Medical circumcision

[Iklboo]

It looks like 3 yr old DS will need to be circumcised as his foreskin is extremely tight and is not coming back at all - even with 'stretching' exercises.
Sorry to be utterly dense but how serious is the op and how long will he take to recover?

he is still very young for it to retract. It is adhered to the glans of the penis and should detach in it's own time, sometimes not until the boy is 10. Normal fiddling by your ds as he gets older usually sorts it out.

Who advised you to do 'stretching' exercises?

the younger the boy is the easier the op and quicker the recovery, however as furball says it is still too early to tell if it is def required for your ds

i would go and see an expert who could properly examine and assess your ds
so you can decide if it is better to get it done sooner or wait and see

Doc advised stretching exercises & referral for circumcision. We're taking DS back today for referral to hospital for their opinion. It doesn't seem to be causing him much trouble except he had a some soreness/redness/slight infextion last week which has now cleared up with bathing & savlon

DS1 is 4.5 I have no idea if his foreskin retracts.. should I have been checking?

general advice bythepowerofgreyskull is leave it alone

Stretching exercises?

Ds couldn't retract his foreskin when he was quite a bit older than that. I think he can now (he's 9) but I haven't checked.

Unless he's having repeated infections or pain there's no reason why the Dr needs to have an opinion on yr ds's foreskin.

phew!
in that case it seems a bit quick to suggest circumsiion surely?

DS2 had a bad infection recently.

My GP has told us to gentle retract his foreskin in the bath, when it is warm. He is 2.5 and he told us it should retract fully by about 7 or 8 and if it won't by then that's the time to consider options. A friend recently told me it was more like 11 or 12 but I haven't had a chance to follow it up, anyway, not an issue yet.

I was a bit at the GP and asked if I should have been doing this, and apologised that as a girl I had no idea at all about willy maintenance. He said there was no "should" about it but we did of course go straight home and check DS1's. His works.

I think three sounds very early to be giving up with stretching. I would ask for another opinion.

did the doc examine your ds? i would go to the referal and take their opinion as they can actually see the 'problem' if there is one

DS isa 4 and we have this problem. He's just had a bad infection where it was really hurting him to pee and his penis was swollen. He needed antibiotics and we've also been told by gp his foreskin is very tight and he may need a referral. I'd really like to avoid this but are there any alternatives if he keeps getting infections?

My ds1 had a medical circumcision for an incomplete foreskin. The operation took about half an hour and was done under general anaesthetic. It was jolly painful when he woke up, but the nurses used some sort of analgesic gel on it, and that worked like a dream for him.

He had it done when he was 4, and is now 15, so I have to confess that the details of his recovery are a little blurry, but suffice it to say that I don't remember him having any major problems or any more severe pain once we were discharged.

The operation was done as a daycase - and we would have been first on the operation list, if my dh hadn't given ds1 a drink of milk first thing in the morning - we were told he could have a drink of clear fluid at 6am, but dh chose to interpret that as milk, so ds1 had to wait for his op until midday rather than having it at 9am.

They used dissolvable sutures on the wound, so we didn't have to worry about getting the stitches taken out, which I think might have worried ds1.

For me, the worst part was seeing him anaesthatised - I was allowed to accompany him into the anaesthetic room. It's very different watching your child become unconscious in that way - not like going to sleep - and despite the fact that I'm an operating theatre nurse, and have seen countless patients anaesthatised, I still found this a bit upsetting.

Far too early to say that he'll need to be circumcised. We had exactly this with ds1 - the stretching excercises took several years to work but they did eventually! Consultant said as long as it was sorted out well before puberty then circumcision wouldn't be necessary.

did he get many infections fortyplus?

By the way...
He had to pull back on his foreskin every day after soaking in the bath.

One day there was a huge yelp and he was crying his eyes out. I ran up to see what was wrong and he showed me this gleaming purple knob - now I know where the expression comes from!

I can't remember how old he was at the time, but I think about 8 or maybe 9.

Not loads but several times - on one occasion our gp squeezed out a load of stuff that looked like tagliatelle but smelt so bad that even now I'm retching at the thought!

Thinking back I'm ure that when he was 3 it hadn't detached at all. By about 5 my gp referred him to a consultant but it had a tiny area about 3 or 4mm long that had started to detach. He just had to go back to consultant once per year and each year the detached 'line' extended by less than a mm as far as I could tell. But then it leapt out all at once! Honestly... it practically glowed it looked like some newborn thing! grin]

Got to go out now so if you need to ask me anything else I'll reply another day

As a girl with no brothers I am also very vague on winky maintenance.
We took DS to doctor because of soreness/mild infection. Dr noted that foreskin could not be pulled back at all to expose the glans and suggested the gentle stretching exercises but these are v painful for DS and obvisously we've stopped.
Dr suggested that he might need to be circumcised after examining him and that he could offer us a referral if stretching didn't work.
(ABSOLUTELY NON-RACIST COMMENT ALERT) - I was wondering if it was becuase Dr is muslim and circumsisions are routine in their religion he thought maybe it was a good way to help/fix DS?

our gp [white female ] has also suggested the possible need for circumcision and i really want to avoid it.

Iklboo - IMHO I'd leave it and see what happens

ruty - have a read of this page You might find it some use?

Iklboo - get him to stretch the foreskin back himself... warm bath... gently pulling it back and forth... ds2 was reasonably enthusiastic about it once he got the hang of it!

interesting furball thanks. we'll see if ds lets me go near it!

DH took him back yesterday and was given a referral letter
Mind you - it is only for a referral. I'm hoping now consultant will say that nothing needs to be done for now.
For the record asked DSD how his winky was this morning.
"It's better mummy look" and began to roll it between his hands like he was rolling a sausage (well Is uppose he was . "Now it looks like a cheese!"

My son was treated with a strong steroid cream when he was about 7 (after having tried exercises with creams/oil) which worked wonders after a week or so. No more ballooning etc. Doctors seem concerned if the wee coming out is in wide spray - this was not my son. If I remember correctly, surgery is not considered till 10 + (ie just before erections happen) and circumscision is the last resort - there are other surgery options (see fab link in the post above). If my son's foreskin becomes tight again, he will need more steroid cream and also was said that erections may help loosen the skin again - surgery would not be considered until lots had been tried. May be genetic too - not sure you can ask all in the family about this! Boys do fiddle a lot with their willies so this helps once you have loosened it at first and, yes, boys need reassurance when they first see what has been hidden! Reassure boys a lot and make sure they do not feel something is wrong with them.

Hope this is not TMI!