[Alaska-Su]

Hi, I don't think I've ever posted on here but I wanted to see how other women with circ'd boys did with the whole aftercare.

The doctor used the bell cap on my son and said I wouldn't have to do anything to it except for the normal cleaning when I changed his diaper. No gauze/cotton balls and no vaseline. That was really nice and the thing came off just after I got home from the hospital (I was in there for 12 days and William was in there for 10 for antibiotics thanks to my placenta becoming infected and him getting sepsis).

Well just last week I started noticing that the skin on William's penis was coming back over the head so much so that you could barely see the head. I didn't think anything of it just checked things by pulling the skin back and wiping off the white stuff which was dead skin. I mean, common sense, right?

After I mentioned it to my mom she was talking about it at work with a co-worker who has a 5-year-old boy and she found out that quite a few doctors are forgetting to tell new moms to boys to pull the skin back and clean the head after things heal. That not doing so could result in the skin attaching as if the circumcision never took place.

If that happens and is caught a bit early, the skin just gets pulled back by the doctor, which hurts the baby and the poor thing is crying in pain. If it's not caught early then pretty much the whole thing has to be done over again.

My mom's co-worker had to take her son to the doctor for it and the doctor had to get scissors in and cut the skin back. The boy still has pain from it. My oldest sister just had to deal with this, too. Her little boy is a month younger than my son and she said the doctor had to pull the skin back already.

They say clean it every diaper change but I'm afraid of irritating it from the constant wiping around such sensitive skin. So I just pull the skin back every diaper change and clean it about every other or every three changes.

So were you told about it? If not did you have to deal with the skin attaching or not?

[Momof4Boyz]

A properly done circumcision won't have skin that needs to be pulled back however, some doctors are now practicing "loose cuts" which leave extra skin that does require being pulled back and like you said if it isn't, it will fuse back on and basically become a uncirc'd penis again. Very few parents are told about this (I didn't learn until after the fact). Since the skin is fused differently than it would be if it were just natural foreskin as pre-teens/teens/adults they could have problems with pain during erections ect because the skin doesn't naturally pull back like it would if they were not circumcised. My son's circ was labelled as botched (a complete skin bridge) because this is basically what happened to him. He looks uncirc'd and that's how we treat it. A few weeks ago I noticed his penis was all bloody when he was using the potty and after further examination I could see that the skin is starting to peel back a bit on it's own (our doctor said if we were lucky this would happen) however, only a small part did so whether the rest will or not we don't know. And what could happen is some parts may peel off while others don't so he could end up with a bunch of skin bridges, which may or may not cause problems. We were offered to have it fixed but after doing a lot of research and my doctors recommendation I've decided that it's not worth it. As if they didn't go through enough pain once, I certainly wasn't going to subject him to it again. If he has problems as an adult it's something that can be handled then and since he'll be old enough to understand and speak for himself the proceedure can be done more safely and while properly anesthetized. I've spent 2 1/2 years researching everything I can about circumcision and it's completely changed my mind, if I had it to do over all of my boys would be intact, but only my youngest is. Care for an intact penis is much much easier.

To avoid it from fusing, instead of wiping it clean everytime (because I would think that would cause irritation) I would continue to put vaseline on it for a few weeks at least.