Question regarding my ped and care of uncircumsized son

[deborah_r]

I was reading a thread in this forum about circumcism and it got me wondering. My son is not circumsized. At our 2 month visit, the ped retracted the foreskin and we found lots of dead skin in there - it wasn't gross or a weird color or anything, but there was a lot of it. I asked wasn't I NOT supposed to retract it for cleaning yet (I was feeling a little stupid for not knowing that all that dead skin was in there!) and she said he had what is called an "auto-circumcision" and that it is OK for me to retract the foreskin when I do his baths and clean in there.

Has anyone heard of this? I'm afraid of causing an infection or irritation by messing around under there...

[deborah_r]

Just want to bump this back to the top once more, and see if anyone has any words of wisdom for me.

Thanks

[dogmom]

After looking it up I found out auto circumcism is when the foreskin naturally retracts permanently on its own, thus making it look like a cicumcised penis. My understanding, like yours, is that you do not retract the foreskin fully until it loosens on its own. In fact, apparently it is normal for some boys foreskin not to loosen for years, while others do so in weeks or months. Some reading I did suggested part of the problem was since it was so automatic for so many years in this country to do circumcison pediatricians didn't know this and would do surgery on some toddlers who didn't need it. Maybe your pediatrician was using the term autocircumcism to describe the natural separation that happens between the foreskin and penis. The dead skin is natural, its called smegma, it just tends to gross us out because we don't know what it is.

Having said that, my family practioner does recommend putting a little tenson the the foreskin when I bathe my DS occasionally. He emphasized not forcing anything. Maybe your pediatrician examined him and realized that she didn't have to force it? Although all the hygiene guidelines I could find were for older boys, I guess as long as your son doesn't show any irratation from reacting the foreskin it would be safe to gently clean the glans. I just wouldn't use a lot of soap and/or scrub so not to irratate the skin. I guess if it was my son I wouldn't do it every day either. You can always call your pediatrician back if you have questions.

Hope this wasn't too graphic for anyone. I did find it interesting that I had to search under uncircumcised instead of intact to get information.

[Rachels]

I've read that you should never forcefully retract the foreskin.

-Rachel
Mom to Abigail Rose
5/18/02

[gour0]

Here's a link.


http://www.cirp.org/pages/parents/peron1/

[deborah_r]

Thanks so much for all of your replies! I had found some stuff about circ. on the internet, but wasn't able to ind anything specific to my problem.

Thanks again - I really appreciate it!