The fact that we need to have this blog reveals how far our culture has gone to make it more normal to have a penis that has been cut than one that hasn't. Doctors don't know how to care for them. Nurse practitioners don't. Nurses don't. Moms don't. Dads don't. Just peruse some of the intact Facebook groups that have discussions about how to care for intact boys, people who are trying to learn how to do it a different way. And so much of the conversation is moms who wanna break from this cultural norm, but they're afraid to because they don't know how to care for it. So today, let's get rid of that worry.

​Let's learn how simple it is to care for an intact penis. And if you're one of the people that does decide to have your baby circumcised, we're also gonna discuss very briefly how to care for that. And also how to educate the doctors if you do have an intact boy, to make sure that when you're going for your well-baby checks, no damage gets done. Let's go.

You would think that this is gonna be some groundbreaking thing by the way the world talks about caring for an intact penis on a baby boy. People who don't know any better will regard intact penises as some nasty thing that must have special attention given to it to keep it from being so gross. But y'all, that is just not true.

Let's consider real quick the female counterpart, the vagina. Do we think that that's gross because it's all closed up and dark and moist in there? Do we think we need to stick things in there to clean 'em out or squirt something in there to wash it? Well, in the past people have, but hopefully by now they've figured it out that that's not needed. I sure hope that everybody listening to this has figured that out.

​But what you gotta realize is the penis and the foreskin is really no different.

So first we're gonna talk about how to clean and care for an intact penis. Then we're gonna talk about how to manage doctor visits for your boy who is intact. And then we will talk about how to care for a circumcised penis in case that is what you end up deciding.

So first—how to clean an intact penis. Ready? Drum roll. You just wash it. Seriously. Treat it like a finger. You just wash it. Warm water, soap. Some places I read just say to rinse it. It's not a big deal.

​You don't ever retract the foreskin. That's the big one there. Some people think that you need to pull back that foreskin to get it clean on the inside, but I'll refer you back to what we just said. You don't pull back things and try to reach up inside of a vagina to clean it. It's covered for a reason. And the same is true for the head of the penis. It is covered for a reason.

And remember back in, I believe it was the first blog of this series, where we talked about the adhesions that exist between the glans of the penis, which is the head, and the foreskin. Those adhesions are still there. Remember that? So you don't ever, ever, ever want to forcibly retract that foreskin. You don't wanna retract it at all actually.

Remember when I went through the procedure for how a circumcision is done? They forcibly get rid of those adhesions to remove the foreskin. So just remember those are there. They're there for a reason. They don't need to be removed. They don't need to be forced. It doesn't need to be forced back. None of that needs to happen at all.

You just leave it in place. Clean the outer part of it like a finger, okay? It's really serious and really important not to retract.

Those adhesions are gonna be there for a long time. On the early end, some babies—it’ll start to pull back a little bit by six months—but usually it's closer to one, two, three, maybe even four years of age before it will start to retract on its own. This does not need to be sped up. There's nothing wrong. You just leave it be.

It will release on its own as your boy gets older. Just rinse it and wash it with gentle soap and water as it is.

​That was groundbreaking, right? You feel like your whole life just changed? No. No. It's really no big deal. It's like cleaning any other part of your body.

But unfortunately, as I mentioned in the introduction, most providers don't really know that. They don't really know how to care for an intact penis. It's like some alien walking into their office. They don't know what to do about it. It's just some gross thing that must be pulled back and examined and cleaned and all this, right?

So because they don't have the education, because they don't fully understand how to care for an intact penis in many cases—obviously this isn't every case—but a lot of them, you're gonna have to really be vigilant when you go in for the well-baby checks.

If you choose to go in for the well-baby checks, they're gonna wanna do an exam that involves removing the diaper and probably trying to check out the penis and pull back the foreskin.

So if they wanna do this exam and you consent to them taking the diaper off, you need to tell them clearly in no uncertain terms that your son is intact, and that the foreskin is not to be retracted for any reason.

​And then once you've told them that, watch them like a hawk. You stay with your boy and you make sure they don't do it.

I hate to be so forceful on this point, but I have heard too many horror stories of the skin getting ripped back before mom could do anything about it. You're really better off just keeping the diaper on. Then we can make sure that nothing happens.

But if it has to come off for them to examine whatever they need to examine, and you consent to that, you've gotta watch 'em. You've gotta make sure that this isn't done because it can cause lasting damage.

Educate them. Help them understand that your boy is normal, and that what they've been taught is actually a departure from normal. They think what they've been taught is normal, but it's not. They've been taught how to care for penises that have been altered. They have not been taught how to care for a penis that is normal.

Let's change this culture to where it is not normal for surgery to be done to every boy, and get back to normal being a boy that is just the boy that he was born—and he's allowed to have the anatomy he was born with.

​Shouldn't be that groundbreaking, but it is.

That being said, if you are a mom who has decided to have your boy circumcised, let's talk quickly about how to care for that circumcision.

If you do have a circumcision, very likely they're gonna go through this with you at the hospital, but just in case they don't, I thought it would be good to go over it.

First of all, think of it like any wound, any scratch, any anything that you've ever had on your body, and remember how you can put a bandaid or a dressing over it, and then when you go to remove it, you can rip off the scab if the scab has formed to that dressing. Okay? That can and does happen to the circumcision sites on babies.

​So what you've gotta do is put some Vaseline-type substance or bacitracin, something like that, that has that ointment type feel over the site where the cut has happened. You wanna make sure that that area is covered with this substance before you put either a dressing or just the diaper on, just to make sure that it doesn't stick because you don't want—it’s gonna clot, it’s gonna scab. That's a good thing, but you don't wanna rip that off and cause bleeding or pain, more pain and discomfort because it gets stuck.