Little boy surgery

I’m back at work after two days off to help W recuperate from his circumcision. My poor little boy. I had some moments of self doubt. Were we doing the right thing? Would he hate us for the pain? Would something terrible happen to him during this mostly cosmetic surgery?

To review – We had decided to circumcise before going in for delivery. The OB told us she wouldn’t do it because of the twisted parts. The pediatrician told us about the problem and that it wouldn’t be a big deal and recommended a urologist for the surgery once W got older. I went in to see him at about 4 weeks old. The line on the back of W’s penis was not straight. It went up slightly crooked (let’s say it’s at 6 o’clock) and then veered off to about 4 o’clock when it got to the head. From the bottom of the head to the top it went from 4 o’clock back to 9 o’clock. That part was the problem. Everything else was fine. He could function normally. The urologist told me that he would do the circumcision once W was 6 months old. We scheduled it for Nov 8th because W is a pretty big kid and we wanted him to be healed before the holidays.

We arrived at the hospital at 6:30 am. W was in a great mood. He smiled at the nurses and played with his sample breathing mask. The anesthesiologist gave him a sample one to play with so he wouldn’t be afraid when she gave him the real one. I thought that was a great idea. We were so worried that he’d cry because of the hunger, but he was just fine. After a little bit of prep, I carried him into the OR. The mask came out and he breathed in it for about a minute until he kind of went limp. He wasn’t asleep, but he was. Then I was sent out to the waiting room with M. I cried. The nurse said it would be about an hour.

90 minutes later, the doctor came into the waiting room and pulled up a chair. He got a piece of paper out and drew us a picture of a penis. Now, this was a stressful time and I still had to keep myself from giggling. So the picture showed everything he did and he wrote out care instructions in crazy neat handwriting. The picture showed stitches all around the head and stitches going up a little and down a little where he kind of re-aligned the line. It’s still not perfectly straight, which is fine with us. We weren’t looking for perfect. We just wanted mostly normal.

About 10 minutes after that, we were called back into the recovery room. W was already awake and was crying loudly. I ran to his room and was able to nurse him right away. That calmed him down! He had an IV in his neck (he’s too pudgy for them to be able to get a regular IV in there. They tried.) We went home with a prescription for Tylenol with codeine and a recommendation to buy lots of KY jelly.

The care is to wipe him as normal then cover the entire penis with KY jelly at every diaper change. He gets sponge baths until Thursday and then soaking for a week after that. He can’t be in the exersaucer or baby bjorn or bumpo or anything this kind of uses the crotch to support him.

His penis looks awful. It is swollen and purple with tons of tiny stitches. He has no idea. He is playing and laughing and being wonderful, just like normal. He seems to dread being on the changing table and gives a little cry when we wipe him down. He’s on standard Tylenol and we never used the strong stuff.

I got through my first surgery on my baby. The whole time I felt like running into the OR and taking him home and not circumcising him. But now I’m glad we did it and he won’t have to worry about this in the future. He’s back at daycare today and doing great. I’m glad that it’s over.