'Fused' vagina in one year old

[KateLB]

Help! Has anyone's baby had 'fused' vaginal lips? I'm in Spain and having problems with understanding what's just happened to my baby. (My spanish is so-so at the best of times and when it gets technical I'm lost!) At my daughter's one year check up, the doctor said one of her inner lips was 'fused' and that they could sort it out on the spot. As I'm sure you can understand I was not happy at the thought of anyone doing anything to her and felt pretty upset and defensive. I asked if it was necessary and teh doc said it could lead to infections if it wasn't opened, so I said OK thinking they'd give her a painkiller or something. Two seconds later my baby was screaming with blood everywhere. I feel just awful and very bewildered. I hope this is just a routine procedure. My baby is fine now, but I still feel terrible about it ... Has anyone experienced this in the UK? I am not at all current on what's normal in infant genito-urinary appearance and thought she looked fine. Help! Any thoughts or experience of similar procedures would be a real comfort. Thanks everyone. By the way, what does DD1 etc mean?

[hmb]

It is not that uncommon. Sometimes it will separate on its own with time, but sometimes it does need treatment. it sometimes neds minor surgery, or sometimes an oestrogen cream is used for a very short period of time. I've no direct experience of the surgery. HTH.
Oh, DD is darling daughter, Ds darling son etc.

[smartie]

Kate, your experience sounds horrendous I can appreciate how you must be feeling. I don't have any experience in this area to be able to offer any real support, but do feel very sure that a local anesthetic cream would have been used by a British GP.

Can you request a 2nd opinion/see another GP? Also enquire about the importance of pain relief at this age. I do know that religious circumcissions carried out on very young, days/weeks old, boys are done (maybe not always) without pain relief albiet a sip of red wine!

[zebra]

Gawd, this sounds awful. I keep thinking DD has never been examined for this problem, and likely never will be.

[jasper]

Kate LB what did they do to your dd to "sort " the problem?

[sml2]

KateLB
I've heard of a baby who had this at birth, it sorted itself out by about 9 months old, but the doctor (in the UK) prescribed some female hormone cream to rub onto the area. I don't know how much this helped.

[Bubblesmum]

Hi, my daughter had/has this. Again was spotted by Dr at about one year old. She prescribed a female estrogen cream to be applied twice a day but said to only do it for a couple of weeks as too much of this can cause premature development (i.e. breast enlargement etc..). It opened back up but then fused again.. Dr has told us not to worry and only if really bad might it cause her problems perhaps with UTI's. At puberty the hormones will open it up again naturally. I've stopped worrying about it now.. I'd prefer to wait and see rather than continually applying estrogen and run into more problems. Dr also said surgery is an option but no rush. HTH.

[KateLB]

Thanks everyone - it's some consolation to know this isn't that unusual. Jasper - it all happened so fast, and from the blood, I can only assume that they manually 'opened' the fused lip. All rather horrible and I'm looking forward to talking to an English doctor about it. Anyway - thanks again. This is such a lifeline at the moment, and I'm glad to say that DD shows now signs of any long term effects.