How much urine can a child bladder hold

Holding Your Pee: Is It Safe?

How much urine can your bladder hold?

A healthy adult bladder can hold up to 16 ounces, or 2 cups, of urine. This is great news if you’ve only had one cup of coffee, but not so much if you find yourself on cup number three with no restroom in sight.

The bladder capacity for children under the age of 2 is about 4 ounces. For children older than 2, the capacity can be found by dividing their age by 2, then adding 6. For example, an 8-year-old child can typically hold 10 ounces of urine.

Most everyone has held in urine at one time or another. You may have wondered whether holding your pee is healthy. Here’s what you need to know.

If your urinary system is healthy, holding your pee generally isn’t dangerous. If you’re an adult and your bladder is holding more than 2 cups of urine, you may start to feel uncomfortable.

If you have an overactive bladder, holding your pee can be an important part of bladder training. Regular bladder training may help you develop a more convenient urination schedule.

There isn’t a set guideline for how long you can safely hold your pee. It varies from person to person.

In certain circumstances, holding urine for any length of time can be dangerous. If you have any of the following conditions, holding your urine can increase your risk of infection or kidney disease:

enlarged prostate
neurogenic bladder
kidney disorders
urinary retention

Woman who are pregnant are already at an increased risk for urinary tract infections (UTIs). If you’re pregnant, holding your pee can further increase this risk.

Learn more: What home remedies work for an overactive bladder »

When you feel the urge to empty your bladder, the reason behind it isn’t as simple as your bladder filling up with liquid. It’s actually a pretty complex process involving many muscles, organs, and nerves that work together to tell you that it’s time to go.

When your bladder is about half full, it activates the nerves in your bladder. These nerves signal your brain to give you the urge to urinate. The brain then signals the bladder to hold on until it’s time. Holding your pee involves consciously fighting this signal to urinate.

These signals will differ from person to person. They also vary according to your age, how much liquid your bladder contains, and what time of day it is. For example, these signals decrease at night — that way you can get a full night’s rest instead of running to the restroom every few hours!

If these signals pick up, it may be the result of an underlying medical condition. Some people may develop an overactive bladder or have a bladder that’s triggered by stress.

For some women, the urge to urinate more frequently can increase after having children. This results from changes that occur during childbirth, including weakened muscles and nerve stimulation.

Simply holding your pee doesn’t cause a UTI. UTIs occur when bacteria make their way into the urinary tract.

If you don’t empty your bladder on a regular basis, the bacteria are more likely to sit and multiply in the bladder. This can lead to a UTI. One study discusses this risk — which can result in infection — but the association hasn’t been proven.

Your risk for a UTI may also be higher if you don’t drink adequate amounts of water. This is because your bladder won’t be full enough to send the signal to urinate. Bacteria that might already be present in the urinary system will then be able to multiply, potentially leading to an infection.

If you’re experiencing any unusual symptoms or think you have a UTI, consult your doctor.

Symptoms of a UTI include:

persistent need to urinate
burning sensation while peeing
strong-smelling urine
urine that looks cloudy
blood in the urine
pelvic pain

Check out: What causes orange urine? »

Your bladder is a part of your urinary system. It’s connected through the ureters to your kidneys. In rare cases, urine can back up into the kidneys and lead to an infection or kidney damage.

Pre-existing medical conditions, such as an enlarged prostate or a neurogenic bladder from nerve damage, can lead to an involuntary retention of urine. A blockage in the passage of urine or weakened bladder muscles can prevent the bladder from emptying completely.

When you have to go, you have to go. If you’re able to use the restroom, you should do so.

But if you’ve been advised to do any form of bladder training, or if you’re unable to access a bathroom, here are a few things you can do to take your mind off the urge to urinate:

Do a task that will actively engage your brain, such as a game or crossword puzzle.
Listen to music.
Stay sitting if you are already sitting.
Read a book.
Scroll through social media on your phone.
Keep warm, since being cold can give you the urge to urinate.

In most cases, holding your pee now and then isn’t harmful to your health. If, however, the urge to urinate is affecting your daily life, you should consult your doctor. Holding your pee on a regular basis can increase the risk of UTIs or other complications.

How Much Urine Can the Bladder Hold

A healthy adult bladder can hold up to 16 ounces, or 2 cups of urine.

We’ve all had to hold our bladder for one reason or another, but the human bladder is only designed to hold a set amount of urine, otherwise getting into the “holding habit” can be dangerous.

Normal bladder volume by age changes over time. For example, children under the age of 2 can hold about 4 ounces. For children older than 2, the capacity can be found by dividing their age by 2, then adding 6. For example, an 8-year-old child can typically hold 10 ounces of urine.

Age	Average bladder size	Time to fill bladder up
Infant (0–12 months)	1–2 ounces	1 hour
Toddler (1–3 years)	3–5 ounces	2 hours
Child (4–12 years)	7–14 ounces	2–4 hours
Adult	16–24 ounces	8–9 hours (2 ounces per hour)

As you age, your kidneys and bladder change, which can affect their function. The elastic tissue stiffens and the bladder stretches less.

Therefore, it can’t hold as much urine as before. In women, this can be due to weakened muscles that cause the bladder or vagina to fall out of position (prolapse).

If you find you cannot hold your bladder any longer, this is known as incontinence. There are many types of incontinence and conditions that could cause incontinence.

How Often Should You Pee?

For most people, the normal number of times to urinate per day is between 6 – 7 in a 24 hour period. Between 4 and 10 times a day can also be normal if that person is healthy.

Normal urinary frequency depends on how much fluid you drink in a day and the types of fluid that you drink. It also depends on if you’re taking medication known as diuretics that can cause you to go more often. How healthy and active you are can also have an influence, and to some extent, your age.

Over two-thirds of women over 70 urinate at least once per night, and up to 60 percent go twice or more each night. It’s very common for most people to wake up once a night, and it becomes more common as you get older.

How Long Does it Take to Pee After Drinking Water?

A healthy bladder can hold about 2 cups of urine before it's considered full - it takes your body around 9 to 10 hours to produce 2 cups of urine.

Liquids typically leave your stomach quickly. For example, after you drink a glass of water, it's estimated that only 50 percent of it will be left in your stomach after 10 minutes.

How long it’ll be from drinking to peeing depends upon how well your body is hydrated. If you’re dehydrated, a glass or two of water will quench your thirst but you may not need to pee for hours after.

When you are well hydrated, the kidneys will efficiently expel urine, which may happen after drinking just one glass of water, meaning you may have to rush to pee after ten or fifteen minutes.

You can plan for about 15 minutes after drinking as a guide to access bathrooms throughout the day.

How to Measure How Much Urine You Are Passing

You may need or want to measure the amount of urine you’re passing to gage whether it’s a healthy and appropriate amount.

To measure the amount of urine you pass, you will need to:

Put a container (like an ice cream container) in the toilet bowl
Sit on the toilet and pass urine into the container
When you have finished, measure the urine by tipping it into a measuring jug

The Risks of Holding in Urine

Urinary Tract Infections

Holding your urine for too long can weaken the bladder muscles over time, which can lead to problems such as incontinence and not being able to fully empty your bladder. Additionally, holding your urine for extremely long periods of time can also cause urinary tract infections due to bacteria build-up.

Kidney and Bladder Issues

When we hold our urine by contracting the sphincter against an already strained bladder, the bladder wall can thicken and break down the normal one-way mechanism of urine flow from the kidneys into the bladder. This can increase the risk of infection and lead to long-term kidney and bladder issues.

When should you head to the bathroom

Your bladder is full of receptors that tell your brain how full your bladder is. Essentially, there's an invisible “fill line” in your bladder.

When your urine reaches that point, your brain receives a signal that you need to pee. This actually happens when your bladder is only a quarter of the way full.

You should go to the bathroom as soon as you feel the need to go. If you have the urge to pee and you think you’ve put at least two cups of liquid into your system, it’s definitely time to go.

If you have the urge to go to the restroom and it has been at least three hours since your last trip, it’s also probably time to go. Don’t go just because you think you should, but really learn to listen to your body.

If you find that you can’t make it to the bathroom in time, you might want to gage what you’re drinking and how much of it. You could be overstimulating it in other ways; caffeine, fizzy drinks, artificial sweeteners, alcohol, tomatoes and citrus can all trigger an overwhelming urge to go.

Tips for Maintaining a Healthy Bladder

Maintain a healthy intake of fluids

Try to drink at least 1.5 – 2 liters (6-8 glasses) of fluid each day. When you are not drinking enough, the bladder gets used to holding smaller amounts of urine and can become sensitive.

Keep a bladder diary

Over the course of a few days, write down when you have to go and when your bladder loses control. Then look for connections. You may find patterns you can change easily, like that urge that always hits when you’ve drank your after-lunch coffee.

Exercise your pelvic floor

Working your pelvic floor can help with bladder control by strengthening the pelvic floor muscles that are responsible for closing your urethra and keeping urine safely in your bladder until it’s time to go.

Manual pelvic floor exercises are effective, but it can be difficult to know if you’re doing them correctly and results can take a while to show.

To rebuild your pelvic floor muscles from the inside, discover INNOVO, the only at-home, non-invasive solution designed to help you regain control of your bladder in just 12 weeks.

INNOVO’s patented pelvic floor exerciser delivers 180 perfect Kegels per session, while you sit back and relax, and let INNOVO do all the hard work.

Why is it dangerous to endure | Domestos

It is recommended to empty the bladder regularly, about once every three hours. But there are times when this is simply not possible. Find out why it's dangerous to put off going to the bathroom and what the consequences can be.

Author: Gorbunova Anna - pediatrician, infectious disease specialist

Delayed urination for an hour or two does not pose any threat to health. But still, it can harm the body if it happens regularly.

The bladder is an expandable organ. The process of emptying the bladder is not much different from the contraction of other muscles in our body. The urine filtered by the kidneys is collected in the bladder by two tubes called ureters. The volume of fluid in the bladder of an adult can be about 400-600 ml. The child is 0-12 months old. - 30-60 ml, in children 1-3 years old - 90-150, in children 4-12 years old - 200-400 ml. It takes time to fill it, which depends on age.

For children under one year old, this time is approximately one hour, for children under 3 years old - 2 hours, 6 years old - 3 hours, 12 years old - up to 4 hours, for an adult - 6-8 hours.

Research shows that the bladder is directly connected to your brain, ie. it is full of receptors that tell the brain how full it is. Essentially, there is an invisible "fill line" in the bladder. When urine reaches this point, the brain receives a signal that indicates the need to urinate. This usually happens when the bladder is only a quarter full. Therefore, when we feel the urge to urinate, we still have time before the bladder is completely full. When it fills up, its muscles work to keep urine from “leaking” until the moment is right.

Holding urine once for several hours is rarely harmful in the long run. The danger of urinary retention has a cumulative effect. That is, if this happens constantly, if a habit is formed to ignore the desire to urinate, then complications may develop.

This complication may be a urinary tract infection. Urine is usually sterile, and normal urine flow usually does not cause bacteria to become infected in the urinary tract. But with urinary retention, the urethra may open slightly and there is the possibility of bacteria penetrating upward into the bladder, causing cystitis, and even into the kidneys, causing pyelonephritis.

Plus, in some people, high intravesical urine pressure causes the vesicoureteral segment to fail and cause urine to flow back to the kidneys.

This backflow, called reflux, can damage the kidneys.

Likewise, the habit of “be patient” can damage the bladder itself.

If the bladder is stretched too hard, for a long time and regularly, the bladder muscles can become damaged (atrophy) and lose their ability to contract. Subsequently, urinary incontinence may occur.

With prolonged "patience", for 10 hours or more, on the contrary, urinary retention may develop, due to the fact that the muscles of the bladder cannot relax, even when we want to. In very rare cases, prolonged retention of urine can lead to bladder rupture. The habit of "tolerating", especially if it is formed from early childhood, can extremely adversely affect the development of the urinary organs.

Therefore, it is necessary to empty the bladder whenever this desire arises. In this case, it is necessary to empty it completely and not rush this process.

An interesting fact here is that in a survey among Russians, Domestos found that 45% of parents say their children try not to go to school toilets. Therefore, it is very important for yourself and your children to form the habit of going to the toilet on time so that undesirable consequences do not occur.

Timely going to the potty in kindergarten usually takes enough time, but with schoolchildren it is more difficult. It is necessary to start training in the use of public toilets and conduct explanatory conversations from early childhood. Public toilets may seem noisy and uncomfortable to small children, but one should try to explain that it is dangerous to “tolerate” in this situation and gradually accustom the child to visiting public toilets, for example, when you go to cafes, children's clubs. Then already at an older age, in school years, a skill will be developed - to control yourself at a break and go to the toilet before the lesson, so as not to endure during the lesson.

Yes, our public toilets are often unattractive. They are often not cleaned, have worn-out plumbing, cubicle doors often do not close or are completely absent, as in the bathrooms of many schools, they also often lack hygiene products and dryers are broken. Therefore, the feeling of awkwardness and disgust often overpowers the natural need of our children. And this can be understood. After all, it is ideal when you can choose a clean toilet, which, of course, will have a cleaning schedule on the door, soap and toilet paper, towels or a working hand dryer. Then we will have no obstacles to go to the toilet.

First of all, all public organizations that have public toilets, especially in children's institutions, are supposed to follow the rules for their maintenance. Then nothing will interfere with this important need, and we, and especially our children, will not have to restrain ourselves to our detriment.

That's why the Domestos brand launched the project “You can't stand learning”, where we have to put a comma ourselves. The project focuses on the low level of sanitary maintenance of school bathrooms and how this can affect the health of the child. As part of the project, the brand helped schools by renovating bathrooms, and launched an educational campaign for parents, students and teachers across the country to help them immerse themselves in the problem and encourage them to pay more attention to the topic of hygiene by collecting expert materials on the topic on the site. link.

Ultrasound preparation - MedSwiss medical center

Preparing for abdominal ultrasound.

1. 2-3 days before the study, exclude from the diet products that promote gas formation (any raw fruits and vegetables, all legumes - beans, lentils, peas; black bread, carbonated drinks and other foods that you individually have bloating.).
2. For 2-3 days before the study, take espumizan 2 capsules 3 times a day (for an adult patient), on the day of the study - DO NOT take!!!
3. The study is carried out strictly on an empty stomach. On the day of the study, do not eat or drink liquids! No smoking!
4. If the study is carried out in the first half of the day - on the eve of dinner should not be late (until 20.00) and not plentiful.
5. If for some reason the study is conducted in the afternoon, dinner should also be no later than 20.00 and not plentiful; in the morning on the day of the study - a light breakfast (tea, porridge, bun) and after 6 - 8 hours, it is possible to conduct a study (that is, within 6 - 8 hours before the study, do not eat or drink liquid). However, it is better to conduct research in the morning.
6. If you are constantly taking any medications, you should consult with your doctor if you can postpone their morning intake or whether you still need to take them in the morning before the examination with a small amount of water.
7. If you have diabetes, please consult with your doctor if you can come to the study strictly on an empty stomach or if you can have a light breakfast.

Preparing for an ultrasound of the kidneys.

1. Special preparation is not necessary, but it is advisable to exclude from the diet 1-2 days prior to the examination products that promote gas formation (grapes, apples, cabbage, brown bread, carbonated drinks and others, from which you individually experience bloating. ).
2. It is recommended to fill the bladder in case you need to do an ultrasound of the bladder. To do this, 1 hour before the study, drink 3-4 glasses of any non-carbonated liquid (tea, fruit drink, compote, mineral water, etc. ) and do not urinate.

Preparation for pelvic ultrasound.

1. Sign up for a study on the 1st day of the menstrual cycle.
2. Usually the study is carried out on the 5th - 7th day of the menstrual cycle.
3. Before a transvaginal examination, it is necessary to empty the bladder and, preferably, the intestines.
4. Transabdominal ultrasound is performed with a full bladder. It is necessary to drink 3-4 glasses of any non-carbonated liquid (tea, juice, compote, mineral water, etc.) 1 hour before the examination and not urinate.
5. 1 - 2 days before the study, exclude from the diet foods that promote gas formation (grapes, apples, cabbage, brown bread, carbonated drinks and others, from which you individually experience bloating.). On the eve of the study in the evening, take Espumizan 2 capsules or Activated charcoal at the rate of 1 tablet per 10 kg of body weight.

Preparing for ultrasound (TRUS) of the prostate with the determination of residual urine.

Since the TRUS of the prostate is conducted through the rectum, it must be cleaned. To do this, 1 - 2 hours before the study, it is necessary to make a microclyster with a volume of 200 ml of plain water using a special pear (syringe), and then empty the rectum. You can use a ready-made microclyster - "Mikrolaks" and purchase it at a pharmacy.
You must come to the study with a full bladder.
To fill the bladder, it is necessary to drink 3-4 glasses of any non-carbonated liquid (tea, fruit drink, compote, mineral water, etc.) 1-2 hours before the examination and not urinate.
If it is impossible to endure and a strong urge, it is permissible to empty the bladder a little to relieve tension and drink a little liquid again to achieve complete filling of the bladder by the time of the study.
If a TRUS is prescribed without determination of residual urine, the bladder must be emptied before the study.

Preparation for bladder ultrasound.

You must come to the study with a full bladder.
IMPORTANT: before you start drinking water to fill your bladder, you must first empty your bladder! Then, to fill the bladder, it is necessary to drink 3-4 glasses of any non-carbonated liquid (tea, fruit drink, compote, mineral water, etc.) 1 hour before the study and not urinate.
If it is impossible to endure and there is a strong urge, it is permissible to empty the bladder a little to relieve tension and drink a little liquid again to achieve complete filling of the bladder by the time of the study.

No special training is required for the following types of ultrasound:

1. Ultrasound of the mammary glands (performed from the 5th to the 10th day of the menstrual cycle)
2. Ultrasound of the thyroid gland
3. Ultrasound of the heart (EchoCG)
4. Ultrasound of the vessels of the neck (ultrasound of the BCCA)
5. Ultrasound of the veins of the lower extremities
6.