It's a loose circumcision

[tammylsmith]

Ok, so my 18 month nephew is circ'd, but he has a very loose circ, from my understanding (haven't changed his diaper) and MIL says his penis looks pretty similar to my son's. I have seen loose circ's discussed on this board, and am wondering a few things aloud...

- of course, circ (RIC) is absolutely not necessary and I would love to see the practice come to an abrupt end, but does anyone else think that doctors are trending towards leaving more foreskin? I realize this causes many problems, but do you think the info on benefits of foreskin are affecting their practice at all and influencing how much they cut?

-WHY on earth would anybody with a boy who has a loose circ then try to even imagine that an intact boy is dirty? They have the same folds of skin, the same mucosa membrane (according to some doctors, harboring STDS and nasties) and are missing the part designed to keep the penis clean during the diaper years

Am I missing anything here? Not that any RIC circ has benefits, but this is even going against the imaginary health benefits that many people use!

[bandgeek]

All very good points.  I brought that up to someone who used the "it's cleaner" argument with me, but then said her son still had a lot of foreskin left over.  I didn't even think about pointing out that he was probably MORE likely to get stuff up there since he's missing the ridged band.  Oh well.

You could certainly point this out when attempting to educate folks on it.  Although there are many parents who instruct the doctor to not do a loose circ, and probably even more parents who take their kids back to be done a second time because "the doctor didn't do it right".  I hear of that very often.  But then you can just go back to the painful erections argument.

There's no "right" way to do a circ.  No matter what "style" the doctor does, the boy is being harmed.

[Lauren82]

I have mostly seen what I guess you could refer to as tight circumcision with my own two eyeballs. I'm going to assume that the method used to circumcise *may* have something to do with it.

The problem with "loose circumcisions" are many. Adhesions tend to form so mothers are instructed to rip the foreskin at every diaper change. Some mothers don't bother with that and deem the circumcision done incorrectly and take baby boy in for round two which removes even MORE of his important foreskin.

[AnnieNimIty]

ok, bear with me here. I was reading on a restoration site ( my husband asked me to do some research for him while he was at work). The site talked about "growers" and "show-ers". Man A's penis may look 3.5 inches but grows to say 8 inches when erect. Man B's penis may look 5 inches long, but grows to 8 inches when fully erect.

Because a Dr. can't tell how much to leave to keep the pulling of surrounding skin and the scrotum they are making them looser to prevent issues like this that show when the man hits puberty.

Which is just another reason to let the male make that decision for himself as an adult.

[Treece]

Exactly, let the boy grow and then he can decide for himself.