No More Pull Ups

I've blogged a few times about my frustration that Ryan doesn't yet wake up dry. I didn't plan on blogging about this, but every time I post something that seems like a personal struggle, I end up with comments and emails of people thanking me because they are dealing with the same issue and got ideas or encouragement from my post.
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Most potty training parents wait until their child wakes up with dry Pull Ups or diapers for a week before transitioning to underwear at night. Ryan has only ever made it 2-3 nights in a row dry, and that's with huge incentives and help from us by waking him up in the middle of the night.
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None of this has been particularly concerning to me since we have two different friends with boys a year old than Ryan and both still wear Pull Ups at night. Last year, they were 5 and Ryan was 4, so I wasn't worried. Now this year, both are still in Pull Ups, just like Ryan - I was in the clear. They were sort of my gage for when to concentrate on eliminating the Pull Ups. Even when Kaylin was able to wake up dry just a few weeks after becoming day-time potty trained, I wasn't concerned about Ryan. We've all heard that "boys are slower" with these things, plus, we have the two friends who are a year older. No biggie.
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Then a few weeks ago, I had a conversation with my aunt who is a Psychologist. She mentioned that the Pull Ups people are in the business of making and selling Pull Ups. They don't want my child to wake up dry...they want to keep him as comfortable as possible so we continue to buy Pull Ups. Yes, some kids have accidents into their elementary years, but that should be the exception, not the rule.
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Yeah, so? What do I do with that information? Ryan is still waking up with a soaked Pull Up, sometimes to the point of it overflowing onto his sheets. He is a very hard sleeper and is definitely not able to hold it all night. I tried putting him in underwear, often per his request, only to end up doing extra loads of laundry full of soaked sheets, PJs and underwear. Now that I'm moving along in my pregnancy, changing sheets isn't only frustrating, it's exhausting.
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She suggested that this is the perfect season of my life to put him in underwear. I get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night myself, so I can go in and wake him up to go potty, too. Even if I need to continue to wake him through the night after the baby is born, I'll be getting up to nurse anyway. I decided to do it.
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Sure enough, Ryan has woken up dry an average of 6 nights/week. And I'm noticing that the nights he doesn't make it are after long days of swimming, where he's likely swallowed a few extra gallons of pool water.
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I've gone from waking him 3 times a night to once just before we go to bed (around 10:00) and once when I wake up in the middle of the night. There have been nights that I don't get up until 5am to go to the bathroom, and even though I'm nervous as I enter his room, he's been dry so far.
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The poor boy is so tired when I wake him up that he's often delirious and confused. I have to guide him to the bathroom and often remind him to make sure he gets it IN the toilet. Once he just stood there with his pants around his ankles and peed on the floor in his sleep and another time he curled up on the floor at the base of the toilet and fell back to sleep.
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Last night, I stopped to pick up a toy off the floor before following Ryan to the bathroom. When I got in there, the room was empty. I looked all over the upstairs before hearing a huge *THUD* which I thought might be him falling down the stairs. Mike was watching t.v. in our room and apparently Ryan wandered in there, stopped in front of our mirrored closet door, stared at himself for a minute, then walked directly into it at full speed. THAT woke him up!
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So we've been pretty successful with this process over the last 3 weeks, and I was very skeptical. And in the meantime, I think we've discovered that Ryan might be a sleep walker, just like me. I don't do it much anymore, but I remember waking up in weird places as a kid. Now I just need to figure out what to do with the mega-pack of Pull Ups in his closet!