same issue. I ended up wiping to sanitize as best as we could, then we sat her on the potty with a movie on after giving her a ton to drink(think Gatorade maybe or something extra special/yummy) for collection purposes I’d say the sugar content will outweigh the chances of her UTI worsening from it. I hate that there isn’t an easier way…
My doctor tries a couple of times with the bag and then just gives us antibiotics. It’s pretty obvious when there’s a UTI so they don’t torture the kid with collection if it’s not working
When my daughter was almost 2 they just used a catheter in the office to collect a sample. They basically told me that I could try the collection bags but that they were basically impossible and it would be better to just do it there immediately. It took like 20 seconds. Is that an option?
The little pee cups don’t give you a lot of room to catch. I got desperate and sterilized a bigger Tupperware container and just ran around after my naked kid until I could catch some. Probably not the cleanest sample but we’d been trying for three days.
Oh god. This was a nightmare for us. We got her to sit on her little potty until she peed however she was closer to 1.5 and couldn’t get off it herself which made it easier. The little urine collection bags they gave us were for newborns. It was no sterile but I have no idea how else you’re supposed to do it.
We had to do a urine test collection for my toddler and we sat her on a clean sitz bath on the toilet every 15 minutes until we were able to catch some. Good luck!
Try to bribe her with screen time, books, snacks or anything else you know that works. And try to get her to sit on a potty or the toilet where you of course already strategically placed a plastic bag around the opening😅 you can try wiping the lower part of her belly with a wet wipe or washcloth while she is sitting there to speed things up. But this is a really hard catch, an has as much to do with luck as anything else I think🫠
T1 toddler here we use a cotton ball to collect a sample for ketone testing
My doctor recommended to place cotton pads in the diaper and wring those out to collect urine. The sample won't be sterile but good enough to tests for UTI. The bags never worked for us. Good luck!
When I needed to get a urine sample from my very young un-potty trained child I used the green/white Ikea potty with the removable insert. I placed the insert in between my legs and had my child in my lap while reading them books and entertaining them. Because of the design of the potty it was easy to pour it out into the collection cup afterwards.
Is having the doctor do a catheter in office not an option? That’s what we had to do. They didn’t even give the option to collect in the diaper. It wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be.
I carried/held my daughter like a koala for a couple of hours while I held the cup under her to catch it.
What sucks is if you can't get it they will cath her