No one is born with complete bladder control. Your brain trains your bladder by telling it when to empty. You can re-train your bladder and learn good voiding (peeing) habits at any age.
- Urgency is the feeling that you have to empty your bladder before it’s full.
- Frequency is how often you need to empty your bladder.
You may notice you have a strong urge to pee and you only pee small amounts. This means you have both urgency and frequency. These patterns can be changed.
How to control urgency
- Stop what you’re doing and stay still. Sitting sometimes helps.
- Squeeze your pelvic floor muscles 4 or more times. Pelvic floor muscles are the muscles you use to stop peeing.
- Relax the rest of your body.
- Focus on something else, like counting backwards.
- Concentrate on holding back the urge to empty your bladder.
- Wait until the urge goes away.
- Walk to the bathroom at a normal pace or wait until later to go.
How to control frequency
It is helpful to complete a bladder diary before you try to re-train your bladder to control frequency. It helps you understand your current voiding patterns. It also helps to show you what things trigger your urge, how much you are drinking, and how much you are peeing.
The goal with re-training your bladder to control frequency is to increase the time between visits to the toilet. For example, if you can comfortably hold your pee for 1 hour, your goal may be to increase that time to 3 or 4 hours. You can re-train your bladder to do this by following a schedule like the example below. Your healthcare provider can help you plan a schedule that is right for you.
- Week 1: Empty your bladder every hour during the day, even if you don’t feel you need to. Do not do this at night. Keep track of your daytime voiding by writing it down in a diary.
- Week 2: Increase the time between visits to the toilet by 15 minutes. This means emptying your bladder every 1 hour and 15 minutes. Develop good bladder habits, such as drinking less caffeine, and use the urge control techniques above. It’s OK if you have to empty your bladder before the set time once in a while. Just keep trying.
- Week 3 and beyond: Increase the time between visits to the toilet by 15 minutes each week. Do this until you can go 3 to 4 hours without emptying your bladder. Congratulate yourself on having re-trained your bladder. Keep up the good habits and pattern.
