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

it was you, soreeyes. DL responded because she thought it was talking about her.

To all intents and purposes cleanandfresh was a "newbie". Why, therefore, would you expect her OP to be written in perfect MN speak?

I'm a "newbie" too and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Aitch for making clear the procedure for dealing with suspected trolls/dodgy posters, ie report straight to MNHQ and do not engage further. See, I know more than some "old hands" already! I also extend my gratitude to cleanandfresh for a thread which has clearly shown me the MNers I'm likely to be at odds with. Me being ancient and having learned not to jump to hasty conclusions, innocent until proved guilty and all that old fashioned, good old British nonsense.

For goodness sake, those that owe the OP an apology just blardy well apologise and stop all this "please miss, it was because of xyz" nonsense. For my part, things did get rather heated and if I swore at anyone or abused them, I apologise, unreservedly. There is no excuse, however incensed one may be for sheer bad manners. I am old enough to know better and will try harder in the future.

What is wrong with you people. Utterly bizarre.

I'm sure what you mean to say is "sorry OP, I was wrong, I behaved badly, I made rude, unpleasant accusations when what I should have done is contact MNHQ quietly off the thread"

But somehow it's all coming out "well it's still your fault OP because your post made me suspicious".

Would any of you except a load of bollocks like that from your children?

OP I havn't time to read the 16 pages, but I just wanted to recommend johnsons top to toe wash for cleaning her.

my friend recommended it to me for this sort of thing. my DD (3) is prone to UTI if she isnt clean, she has one now because she decided to wipe herself after a poo instead of asking us to help.

you can put it in the bath or what i do is put some into a sponge and kind of froth it up with plenty of water and i make sure that she washes herself thoroughly then sits to rinse. because it isnt soap, it is safe to use in this way.

hope it helps.

HAving read right through, I'd like to offer an apology to Cleanandfresh for thinking she was a perv.

And also to say I feel the same as Llareggub, Winnybella and DandyLioness wrt the reasons the OP struck me as nothing more than a hodge podge of terms for girls' private parts all lumped together as one big convenient magnet for parties whose interest in such matters has nothing to do with the cleanliness of small children.

I don't think the 'would you accept that from your children' standard applies here. There are individuals trawling the net for fora where small children are discussed and I think it behoves us to be aware of the potential for pretty much anyone to join a discussion for their own purposes, and avoid peppering an OP with a lot of different terms for a child's privates that might come up as responses to a search.

A simple wording of the question along the lines of soap or no soap would have elicited the short and sensible answers needed (and which were given). Mumsnet discussions appear as results on even an ordinary google search, not even advanced, depending on the search terms. You do not know who else is out there keeping track of information you share on this site.

Am sitting here debating with myself whether to post this or just forget about it. Decided to post.

also, make sure that she wipes herself thoroughly with paper after a wee to get it dry, we had a problem with this too, and had to teach her again. i think its when they become more independent about going to the loo that these problems start. (sorry if patronising, just that i have recently had to deal with similar, my mate had to tell me)

I've looked once again at the OP and can't see anything wrong with it. I don't think it 'behoves' c&f to have worded it without the terms for female genitalia to avoid suspicion, or interest from salacious googlers, any more than it behoves women in the street to cover up to avoid unwanted attention from men.

Gentle soap. Like Top to Toe wash, or Simple, or Johnson's baby soap. I understand why you've worried about using it - but it's clear from what you're saying that no soap is not doing the job.

Just use a baby sponge, gently, front to back.

gobsmacked by the troll hunting, this is why some of us so rarely bother posting. I'm sadened at the inability of some individuals, who made offensive or assumptive comments, to actually appologise to the OP. I want to reasure any new members that actually fot the most part mumsnet isn't the horrendous place it might appear from this thread :(

'light, bubbly and pleasant' were the words that c&f used, but i understood them to be in relation to the tone of the discussion she wished to have with her daughter, certainly not a description of the cleanliness of her daughter's genitals.

I think what's unusual about this thread is that it's a classic flaming where every response offered by the op to defend themselves gets further picked apart and yet despite being refuted by mn and a very well known poster, it just hasn't gone away. C&f, I saw nothing wrong with your op at the time, and wish I'd spoken out too. I also agree that you are owed unreserved apologies without the attached justifications for the way you were responded to.

Eleison, the OP herself stated that she had written and rewritten her post several times. Clearly there was a concern there about wording, and possibly about salacious googling.

You can make your own decision about yourself and how much you share of yourself here or elsewhere but the (very detailed) question was about another person, a child.

Dandy, I think the point thelibster was trying to make was that, at the beginning, the op appeared to be a newbie.

Thanks GDBD it's so nice when someone reads what they see rather than what think/would like to think they see!

OH FGS

SHUT UP, ALL OF YOU

Aaaah. That's better

OH FGS

SHUT UP, ALL OF YOU

Aaaah. That's better

oops, connection problems

mathanxiety, that isn't an apology. "I'm sorry I thought you were a perve but really it's your own fault". Pathetic.

Fuck me, you lot. I mean, not really, obviously.

Faced with the revelation (and it was hardly a revelation) that you made a mistake, you're still justifying yourselves, and by doing so you're attacking the OP's posting style and choices.

she said in her OP that she was uncomfortable with the whole topic, having been brought up to be so. And some of you leaped to conclusions, and that was bad enough, but having been told you were wrong are you seriously saying that it's more important to defend yourselves than to apologise to a concerned mother who has been called a fucking paedophile here?

I don't know, maybe you don't know how inciredbly hurtful that is. Trust me, it really is. I said to someone on another forum recently, who was concerned about weaning her toddler, that weaning mine was actually nice because now I'm comfortable around her when half-dressed (it's summer in Austraila here) and don't worry about being asked for milk.

That got picked up as me 'initiating breast play' and 'looking for excuses to be naked around my child' and it was fairly light hearted but fuck, it was the most hurtful thing that's ever been levelled at me. For weeks after that I seriously restricted my interaction with my not-even-two-year-old daughter, for fear that maybe i'd actually crossed a line. Our nice morning snuggles, gone.

It might be a throw away line to some people. But it's an incredibly painful thing for a good mum to be accused of.

If you did so accuse, maybe think over and above your own sore ego and actually properly apologise to the victim here; the OP.

Tortoise :( I hope you've got your snuggling mojo back now.

Tortoise- I'm sorry the ridiculous opinions of others wrt the state of undress vis a vis your toddler hurt you so much that you decided to refrain from snuggling with your DD- but, frankly, why would you give them so much weight, I don't know. I think you'll find in any paediatric literature, or forget it, you'll find that a majority of people in RL are sensible when it comes to nakedness around your small child. While the comments you got there were undeniably stupid, I don't know why would you take them to heart so much, tbh.

Wrt the supposedly grudging apologies the OP got here: a lot of people got called wankers and fuckers with perverted minds of their own. They got accused of leading a witch hunt because someone dared to mention girl's genitals.

They try to defend themselves and say that it wasn't so. That's all.

God Tortoise, how unreasonable of you to have sensitivities that winnybella can't empathise with.

I've had enough of this now, it's a bag o'shite.

Wow.

I was having the exact same problem with my DD (6) since last week and we couldn't go to our Dr cos we were on holiday overseas and I'd wanted to post about it. Luckily I didn't. I suppose at the very least I would be labelled an ignorant woman or negligent mother. Then I saw this thread. Which has been a bit confusing!

I suspected it was some sort of fungal infection due to dd's bits not being cleaned properly because we weren't at home and not in familiar surroundings, and also we were out and about a lot the whole day. But I wasn't sure, partly because she has a medical condition and takes lots of drugs so I was worried if it might be a side-effect from one of them. Plus her bits weren't red or itchy. Just lots of whitish discharge.

Anyway, we're back from holiday now, and have just gone to the Dr's and he looked at it, and he said it was fungus, altho he was a tad surprised it was not itchy, and he said it was very common and to apply Nizoral cream twice a day until it clears, and not to use the cream for more than a week. We see him again next Monday.

FFS is this still going on?
Fucking shameful.

OP, if you're still reading, FWIW I often have the same dilemma. It isn't obvious how to wash a child's bits. In my case, my mother never touched us, so I have nothing to go on. (I don't mean sexually, I mean she was not at all tactile. Her mother was worse. My mum was once in hospital for 6 months and she never visited her once. She was 6yo.)

My DD is v. sensitive to detergent, so she has a plain bath with no bubbles and might wipe with a flannel.
I wouldn't do it myself, and haven't since she was about 3 or 4.