Intimate hygiene in girls

[cleanandfresh]

Yeah I know crap title and I apologise in advance for "twee" terms BUT I am genuinely a bit confused about cleaning my little girl's "bits" (and I am calling them bits for brevity's sake rather than getting into labia major and minoria etc...)

So my girl is nearly 3 and she has a bath before bedtime most nights (except Fridays). I know that soap is not a good thing for the intimate regions so I don't get her to soap there but do remind her to "swish her twinkle" (yeah shoot me!) along with swishing her tummy and legs etc.

I have noticed these past few days that she has white, creamy deposits in the folds and around the top of her clitoral hood and wondered whether I should be trying to wash these away. She's been ferreting around this area occasionally and has said "look it's creamy" but it doesn't seem to bother her. The other day she was pretending to be a baby and have her nappy changed so I took the opportunity to get some cotton wool and try to really clean in this area but she really didn't like me doing it and I must admit it didn't feel right.

I guess I worry about thrush but I don't think it is and then I worry about messing about where I should just leave well alone. But then I worry about being too coy and maybe I should be actively encouraging her to "clean" there a bit more. I know on Mumsnet there is a small sector that think any female scent or secretions should be disinfected away and I don't want to fall into that trap - but I do want to keep my daughter healthy and instill a healthy, positive attitude towards her genitalia. I always use the words beautiful and fresh in relation to her body as in my own childhood I was very much given a negative impression of that area of my body.

Mothers of girls please help me out here

Aitch, I think calling people 'wankers' and 'thick' and 'fuckers' isn't allowed either, is it? Yet quite a few posters had no compunction in doing exactly that.

Yes I did. There was a comment I'm sure. I would have quoted it but am on my poxy phone and the thread is so long!

If I am wrong then great, because I would hate to think that people really think like this.

thanks again for the advice, bruxeur. i have asked for the one post where i said the word fucking to be removed, as promised.

it does seem to me that anyone who spoke in favour of C&F is being held to a much higher standard of behaviour, however, than those who were calling her a paedophile troll (whether directly or indirectly) the other night, the overwhelming majority of whom have read the MNHQ update and have felt no compunction to come back and do the decent thing in apologising. this is genuinely shocking to me and totally alters my view of MN.

Oh come on Aitch, you've engaged in plenty of troll debate in the past, so don't get too holier than thou on this.

no i haven't... what a peculiar thing to say. my opinion re trolls is that they are sad creatures who are best ignored, tbh. i am not bad at spotting them, though. in any case, the main point here is that cleanandfresh is not a troll and never was, and that could have been established by following the troll-hunting procedure as detailed at the top of every talk page on MN.

and anyway llaggerub, you have at least apologised after a fashion, as has winnybella and namey and shiney. it's the others i cannot get my head round.

oh yes, i make mistakes. and then i apologise to the person concerned, because i would be ashamed not to.

i can't understand what you lot expect the OP to do with your reams of weird half apologies...

just say sorry, made a mistake and that's it. next time report your concerns instead of flippant responses which imply the OP is inviting people to discuss children's genitalia to 'get off'. it's too harsh a judgement to make on an anonymous forum.

I replied to the OP on the night saying that I didn't really have a lot of advice as a mother of 2 boys but that I thought the OP had asked a valid question and that the responses were very harsh. I am so glad that the OP has been"accepeted" as a genuine poster. Quite a few people have mentioned the tone and vocabulary the the OP used in their post as evidence that they may not be genuine. I would genuinely like to know how others may have worded the post. I didn't see anything suspicious in it at all but as a fairly new MN I would appreciate advice on how to post so that I don't get subjucted to the hideous response that C&F had

subjected

don't let these histrionics affect how you word anything... if people pander to this nonsense and become paranoid about discussing issues or wording them 'correctly', mumsnet will become a much drier and less verbally rich place. problem is that in AIBU, everyone thinks it's OK to pile in and say any old shit. i've noticed that the tone of AIBU often extends into other topics, often because alot of people mainly hang around there.

it's a flippant and spiky tone which can be amusing or interesting but on threads about how to wash your child's bits, not appropriate.

oh do give it a rest, dandylioness. stop making this about me, this is about the way you all behaved and are now seekign to justify it. i do not troll hunt, never have. there is one person on MN who i believe habitually trolls these boards for responses and she is very well known indeed, there is no hunting required.

agree wholeheartedly with blinks.

Thanks blinks. I have only ever looked on MN and never posted until this thread. It really made me think about whether I would put a query on here as someone that people didn't "know" for fear of the really negative and actually quite nasty responses people get.

you probably get more reasoned responses during the day, soreeyes... less boozers.

well, no, i really am not making it about me at all, however i can see how it might read like that. here's what happens, let's say ten people all speak to you and so you respond to those people, because you are one voice and they are ten separate individuals it makes you appear more involved than you are.

this is exactly, of course, what happened with cleanandfresh on this thread. it's the 'drown the witch' principle in action. damned if you do respond, in her case a paedophile if she doesn't.

blink, thanks for your reply. I kind of got that from this thread but the problem being with 2 under 2's there's no chance of getting online until late in the evening, I'm normally here during baby feeding time only!

it wasn't actually. you don't have to justify yourself to me.

Sorry re-reading my post it sounds like I'm justifying to you but what I meant was that if I ever posted it would be at what would be seen as the "suspicious" times! Actually looking again, was it me or DadndyLioness you were talking to? God I'm crap at this!