If you have a vulva Unless you have physical limitations that prevent you from doing so (more on this later), it's best to reach around your body, behind your back and through your legs. This position allows you to wipe your anus from front to back, ensuring that feces is always moving away from your urethra.
After comfortably passing a stool, always wipe from front to back. Avoid any skin-to-skin contact with stool. Simply reach behind your back and between your legs, using plenty of crumpled or folded toilet tissue. Wipe backward from the perineum , the space between the genitals and anus, moving toward and past the anus.
Lesson number one: "Always wipe from front to back," says Alyssa Dweck, M.D., an ob-gyn and author of V is for Vagina. "Wiping from back to front can bring bacteria from the rectum toward the urethra and increase your chances of a urinary tract infection," she explains.
It's important that you wipe front to back, as wiping the opposite way — back to front — can spread bacteria. “Every time one wipes after urination, the bacteria from the gut can get transferred to the vagina or the urethra if wiping from back to front,” said Dr.
Wiping Front to Back
If you don't have any physical limitations preventing you from reaching around your body to wipe from the front to back, it's generally considered the safer route to go. The reason is that you'll be moving feces away from your more delicate parts, lowering the risk of infection.
Why don't men wipe when they pee? Because generally they don't need to. There is very little urine which will be on the outside (head or glans) of the penis after urination, and a little shake is usually all that's needed if that. That will also dislodge any that is still inside the urethra.
So how do you know when the time is right? Each child starts their potty training process & toilet training at different ages and that's the same with wiping their own bottom. For some children, this may happen as early as 3-4 years old and for others, they may not be physically or mentally ready until 5+ years old.
Polling them on their sit-or-stand preference, we found that 79% of respondents were sitters, and only 21% stand up to wipe. Similar surveys conducted by internet outlets found a more even split, approaching 50-50, though we are unsure those surveys specified the ol' squat-and-hover as “sitting,” which we did in ours.
The first tip is to keep your expectations low. Actually, many kids' little arms aren't even long enough to reach around for proper wiping technique until they are 3.5 or 4 years old. Girls typically master wiping faster because they wipe for both pee and poop, so they have more opportunities to practice.
Show your child how to hold the wipe flat in their hand (not wadded into a ball). And then walk them through the process of wipe, fold, wipe, fold, wipe until they don't see anything on the wipe anymore. That's how they'll know they're finished and ready to flush. Practice makes perfect.
“Wiping front-to-back minimizes the risk of spreading bacteria,” Audra Williams, M.D., clinical instructor and ob/gyn at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Health System, tells SELF.
While a Reddit user surveyed 950 participants—626 identified as male, 306 identified as female, and 18 people put their gender as “other”—they found that 65.7% of respondents wipe sitting down and 34.3% wipe standing up. But even though standing wipers may be in the minority, they do exist.
Out of 3,005 voters in a 24-hour period, 35 percent said that they wipe standing up. That's over 1,000 men. The other party might be more common but plenty of guys are standing up to wipe post-poop. The phenomenon is so common that Buzzfeed created two different videos about it.
You see, when you don't clean yourself down there after peeing, the urine droplets stuck in your pubes get transferred to your underwear. This gives rise to a foul odour. Moreover, it also gives birth to bacteria in your underwear, increasing the risk of urinary tract infections (UTI).
"When urine leaves the body, oddly we get a drop in blood pressure, which then causes activation of the sympathetic nervous system to increase the heart rate and vascular tone, which then restores the drop in blood pressure.
Wipe backward from the perineum, toward and past the anus. “Wipe gently, and use additional toilet paper until the paper is clean and never scrub the skin around the perineum. If you cannot reach behind your back, reaching in between your legs from the front is fine as long as you wipe from front to back,” says Dr.
Allybocus Akbar writing in pubtexto.com, an open access journal, stated that water is considered more hygienic since all faeces and urine are washed off and leaves no bad smell in underwear; whereas wiping does leave residual smell, behind no matter how much one scrubs with toilet paper.
When at home, 7 in 10 men said they usually pee standing rather than sitting. In fact, only 17% usually sit down to urinate.
54% said front to back, which is how you're supposed to do it for hygiene reasons, especially if you're a woman. Another 7% said they use a bidet . . . and 5% said they wipe in a DIFFERENT way.
Failure to wipe correctly could leave you vulnerable to a urinary tract infection or aggravate any existing rectal issues, like hemorrhoids or anal fissures.
With clean fingers, gently separate your baby's vaginal lips. Use a moist cotton pad, a clean, dampened cloth, or a fragrance-free baby wipe to clean the area from front to back, down the middle. Clean each side within her labia with a fresh damp cloth, moist cotton pad, or fragrance-free baby wipe.
If he is in school or pre-school he will probably already be doing lots of work on co-ordinating those fine and gross motor skills already, so if there are no developmental delays that could be impacting him, practice is all he needs. By the age of 5, most children should be capable of wiping effectively.
Steps to clean a toddler's bottom
Take off their trousers., apart from their vest and nappy, and wrap them in a towel. Clean baby bottom with a no-rinse cleansing fluid or a cleansing lotion . If you prefer, you can also use a cleansing gel or emollient soap, and rinse with water.
"Using a bidet or a water attachment of some sort or popping into the shower and cleaning yourself is your best bet for making sure your butt is clean." Keep scrolling for the biggest mistakes people make, according to Dr.