As I’m writing this, Meyer (corrected age 7 1/2 months) is currently having his little penis whacked by an expert surgeon who, according to the nurse, takes immense pride in circumcisions.
Our first son had his foreskin removed like most boy babies, right after being born.
But this one? There were bigger priorities.
Like, ya know, living.
Meyer was born at 29 weeks gestation and has a long and complicated medical history. He lived in the NICU for the first 2 1/2 months of his life. You can read more about the saga here. And here. And here.
As issues have worked themselves out, the penis started to pop up.
Literally.
I learned this from our highly inappropriate nurse, who just spent 20 minutes dropping the word “erection” into the conversation waaaay more often than anyone needed.
Several of Meyer’s doctors have mentioned that things are a little, er, tight on the tallywhacker and indeed, it’s a little hard to do a thorough cleaning job down there. Another one of those tasks, along with wiping poop out of ball crevices, that I never imagined myself doing, yet do every day of my life.
So often, in fact, that sometimes I forget to even wash my hands afterwards.
May I offer you something to eat?
So here we are.
Meyer has been wheeled back and Gabe and I are still talking about the weird conversation we just had with his nurse.
She talked extensively about baby boys’ erections vs. grown men’s erections, about penis pain and how my husband “knew what she was talking about” (wink, wink), about how important it is to men to have pretty penises even though “we women don’t notice.”
It went way beyond clinical.
We began to get so uncomfortable neither one of us would make eye contact with her.
When she finally left the room, Gabe said, “That’s way more information than I will ever need to know about my baby son’s boner.”
I did take some comfort, however, in knowing how much pride an expert surgeon like ours takes in sculpting a fine wiener.
The nurse insists that of all the incredibly complicated surgeries he and the other doctors perform around Children’s Hospital of Atlanta everyday, it’s the well-done wee-wee whacks that they’re proudest of.
Boys and their toys.
And by that, I mean their penises.
Apparently, Meyer’s newly peeled pecker will come with some kind of plastic bell over it, akin to those plastic cones dogs wear.
This should be a fun new skill for me to acquire. Cleaning a penis bell.
He won’t hate that at all.
It’s 9:30 in the morning. Do you know where your foreskin is?
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