What percentage of intact baby boys end up getting circed later in life in the U.S.? - Page 2

[tennisdude23]

Originally Posted by RealityCheck123 

You're right Brant. At the direction of my peds dr I would periodicly attempt to gently retract their foreskins in the bath, but you could tell by looking that it wasn't gonna happen. I was so uncomfortable doing it that the attempts were brief and without any forceing the issue, more like will it? nope. done. I couldn't stand it when the dr would try. i stopped trying myself and had the boys try on their own in the tub with instruction to stop if their was pain. The info I was getting at the time from the dr was that if their foreskins hadn't retracted by then (6 and 7) that they possibly never would. We tried steroid ointments, which in retrospect I wonder if that is what caused DS1's infection. Didn't even get a glimpse of the glans or meatus. Was sent to a urologist that reccomended immediate circumcision for both boys. It's so hard to know what's "normal" when you don't have a penis of your own to compare to and living in the society that we do. I said before that if I had a do-over I would have circ'd them as infants, but probably not. I just feel terrible that they had to be circ'd at the age they were and remember it. I have guilt, though my rational mind knows that my heart was in the right place when I left them intact as infants. I wanted them to make their own choice regarding their own bodies. Damned if you do, damned if you don't feeling. Truthfully, I think the whole experience was more traumatic for me then them. They are resiliant little boogers! At least the urologist did a good job. His stitches were micro-fine and healed without a visible scar.

That must have been a terrible experience.  Unfortunately, you seemed to have been given lots of bad advice.  Most boys cannot retract the foreskin at 6 and 7.  Gently retracting the foreskin from birth can actually exacerbate the problem, causing micro tears and damaging the tissue.  While this is unlikely to occur if it happens from time to time, constant manipulation and forcing back of the skin is contraindicated.  This is the reason why the best care for an intact penis is doing nothing at all.  The median age for retraction is 10 years old.  As far as I know, the steroid cream should only be used by teens and adults.  Phimosis is really a diagnosis for late teens/adulthood.  As long as a child can urinate, it's fine.   So, sorry for the experience, but it's highly unlikely that both boys needed to undergo a circumcision at the same time.  As the poster above me said, "the biggest problem that the average intact boy will have is that somebody THINKS he has a problem!"

[Cyllya]

Originally Posted by RealityCheck123 

I said before that if I had a do-over I would have circ'd them as infants, but probably not. I just feel terrible that they had to be circ'd at the age they were and remember it. I have guilt, though my rational mind knows that my heart was in the right place when I left them intact as infants. I wanted them to make their own choice regarding their own bodies. Damned if you do, damned if you don't feeling.

I don't think it causes them any problems to be able to remember the circumcision. I know from my own personal experience that you don't need to remember an event in order to be affected by it. And look at those studies that show how people are affected by CIO sleep training all the way into adulthood. I bet none of those adults actually remembered being feeling abandoned and helpless as babies, but it has still shaped their view of the world.

If circumcision is going to happen, the older the better.
 

[brant31]

Originally Posted by RealityCheck123 

The info I was getting at the time from the dr was that if their foreskins hadn't retracted by then (6 and 7) that they possibly never would. We tried steroid ointments, which in retrospect I wonder if that is what caused DS1's infection.

Sadly, this is one area that knowledge among the medical profession lags the knowledge that many parents have. At least they're starting to up the age a little... the advice used to be that your sons should be retractible by age 3, which caused untold angst among parents. That advice turned out to be rooted in a fundamental misreading, with frequent repeating, of a study done on Danish schoolboys many years ago. It is now largely understood that there's no "normal" and a tremendous variation in ages. Not only that, some boys are able to bare half the glans relatively quickly, but the more durable adhesions at the corona might not resolve completely on their own until 10 or more years later. That was sort of my case, and everything turned out fine. It's a challenge for intactivists to get the word out to parents and the medical profession that in most cases no determination can be made until at least puberty; phimosis is the normal condition in childhood, and the diagnoses of genuine preputial stenosis or frenulum breve can't be confirmed until adolescence, at least.

You sound like a great mom and your deep concern for the welfare of your sons is evident. I hope you'll keep up with the latest on this subject, and one day explain to your sons how and why it's important to keep their children intact and healthy.

[hakunangovi]

Reality,  Your heart WAS in the right place when you left them intact.  Sadly you were a victim of gross ignorance on the part of the medical profession. It happened to my son, and continues to happen every day.  I keep wondering when they will change what they teach in medical school.  The one small sliver to be thankful for is that our sons were given full anaesthetic, and had access to pain killers afterwards - infants get no relief and I am sure it affects their psyches for life.

The other issue that I want to point out is that if phimosis becomes a problem in an older child there is a myriad of treatments that do not require amputation of the foreskin. if you are interested check out:  www.cirp.org/library/treatment/phimosis  ,   www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2490/8/6  . Better still, print them out and go educate that urologist.  And here's one for the ped:  www.cirp.org/library/normal .

You sound like a great Mom - your boys are lucky to have you.
 

Originally Posted by RealityCheck123 

I said before that if I had a do-over I would have circ'd them as infants, but probably not. I just feel terrible that they had to be circ'd at the age they were and remember it. I have guilt, though my rational mind knows that my heart was in the right place when I left them intact as infants. I wanted them to make their own choice regarding their own bodies.

[WantRice]

I don't know about the US, but in Canada it happens more often than you would expect. I'm a teacher and this very topic came up in our staffroom today because one of the teachers had a student who was away for this very reason. He is in Grade 2.  I've been at my school of 600 students for 3 years and have heard of 1 case per year. One of them was my own student. A teacher friend at another school had 2 students in his Grade 5/6 class go under the knife in the same year. I, of course, don't know the reasons for the late circumcisions, but it upsets me to think that they are most likely due to "phimosis" or recurrent infections and probably could have been prevented with the right education and different doctors.

[brant31]

It is very unfortunate for the 1 or 2 boys per year in your school -- some of which almost certainly were preventable, as you say -- but it's magnitudes better than knowing that 150 or so more of the 300 boys at your school would have gone through this as newborns if circ rates were what they once were. I have to point that out to parents all the time... when they say "If we don't cut, some of the boys will need it and be traumatized", I have to explain that 1% getting cut later is always a better outcome than 80% getting needlessly circumcised at birth, with 5% of those having serious complications. The complication rate at age 6 and up is virtually nil. I wish no boy ever had to be circumcised, but for us to get to that point there'd have to be a very wide public dialogue and a community commitment (parents and doctors) to best practices. It's still taboo to be too frank about "private parts".

[hakunangovi]

Originally Posted by WantRice 

I don't know about the US, but in Canada it happens more often than you would expect. I'm a teacher and this very topic came up in our staffroom today because one of the teachers had a student who was away for this very reason. He is in Grade 2.  I've been at my school of 600 students for 3 years and have heard of 1 case per year. One of them was my own student. A teacher friend at another school had 2 students in his Grade 5/6 class go under the knife in the same year. I, of course, don't know the reasons for the late circumcisions, but it upsets me to think that they are most likely due to "phimosis" or recurrent infections and probably could have been prevented with the right education and different doctors.

I find this rather distressing because numbers like that prove that we still have a huge number of doctors in Canada that are uneducated about foreskins.  Even the CPS states that 1% of intact boys will require circumcision at some point in their lives.  This is in marked contrast to Finland, for example where less that one in 16,600 men will die without his foreskin.  Clearly our medical system in Canada is not treating foreskins correctly. 

Just curious - where in Canada are you?
 

[WantRice]

I'm in the greater Vancouver area. 

[hakunangovi]

I am in Alberta and I know that B.C. has been ahead of the prairie provinces in the reduction of infant circumcision, and your experience seems to highlight a fear that I have: While more boys are being spared at birth, they are being caught later by the doctor's ignorance of normal anatomy, and a lack of knowlege in how to treat (or not) issues that arise later .  There is one doctor in Vancouver, whose name escapes me right now, who has built up a sizeable business performing hundreds of circumcisions annualy.