When Do I Take Away the Pull-up at Night?

Just talked to our pediatrician about this at my son's 4 year old well-visit. Her take - keep on the pull-up, he's got a long while before this is a problem (in fact, our doc said, reassess again at 4.5...and even sometimes kids can take as long as to age 7 to be fully night-trained). Her reasoning was that if he's waking up SOAKED, it means his body/brain is not yet mature enough to make the connection while sleeping for such a long time (naps have been ok. I figured once we had no wetting during naps established, we could then address the longer stretches). Anyway, this is not a situation that should be pushed (just like potty training in general). In fact, we still use diapers at night due to their absorbency. A pullup is not made to be as absorbent and I was cleaning up A LOT more overnight leaks. Another friend of mine did the same as her daughter (over age 4.5) was sleeping through being wet and having it sit next to her skin for so long they were dealing with some major skin irritation and chafing (again, pullups do not withdraw the moisture away from the skin like diapers do).
More and more my son wakes up drier or comes to find me in the middle of the night for help to use the potty. When he starts to do this more regularly, we will consider making the switch (which our doc advised....limit fluids after dinner, wake up child to use potty before we go to bed, etc.).

I have 4 1/2 yr. old boy/girl twins and we potty trained them at age 3 with pull-ups at night. My daughter was mostly dry in the mornings while my son was always soaked in the morning. We decided to put her in underwear through the night and she did great. We waited until my son started to wake up dry (closer to age 4) and then we let him try underwear through the night. In the beginning, more nights that not we would be changing sheets. But after a few months, he goes all night dry, and I don't think he would be doing this if we would have kept him in the pull-ups. I think your son is still too young to go all night without pull-ups, especially if he wakes up wet. I've always heard that it's harder for the boys than the girls, and in my case that is what happened. I guess my advice would be to wait until he wakes up dry more than he wakes up wet, and then take the pull-ups away and be ready to wake up in the middle of the night to change the sheets once in a while.

I wouldn't take the pull up away until he is dry for several nights in a row. Unless, you like doing lots of laundry. :) My son night trained at closer to 5 years old. My daughter is 3.5 and she just night trained in the last month or so. For both, it was about a year after they day trained. For my daughter, we told her we would get her new princess panties if she could stay dry for 7 straight days. It took her about a month, but she did work up this goal.

I too was putting my daughter in Pull-ups at night long after she was potty trained. 95% of the time she would wake up dry, but she would have an accident about once every 8-10 days. It just clicked in my head that I was wasting money and not really helping by putting her in the Pull-up at night. In addition to limiting the liquids (when you see fit - I understand the giving in when it's hot) I just made going to the toilet the very last thing she did before bed. Even if she insisted she didn't have to go, I'd tell her "Well let's just try and see what happens" Sure enough she'd urinate, even though she didn't fell the urge to go.

Something else I tried: I did not want to wake her at night either, so I would just pick her up out of bed, sit her on the toilet, and gently tell her to try to pee-pee again. I put a night light in the bathroom so I didn't have to turn on bright lights. The result was her using the bathroom while she was half asleep, so I didn't worry about her staying up, since she never became fully conscious.