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Not circumsizing your son--what was your experience?
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Anonymous
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We have decided that we are not circumcising our son, but we have no experience how to wash and handle him after birth.
Have any of you gotten any advice on what to read or should the pediatrician be the best resource for this? We are interviewing pediatricians soon and that will be one of the first questions to ask. Any feedback is welcome. Thanks. |
Anonymous
| You don't do anything for years other than bathe him. Clean it like it is a finger. The one red flag for a pediatrician is if they tell you otherwise. Do not go to someone who wants you to retract the foreskin yourself in the first few years of life. |
Anonymous
| Washing and handling your newborn will actually be easier if you're not circumcising since you won't have to provide wound care. PP is right -- you just wash it like any other body part. |
Anonymous
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Don't mean to hijack the thread...but honestly, what is the reason that people opt for circumcision if there are no religious reasons? I was born in Europe and no one circumcises their children there unless it serves religious purposes. I was shocked to learn that the majority of men in the US are circumcised regardless of religion.
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Anonymous
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Five years into my first uncirc'd penis, I'm finding it a complete nonissue. It gets washed just like all the other body parts -- as needed, gently and only on the outside. My son has never had any problems using it (for peeing, for a light saber, whatever) and our pediatrician has never remarked on it either.
Fwiw, my son has also never remarked on how he's different than his dad. Or if he has, it's because of something obvious like size or hair, and not because of the look of the thing itself. |
Anonymous
Because penises are so icky and kids will tease you in the locker room. I mean really, how can you keep your privates clean if you don't wack some of that extra ickiness off? Plus I want my son to have a good sex life and no one will sleep with him if he is not circed. |
Anonymous
Let's not hijack this thread. If you want to see people's answers on this PP, you can search and see there has already been a lot of discussion. |
Anonymous
I guess that sums it up. He will have to look for a partner across the US border. |
Anonymous
I'm assuming this was all meant with sarcasm. I always think the "we want him to match daddy!" argument is hilarious. My husband is not circ'ed and has no idea what his father's "status" is. Nor does he want to know. Clean like a finger, and don't retract, as others have said. And don't trust a doctor (or article in a magazine) who tells you otherwise. My sister chose to circ her son, we chose not to circ ours, and I'd say we're both happy with our respective decisions. |
Anonymous
| Three boys, none circed, and we didn't do anything. At one point when one boy was in early elementary school, the ped was concerned that the foreskin wasn't retracting/retractable enough, but a phone call to Johns Hopkins put that fear to rest. |
Anonymous
| A friend didn't circ and eventually her son did need to be circed. The family was still glad they'd made the choice they did. Yes, it hurt. But he was old enough to understand why they were doing this, and it didn't hurt forever. |
Anonymous
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I didn't do it because the odds that he will ever truly need to be circumcized are very very low -- something like 1 in 14-16 thousand boys in Scandinavia eventually need circumcision. Now, they do treat things like hypospadias differently, so our rate would be a bit higher, but nonetheless the vast majority of US boys that need circumcision either don't really need it or need it because they've been prematurely retracted over and over.
Rates are also 50/50, so there's no real locker room argument anymore, even if one did care about their locker room peers. The pps who said clean like a finger and make sure he isn't retracted (by anyone but himself, when he's ready) are correct. |
Anonymous
| Has anyone with a noncircumcized son had trouble with daycare providers retracting the foreskin? |
Anonymous
| You don't need to do anything. My younger son has an extremely long foreskin, so I clean the folds of it, but I still don't retract. |
Anonymous
| My son was circumcised, but not well (the foreskin was left too long -- my ped analogized it to a turtleneck that should stop at your chin but goes up to your eyes) and we have had a lot of issues with adhesions and yeast infections. Now that he is almost 2 it seems to be getting better, but the first 2 years have been very difficult -- painful for him and not very pleasant for us. I imagine it's similar to what we would have gone through had he not been circumcised at all. My sister had the same issues with her youngest son, although his issues persist and he is almost 5. |