Consent
Consent isn’t as hard as we think. It’s a matter of asking the questions.
After yesterday with Renzo, I was nervous about bathing him today.
He didn’t seem mad or upset about the previous day’s bath, where I quickly gently washed his penis (less than 2 seconds), wearing a plastic glove and using shower gel, and he did this little, “unhuh unhuh,” unhappy cry.
He made the cry sound again, looking at me with a scared, confused expression a couple more times, while toweling off, and getting dressed.
I feel now like I did it wrong, because I rushed. I know he needs to learn to clean his penis or have someone clean it. All the medical sources say that.
There’s gotta be soap, not just sitting in bubble bath water in the bath.
The soap needs to be directly applied and reach the tiny crevices.
It’s definitely true for myself, granted female parts have more folds and crevices. There’s kids at the orphanage who are uncircumcised, kids from muslim families, so they train us we need to pull back the skin when washing them. You don’t wanna get an infection.
I decided to give Lorenzo the most basic rinsy-rinse bath (nothing scrubbed more than armpits) and I said to him,
I saw that he was sad after wash the penis, the thing that was different, and we won’t do that, we’ll just do it the old way, would that be better?
He said yes, and I sang him through bath time.
A 7 hour day with him totally tires me out.
But I almost thought that he smelled like body odor for the first time today.
I’ve never smelled that from him. No odor output, not feet, not armpits, not bits and such. Always smells clean, neutral, like moldy laundry (the clothes). Baby skin, rashes.
Today, I also noticed new acne on his butt. Are his hormones shifting?
Is the washing brush dirty? Sigh. Can’t keep up with so many things to clean. But I want to.