Foreskin "needed" to be retracted due to problems urinating?

[momileigh]

I would like some info.

There is a 5-month-old baby boy, intact, who was recently having trouble peeing. He would be dry for a loooooong time, cry and scream, then suddenly flood himself with the biggest pee ever.

So his legal guardian had a mohel friend of hers break the adhesions between the foreskin and the glans with a probe. Now she has to retract the foreskin every day and put vitamin E on the glans. It has apparantly solved the peeing issues.

Do you think this course of action seems appropriate? I know I haven't given a ton of detail but I hope its enough for some opinion.

[cravenab00]

GAH! NO! BAD!!!!



where are all these people coming from who think that retracting is the answer to every problem?????

[sadkitty]

Doesn't sound right to me. It seems like if the opening was too small it could have been dealt with in a less invasive way then having his genital penetrated. I don't know if stretching excercises are indicated this young, but i would have tried that before penetration of an internal sex organ.

[MCatLvrMom2A&X]

Good greif this little boy is going to have some major scar tissue to deal with repeat retraction messes up the sphincter at the tip of the foreskin. If it is forced open over and over again then it stops working right and starts scaring up.

My heart is breakin thinking about how much pain that little boy indured during that proceedure

Odds are that he wasnt having trouble peeing and even if he were it wasnt his foreskin causing the urine not to come out. Immature bladder, small urethra are just 2 things that I can think of off the top of my head.

If you can please get this mama to stop hurting her little boy.

[momileigh]

Well, it isn't his mama. It is the very pro-circ midwife who is looking after him while his mom tries to recover from a very botched c-section. (She's in the hospital with very serious issues.) His parents didn't want him circ'ed, and the mw doesn't like it... so I think there's a good chance that she wanted to find a problem w/ his intactedness. I can't put a stop to it, but it is good to get an education about it.

[fruitful womb]

I'm in shock! Mind if I ask, where is the father? Sounds like your the only one to advocate for this baby. How is it she has the right to make a medical decision for this child?

[momileigh]

Both parents are a thousand miles away. The baby boy is a twin; he and his sister have been w/ the mw since they were a few weeks old. She was the only person who stepped up to help them while Mom's in the hospital and Dad is trying to work and take care of the 3-y.o. It is a sad situation, but in this scenario, I guess she HAS to make the medical decisions. As far as advocating goes, I can try to gently provide information, but that's it.

[MCatLvrMom2A&X]

Sounds like to me she will end up having him circed because of problems if this mom dosnt step in and stop it. She must have really had a terrible section to still be messed up after 5months

[eepster]

The whole thing sounds fishy.

If the child was truely having difficulty urinating he needed to see a urologist right away. She should have taken him to the ER right away and as a MW she should know that.

Not being able to urinate is life threatening, my cat had that problem. He had to be taken to the emergency veterinarian b/c it was the weekend and the regular vet was closed. He didn't get retracted or circ'd he got a catheter, and the vet indicated that if he hadn't been cath'd he would have suffered kidney damage within 24 hrs.

Why did she have a mohel freind play with the kids penis if she truely believed he had a life threatening condition.

Basically she is either making stuff up or horribly incompetent.

How did this woman end up as legal guardian? Can that status be changed?

ETA: god I type slow I started posting bfore your last post, so ignor the how question.
Do the parents know what is going on? Can you contact them?

[phdmama06]

Poor baby :
My baby is the same age as him, and I just can't imagine deliberately putting him through that kind of pain.

[colaga]

That's sexual abuse, pure and simple.

[momileigh]

OK, well thanks for the info. I think you're right; I don't see why a foreskin that was passing urine fine for 5 months would suddenly start to close up and keep a kid from peeing. On the other hand, their "remedy" is apparantly working, which I don't understand either. (Unless the problem and its remedy are both exagerated or nonexistant.)

Yes, it was a devastatingly messed up section. She almost didn't make it at all. She will never fully recover, but we're hoping she will get to the point where she can leave the hospital and be a mother again. Their lives are so stressed and sad right now, I can't imagine heaping something else on their plate. They decided (out of desperation) who to give their babies to, and I think they need to believe their kids are fine.

[fruitful womb]

I did some more thinking about this. Its more like, haunted by your story!
This child's parents do not want their ds circumcised but chose a MW that is adamantly pro-circ. Oookaaaay. Maybe they didn't know that she favored circumcision.

What that Rabbi did to this poor baby is called, synechotomy. A medical procedure that requires informed consent by a legal guardian. What he did was very BAD! I believe the parents could actually sue. There is no medical justification for this at all! The problem with this baby isn't a urinary condition because he is filling his diapers. I strongly feel this baby is going through serious separation anxiety from his parents. This is so so sad. If it was a urinary problem the baby would have high fevers, chills, and sometimes vomiting. Those babies need to be with their parents, not with someone thousands of miles away and is in favor in circumcision! If the Dad is willing to let his babies live with someone thousands of miles away he could surely find someone else, maybe another family member who is pro-intact. This whole situation seems so messed up to me.

Synechotomy:
http://www.mothering.com/articles/ne...uncircson.html

To perform it, the doctor pushes a blunt metal probe under the foreskin and forcibly rips it from the glans. It's as painful and traumatic as having a metal probe stuck under your fingernail to pull if off. It will also cause bleeding and may result in infection and scarring of the inner lining of the foreskin and the glans. The wounds that are created by this forced separation can fuse together, causing true adhesions. There is no medical justification for this procedure because the foreskin is not supposed to be separated from the glans in childhood.

Thank you for advocating for this baby. Where would he be without you! I hope the mom recovers soon.

[momileigh]

Thanks for the medical definition. And for the thoughts regarding the nature of this little boy's problem.

Honestly, (and I'm not interesting in debating this) I think the whole penis issue pales in comparison to the fact that these babies are being raised without parents, in a rotating schedule of all different people. Each night of the week, a different team of three people cares for them overnight. Every day, they are "mothered" by any of the hundred or so staff, students, and clients of the birth center. We do have some wonderful volunteers that might come for several hours at a time to care for them.

The trouble all started when this mom tried to have an unattended birth of twins on her houseboat. She experienced a severe pain that turned out to be a partial placental abruption, went to the hospital, and got the worst cesarean I've ever heard of. The state promptly called the parents into court for a custody hearing because only unfit parents would try to UC. Dad called their far-off midwife from their first daughter's birth for advice on what to say in court, and that's how she got involved.

The boy never met his mother at all, due to his brief stint in the NICU, until a couple of weeks ago when they went to visit her in the hospital for one afternoon. The girl was with mom and nursed for two days before mom's complications developed and she had to go to the ICU. So then the boy was released from NICU and Dad has newborn twins and a 3-year-old to care for, plus he works from home, and then when he wants to visit his possibly dying wife, they won't let him in with his babies. They have no family (one side no one is living; the other side is sufficiently estranged to where no one has spoken in many years and I don't know the details there). He tried to get help from state agencies, and they just started investigating the family to take their kids away from them. He had no where to turn and was scared of losing legal custody of his kids, and this mw finally offered to keep his babies until mom was out of the hospital. I think she was imagining it might be a few weeks, but now the kids are 5 months old and mom isn't even halfway in a condition to go home, much less care for twin babies and a 3-year-old. (5 months after multiple surgeries, she still has open wounds that haven't healed... plus she currently has no GI tract.)

I don't want to take any credit that isn't mine. A lot of people have spent a lot more time, energy, and money than I have to try to care for these kids. I just give them a bottle once in a while, change a diaper here and there. I am concerned about the foreskin issue, but I also know that this mw is not going to listen to me or any anti-circ information. I brought it up for my own education.