For the first time in about 24 years, I feel hard done by about being born without a belly button. 
Well, technically we were all born without a belly button. Most of us got one about a week later. 
Why don’t you have one, may I ask? We weren’t sure if WhyBaby would get one, as she was so premature. She did end up getting one eventually, but it’s flat, neither an innie or an outie.
I was born with Bladder Exstrophy and part of that is that the abdominal wall doesn’t form properly, so there’s no belly button.
I got given a fake one when I was 7. I begged my surgeon to do it when he was doing something else, and he did, and I was about as pleased as I can ever remember being. I think I actually hugged him for it. It didn’t hold up to close scrutiny but passed casual inspection, which was good enough for the swimming pool, beach and made changing for sports at school a little less horrible (it still was, but there was one thing less to be bullied about).
Unfortunately after the last couple of ops over the past 5 years, the surgical scars which previously had been mostly below the level of the navel were extended beyond almost to the sternum so the illusion is broken and it all looks rather horiffic.
I am not a doctor or anatomist, but the wikipedia article on the navel mentions that “[t]he skin around the waist at the level of the umbilicus is supported by the tenth thoracic spinal nerve (T10 dermatome).”
Might this have something to do with it?
Sadly, I sit here in Property at the moment, in a suit–hard to gaze at, much less play with, my bellybutton, so I’m not sure if I have the sensation or not…
Wow. My dad lost his belly button for a while after some surgery or another, and then they made him a new one. But it somehow got put in crooked; it’s really weird looking.
Thanks for sharing your story. It’s nice to know I wasn’t merely being a neurotic mom when I worried about her not getting one. It does seem like one of those stupid things kids would be mean about. At the time I was worrying, though, everyone was saying, “Um, don’t you think you should just be happy if she lives?!” And they were right, of course. But still…hopefully her “flattie” will suffice.
Good luck with your ongoing treatment.
I haven’t got a clue what you mean by either one. Poking the navel results in the feeling of the navel being touched but no pain or feeling anywhere else. Pinching anywhere results in feeling the pinch where it happens and nowhere else.
I once had somebody mention “that thing where you scratch an itch and it moves so you end up chasing the itch” and that meant nothing to me either. Scratching may or may not relieve the itch but it never moves.
You guys are wired weird!
I’ve always felt this, and it’s very unpleasant to me. I’m also a pre-op transsexual, and I wonder if I will still feel it in some way after my genital surgery. I hope not, but I will let you all know either way.
I used to have that weird, quasi-sexual sensation if my navel was manipulated. But since my surgery (hysterectomy, vertical abdominal incision starting about an inch below my navel) I no longer have it. Whatever the physical connection was, it seems to have been disrupted.
WhyNot, I’m guessing that that was a defense mechanism. It was probably easier on your mental health at the time to focus on something small and finite, than to be overwhemed by the all the unpleasant possibilites in WhyBaby’s situation. (And she’s such a cutie. I’m sure her “flattie” is adorable, too.)
If you press your belly button 100 times, you will TURN OFF YOUR PENIS FOREVER!
So stop doing it!
I’ve been touching my penis for 20 minutes now, and I still don’t feel anything in my belly button.
…oh wait.
Well i am weird i admit but the pain feeling like it’s coming from a different place thing i think is pretty common and based on some known anatomical fact. Something to do with nerve endings being routed through the same place or something, hence it’s more common on the back due to the proximity to the spinal cord. I can’t find a cite for this though, i have no idea what search terms to use to even start looking.
Maybe **WhyNot ** could come in on this point? I’m sure that concept must be well known in massage circles?
BTW **WhyNot ** i’d probably go more with seriously icky than pain. But then i’m a typical bloke, i won’t go to the doc unless it’s serious enough to inhibit my already poor basketball skills and even then only if it’s really bad. Pretty sure i busted a rib or two last month but hey, no need to bother the doc eh.
I still haven’t found the wiki article that **dart ** referred to. Man my google-fu and wiki-fu suck!
Sorry – the article I meant is one called “Naval Fetishism” (most interesting thing that pops up when you google “belly button nerve”). And Madonna actually refers to the sensation shooting up instead of down… which I guess adds another dimension to the question.
I was really surprised to see that so many people didn’t know what this is… although since about half of the posters know exactly what the OP meant, I don’t think that it’s any cause for worry.
Well, I think what you’re referring to is the way nerves are bundled, and run in opposing pairs, so that, for example, you can sometimes scratch your left elbow to relieve an itch on your right elbow. It works better for some people than others, but it works because, at the spinal column, the “right elbow nerve” and the “left elbow nerve” are very close together, and signals from one sometimes “jump” to the other. A dermatologist who removed a mole from my arm when I was a kid recommended to me that I scratch the opposite arm (since he didn’t want me scratching a newly cauterized wound) and it kinda sorta worked.
The other thing you might be referring to is called, appropriately enough, “referred pain”. This happens, again, because nerve run all over the place like fibers. So a nerve can be stimulated in one place but “read” sensation in another. It’s common, for example, to have a pain in your back right next to the spine or next to your shoulder blade that’s actually caused by muscular tension in the neck. I can work on your back all day and it won’t relieve it, but 5 minutes of neck work relieves the back. Heart attack pain felt is commonly felt in the left arm, even though the left arm isn’t damaged at all, or “brain freeze” is felt in your head between your eyes, even though the nerve that’s chilled is in the roof of your mouth. Those are also referred pain.
Chalk up another person who knew exactly what the OP was talking about. Discovered the sensation early on in childhood probably in the process of washing my bellybutton. It’s not painful or even unpleasant for me, but more akin to FRDE’s response of wanting to urinate.