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hi, i just joined this tribe and i apologize if this is not the right place for this post.
so, my son will be four next week. about six months ago, his papa (we are not together any longer) tells me that he took our son to the doctor and was prescribed this white cream to apply on his red penis. at this time, he was advised to start pulling back the foreskin everyday to help with the retracting process. papa was circumcised after being birthed and is new to this world of intact penises as i am. i did not know to retract our son's penis so it has been happening half the week (we have joint custody).
on tuesday, my son went to the hospital with his papa and it was discovered he has an infection under his foreskin. it looks like a hard, white bump like an absess. he was told to buy polysporin and apply it twice a day until an uroligist (sp?) appointment is made. this doctor at the hospital did not know what it was, only saying it is an infection. my son's papa called me frantic saying the infection is because the right side of his foreskin does not retract fully and that is why he has the infection... that he will keep getting infections until he has to be circumcised.
while waiting for the uroligist appointment, i am trying to research as much as i can. i have this great fear that they will push having him circumcised as the 'easy' solution. in the meantime, i am reluctantly putting the polysporin on his penis (i like the natural route and am not a fan of antibiotics) and putting drops of black tea from a steeped tea bag on the foreskin (friend recommended this for soothing and help with infection).
i am asking for any support around helping the infection and info that i can take with me to the doctor's appointment.
thank you!
so, my son will be four next week. about six months ago, his papa (we are not together any longer) tells me that he took our son to the doctor and was prescribed this white cream to apply on his red penis. at this time, he was advised to start pulling back the foreskin everyday to help with the retracting process. papa was circumcised after being birthed and is new to this world of intact penises as i am. i did not know to retract our son's penis so it has been happening half the week (we have joint custody).
on tuesday, my son went to the hospital with his papa and it was discovered he has an infection under his foreskin. it looks like a hard, white bump like an absess. he was told to buy polysporin and apply it twice a day until an uroligist (sp?) appointment is made. this doctor at the hospital did not know what it was, only saying it is an infection. my son's papa called me frantic saying the infection is because the right side of his foreskin does not retract fully and that is why he has the infection... that he will keep getting infections until he has to be circumcised.
while waiting for the uroligist appointment, i am trying to research as much as i can. i have this great fear that they will push having him circumcised as the 'easy' solution. in the meantime, i am reluctantly putting the polysporin on his penis (i like the natural route and am not a fan of antibiotics) and putting drops of black tea from a steeped tea bag on the foreskin (friend recommended this for soothing and help with infection).
i am asking for any support around helping the infection and info that i can take with me to the doctor's appointment.
thank you!
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Re: needing some support for my son
Thu, July 5, 2007 - 11:01 AM*******Anyone who recommends any kind of retraction is NOT up to date on their information. *******
It is more harmful than helpful, period.
Here's the best resource I know for support for your kind of question:
www.mothering.com/discussio...isplay.php
Please check it out ASAP and you'll get lots of info and support!
(My guy is little, and hasn't had any problems, so I have no personal experience to offer.) -
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Re: needing some support for my son
Thu, July 5, 2007 - 3:26 PMthank you so much! -
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Re: needing some support for my son
Fri, July 6, 2007 - 6:42 AMYou're so welcome! I sure hope he feels better soon.
Please let us know how it all works out.
Unfortunately, keeping a baby intact is just the beginning of years of having to protect him from uninformed people.
We end up having to know more about genital health than pediatricians, who were likely mutilated themselves, who still think full, loose retraction should be the (forced) norm from the beginning.
The fact is,
when boys are born, the foreskin is completely fused to the glans. To separate the two in one day is like tearing off an entire fingernail (one that wraps around the tip entirely, and in this case, *both* parts are awash in nerve endings).
A lot of people don't know this.
So the foreskin and glans are fused together in the early years, which protects that whole area from getting mucked up with poop in the diaper and such, and actually protects against UTIs and other infection.
The two separate from each other verrrry gradually, with help from the little guy who is always happy to tug on it, roll it around, and rub it (we all know how that goes). He knows when it hurts, so he's not going to force the process the way a "helper" will. It is completely normal for the foreskin to not entirely retract until a boy is 6-7-8 or more years old! It's never useful to rush it. Even if a boy needs a catheter for any reason, there are ways to collect urine that are not invasive, and require NO retraction at all. (see the Mothering.com link above)
Those who argue that circumcision protects against infection is ignoring the fact that infections result from meddling doctors who force it back, tearing the connective tissues in one swoop, which then heal back together. It's the repeated tearing and healing that sets up little guys for infection.
Parents used to be taught to peel back the foreskin and clean the whole area with alcohol on a swab during diaper changes!!! Can you imagine the pain and misery for those little guys? followed by scarring and infection... They'd have been better off just losing the thing in the first place, frankly, with years of torture ahead of them instead. It wasn't hard to convince that generation of parents in this horrible context that circumcision is "cleaner," "looks nicer" and "protects from infection."
Best of luck to you! -
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Re: needing some support for my son
Fri, July 6, 2007 - 8:19 PMthanks again, i will let you know how the specialist appointment goes. :) when i was at the pharmacy last week, i asked the pharmacist what to put on my son's infection and he actually told me the same thing... rubbing alcohol! i could not believe it. i may not know a lot about the penis and penis care but i would never put alcohol on it! -
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Re: needing some support for my son
Fri, July 6, 2007 - 11:02 PMMine was almost completely retractile when I was taught to wash it myself when I was less than 3 years old, and it had been so retractile that
somehow my mother was warned to keep it from starting to adhere rather than persuading it to separate. This sort of messed things up for my younger brother, who wasn't so loose. I was always sure to pull the thing in the tub, but my brother didn't usually bother. Maybe his skin started to re-adhere because he wasn't pulling it, or maybe he wasn't pulling it because he didn't like the feeling because he wasn't loose to begin with. I don't really know. I wish my parents had known better than to keep fussing with him and praising me for something that was really no big deal to me at all. On top of all this, my older brother was snipped at birth, so there was the constant admonition of what might happen if we didn't pull back. My father didn't seem to remember much of his early childhood, so he was no help. The whole thing seems absurd in retrospect. I'm pretty sure my mother still believes what the doctor told her about there being a problem with my brother's penis because it would not unpeel on its own the very day he was born. What a bunch of crap. Last time I discussed it with him, my brother assured me his penis is just fine and always has been.
Foreskins don't cause infection.
Infectants cause infection, and they get in there if you tear the adhesions.
It's not rocket science, and I wish more doctors could have wrapped their brains around this a long time ago. -
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Re: needing some support for my son
Sat, July 7, 2007 - 3:53 AMJeannine Parvati, my late friend who wrote prolifically on non-medical midwifery, genital integrity, prenatal yoga, and plenty of other topics related to holostic family life, , once marched in an anti-circ rally with a sign that says Nature Makes Perfect babies, and I think that sums it up well.
I want to thank Orange for great, factual and personal men's health info here. great to hear men and women talking about their bodies and what they have learne by living consciously in them.
I've been saying for years that any kind of really useful "sex education" has to include honest talk about human variation (for example, how some little boys have loose, stretchy foreskins and soem have tighter ones at the same age, even within a family) by the people who actually experience it.
I learned about periods and about condoms in junior high school. but neither the fledgling sex ed programs at school, which were pretty wimpy, or my liberal but highly anxious parents (with whom ;d have major blowups around sexuality within a couple years...) taught me, or anyone I know, about the ways that a girl's vulva change with sexual maturation, or that as part of the process they
often feel itchy when they grow. I honestly thought, and i was one of the better informed ones, that my labia were getting larger because I'd rubbed at them when they got itchy.
a freind whose whose two boys were/are intact (they are grown men now) told me thathere's "a hormone" that boys the family MD said boys secrete "a hormone" around age 4 or so (guess you were on the early side Orange) that helps loosen the skin around then...I'm pretty well versed in himan physiology but hadnt heard of this and asked my friend, who's also a holostic health amateur and mostly self-trained nature biologist, if he knew what hormone this was...he didn't. and I haven't found it in the literature yet...does anyone know???
WHY don't they teach this stuff? WHY are we so ignorant about our bodies??? rhetorical questions I know; I'm just SOO glad to see women and men working together to change it...
I should go back to sleep, got two biology quizzes to take in the morning and it;s amost four now...woke up and logged in when I couldn't sleep... -
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Re: needing some support for my son
Sat, July 7, 2007 - 12:37 PM>said boys secrete "a hormone" around age 4 or so
My guess is that this would in some way relate to changes of body chemistry associated with loss of lactose tolerance in people who
are born tolerant and then become intolerant (most, wordlwide, that is).
It's about at this same age that the baby teeth are basically done forming and the body begins developing chemical channels to synthesize some amino acids that it previously could not.
There are important psychological changes that happen at about that age which might be explicable by brain chemistry. For one thing,
most people can't really remember anything before about that age. I have at least a few crystal-clear memories back to at least age 2,
so the 'early hormone' thing would seem to make sense in that way.
The hormone might be DHEA or some precursor/metabolite thereof, but just a guess, really. -
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Re: needing some support for my son
Sun, July 8, 2007 - 6:54 AMAs for the hormone idea, I was talking with a pediatrician friend about various young boys' personalities (at a party) and she said that boys' testosterone levels are pretty low until they are around three, and I *think* it was around three and four that she said they really spike up, which can help us understand why some boys start acting more macho around this age. She said they're high for a while, then mellow out until puberty.
I wonder what else is happening chemically around that age, and why?
I've been all over the 'net looking for some nice straightforward graphs of hormone patterns, with no luck.
Anyone here a better GoodSearcher than me?
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Re: needing some support for my son
Sat, July 7, 2007 - 3:12 PMthanks for sharing your family story. i have recognized the possibility of praising my son over this and i don't want that.
i agree with you about the infection. it is definitely not an infection. in my research, i think it is an adhesion as well. it is a small, white lump under the foreskin. i hope the uroligist isn't a circumcision pusher. my son's father is feeling bad. i am learning heaps. -
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Re: needing some support for my son
Sat, July 7, 2007 - 11:04 PM>my son's father is feeling bad.
Surely, there's no need to feel bad about sincerely trying to do what's best, is there?
To put the weight of a world of medical misinformation onto one of its hapless pawns is not really fair; especially if he has had the moral strength to reflect and reconsider things so well.
Any time in life we are able to accept that we've been getting something wrong, and to start doing better, we shouldn't kick ourselves; we should give ourselves a pat on the back. -
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Re: needing some support for my son
Sun, July 8, 2007 - 9:47 AMi agree, i keep telling him there is no need for blame. this is a time for acquiring knowledge and proceeding in the best way for the boy and his penis. i appreciate that this situation has opened my eyes to a world i virtually know nothing about. i have learned so much in the past week. blaming only makes one stuck.
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Re: needing some support for my son
Sat, July 7, 2007 - 4:11 AMokay, one more response. I don;t have sons so my personal experience is limited but i;ve heard the following often work wonders to soothe irritated little boys' penises...
a) try adding a little baking soda to his bathwater....it's amphoteric (can work as a weaki acid as wella s a weak base) ..fiends swear by this
b) herbal powders or soaks also for the tub...y a combination of powdered oregon grape root (a substitute for goldenseal, which is an at-risk wild herb that I try not to purchase), slippery elm powder, and comfrey root or leaf powder and/or marshmallow root powder. herbs can be powdered in a clen blender or coffee grinder.
c) since there's some infection already, try echinacea root. I;d recommend it orally in a glycerin suspension for a young child. you can try it with the soak herbs as above, but echinacea, when it's strong enough to work, produces a curious tingling sensation in the mouth...and probably ion the genitals too, which might be a little weird for a 4 year old.
d) my own personal feeling, based partly on experience on philosophy, and partly is that the hands of adults do NOT belong on or in the genitals of children if it's at all avoidable once they are out of diapers, and I strongly recommend against appliyng any kinds of creams, ointments, powders, etc "by hand" unless the child wants, adn is ready to, to rub them on himself. some years back, someone wrote to me about a cream that had been prescribed for a little girl, also abot 4 years old who had vaginal/labial adhesions. my friends and I agreed that not only did using the estrogen product this doctor recommended seem physiologically inappropriate, but that,sut as with boys with clingy skins, it would probably loosen up over time and unless she was old enogh for menstruation or sex with another person, what difference did it make? I jsut found the idea of an adult rubbing anthing,e ven benign botanical products,all over the genitals of a child highly invasive...I know that at that age I would ahve felt it as a form of sexual invasion, though I didn;t know words like that, if either of my parents, or anyone else, had touched me like that! (I had a rather intrusive mother anyway, so I may be eceptionally sensitive to this sort of thing.) I just think there are too many ways that een well emaning parents and other adults invade the developing sexuality of children..circumcision is onoy one of many ways we have of messing with this. (spanking butts is another one...) -
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Re: needing some support for my son
Sat, July 7, 2007 - 3:23 PMthanks judith! great two posts, lots for me to think about. :) i have been giving him echinacea and vitamin C for the infection but i really don't think it is an infection. baking soda in the bath sounds great. -
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Re: needing some support for my son
Sun, July 8, 2007 - 6:59 AM"Any time in life we are able to accept that we've been getting something wrong,
and to start doing better, we shouldn't kick ourselves;
we should give ourselves a pat on the back." -Orange
Right on.
kelli,
is your ex committed to keeping your guy intact?
When you said you hope the urologist isn't a circ pusher... I wonder, will you be at the appointment?
Or can you trust your ex to stand firm?
I mean, my optometrist doesn't try to cut off my eyelids when I get conjunctivitis... -
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Re: needing some support for my son
Sun, July 8, 2007 - 9:57 AMi have stated i will be at the appointment and to let me know when it is. my ex is a funny guy... maybe this is a typical response for a lot but, he is normally very strong and firm in his beliefs but when it comes to our son and him being physically sick, he turns into this mess who can't deal. he feels strongly that our son shouldn't be circumcised but then he makes comments to me saying maybe circumcision is the right answer (he thinks it is an infection and it will keep reoccurring and maybe circumcision is the bright shining answer for it all to stop). my ex is actually going to school to become a chinese doctor so him pushing the polysporin threw me for a loop. but again, he just doesn't want our son to suffer so he makes allowances that he normally wouldn't. i should send him a video of a baby getting circumcised to remind him what the painful procedure is! -
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Re: needing some support for my son
Mon, July 9, 2007 - 6:00 PMI thought I;d replied to this but I don't see it...so here goes again...
if your child's dad is big on traditional Chinese medicine (or classical Chinese medicine or something along those lines), maybe papa-san can take child-chan to a pracitioner who will use herbs, diet, and/or acupuncture and massage to help treat the little guy's owies???
I think most of us are trained to "do" something when someone" especially a child or an animal or a dependent person of any age. letting nature fix it is not in our general culture of health and healing, though it used tto be, in the old horse-and-buggy days (when doctors had much more important things to do than circumcisions, for example, think of that , "it'll heal with tincture of time."
anyway, this sounds promising, and there is probably someone he knows, especially if he is studying Chinese medicine himself, who works a lot with children and reproductive health. maybe there is a clinic doing Chinese medicine associated with his school, or some other health sciences organization near where you live?
in the larger picture of things, maybe this cultural need to circumcise is based on our general impatience with natural processes...too man parents and health professionals don;t know about being patient with how a skin eventually loosen, a little boy will eventually learn to wash himself, and minor adhesions will eventuallyresolve... -
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Re: needing some support for my son
Wed, July 11, 2007 - 9:19 PMyes, my ex is looking into getting one of his profs to look at and treat the boy's penis. she is on holidays right now but has said soon a meet-up with happen. i feel relieved because he will listen to his prof who he respects greatly over the specialist and potentially bad advice. :) -
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Re: needing some support for my son
Thu, July 12, 2007 - 5:48 AMGreat! Sounds like the perfect solution. -
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
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Re: Any Update?
Tue, July 31, 2007 - 2:02 PMthe adhesion is almost gone! the ex and i haven't done anything and when the boy retracts his penis, i encourage him not to so another adhesion doesn't potentially evolve. an appointment was made to see an urologist (?) in october. i am feeling so much better after researching and educating myself with supports through friends and online.
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