Circumcision At Two Months of Age

The concern is the anesthesia. TJ had an undescended testicle so at 8 months he had to have it brought down. We were very unhappy with his initial circumcision and asked the urologist to enhance it a bit. He agreed that more skin should have been removed and agreed to do it since TJ would already be under. However, he said that if we decided to not do it at that time that he would NEVER put a child under for that procedure alone. We had it all done at the same time and all was fine. I don't know if it was just our doc or if most of them are reluctant to put them under for that. IMHO: It is not just a cosmetic procedure. My friend's son who is 8 and "intact", got an infection. He had been taught over and over how to make sure he was clean and safe, but he got an infection anyway. Dad was in Iraq and he was too ashamed to show his mom and the infection got worse and worse. He was in horrible pain before he finally told his mom.

thanks :love: it's a very personal decision for each family to make. It's just one of a myriad of other choices we'll be faced with as parents. My suggestion for anyone is this: Do the research. If you research this and feel that it is in your child's best interest, then there is nothing anyone can say to negate that you did what you thought was best. It's the families that make their decision (to circ or NOT, to vax or NOT, etc...) based on the blind recommendation of others without forming their own decision that pushes my button.

My son had it done at 7 months by a pediatric urologist--- No problems!

Thanks for your posting! My baby will be circumcised at 2 1/2 months and I am furious because the doctors continued to put it off! At one point it was going to be done before we left the hospital but the doctor thought it should wait until 1 month of age. Then when it was scheduled at the doctor's office, it was cancelled and the doctor was on vacation after that!! I definitely want it done, but can' wait until my baby comes thru this procedure. I have been depressed but after reading your statement, I feel relieved. My other 2 sons were done while they were newborns and want the same for my new baby. Again, THANK YOU!!!!!

My son was circ and my step-son never was. My step-son never had any trouble with being uncircumcised as a toddler or older child. And I don't think my step son and son felt 'different' due the different appearances of their penises. I completely respect your decision, but honestly, if I could go back to when my son was an infant, 27 years ago, I probably wouldn't do it again, the more I read the more I realize it was unnecessary.

When M came to us at 10 weeks, he was not circumcized. We are Jewish, and we want him to be converted to Judaism in our shul, because we want that to be a part of our identity that our whole family shares. (A went through a conversion a couple of years ago.) In order for him to be converted, he had to be circumcized. We ended up doing it right after he turned one year old under general anesthesia. If we hadn't had to do the conversion, I don't think I would have had it done at all. Although DH was in favor no matter what, and I probably would have bowed to his preference on the subject. . .

I had my son circumcised at 10 months under general anesthesia by a mohel/urologist. He did fine.

For anyone concerned about having both circumcised and intact penises in the same family...in ours it is a total non-starter as an issue. No one notices. We all don't have brown eyes, either. It's truly and totally a non-issue. While we do have both, I can't say that we've had no issues with the intact little weewees. One doesn't retract in the proper way and has been difficult to keep clean. Yes, we've trained the child. Yes, he does do it. We've visited the urologist to have the penis in question evaluated. We have a game plan in place for each possible contingency we may encounter as the child grows older. I'm not willing to heatedly debate about which is better, and am happy with both the circumcised and intactness of our family members. We have opted to not do surgery for the intact. That being said, though, there can be issues that arise with time and are not related to poor hygiene. I get a little miffed when people blithely say that there is no problem with intact penises except for poor hygiene. That isn't always true, and the issues are not always apparent in very young boys. (*wince* can you tell I've had this discussion one too many times? :o )

My boys were done at 20 months. One of the boys has 'floppy airway' asthma so the whole anesthesia thing was an issue, then there were a couple of other things....bottom line it took a while. Surgery was at 7:00 am. by 1:00 pm they were chasing each other around the house. Tylenol only given once (2:00 pm) as recommended by the DR. Boys didn't seem to need it after that. I was honoring the request of the birthparent, but probably would have had it done anyway (personal choice). The boys did great! Regardless of your stance on the necessity of the procedure, I found the Urologist's comment to be funny - he said he was fulfilling the missions "to make the wold more beautiful - one weewee at a time":)

I so SO wish we had had Cameron's circ'd. He now has to get straight cathed every 6 hours (he stopped peeing) so I have to retract his foreskin every time. It hurts him. :( Having him circ'd would make this so much easier.

Poor baby. I'm sorry he has to go through that. That must be hard on you both. :(

I have not read through the thread. I posted under the other circ thread and am copying here in case the op misses my reply. I am an RN that has worked in normal newborn nurseries and the ICU nursery. What if he grows up saying, "I want my foreskin back. I want the increased feelings an uncircumcised penis has. I don't want a penis that is misshapen because of scar tissue." Children have lost their penises to circumcision. I was working in a hospital (where most of the staff was anti-circ) and a baby lost all sexual function because of a surgical mistake. Then there's the whole risk of hospital acquired MRSA in a raw sore. And I wonder about the long-term consequences from having experienced such pain so early in life. (They have to peel the skin off the penis before they cut it off.) Can you imagine the pain of peeing on such a raw wound? I find the argument that neonatal circumcision prevents a later in life painful surgery ludicrous. The baby feels pain and it hurts a lot more because the foreskin is still attached. How can people rationalize away the pain babies feel? Also, they don't always use anesthesia for babies. I worked as a RN in the ICU nursery. We had to do a lot of awful, painful things to babies to keep them alive. None of their screams of pain were anything like the screams of a baby being circumcised. 1 out of 8 women will develop breast cancer. Should we cut off the breast tissue of all baby girls to keep them from getting breast cancer? Women can survive just as well without breasts as men can survive without foreskins. Why not prevent this horrible cancer death for all those women with just a little surgery when they're babies? (Yes, breasts do an important job by making breastmilk, but that's about all they do. Foreskins are also important. They allow the penis to provide sexual lubrication. Women who do not make enough lubrication during their youth and post-menopausal women would have easier times with sex if they were with uncircumcised men. Then there's the protection men get from the foreskin which allows them full sensation during sex.) I've read about some studies in Africa. The circumcised men received a lot of education about safe sex that the uncut men did not. The circumcised men knew about safe sex. The groups were not the same. Why is this country so obsessed with cutting up baby penises? (Could it be, in part, because of how much money doctors and hospitals get? Estimates for the annual costs of US circumcision range from $150-270 million to $234 million and $527 million. Look at the statistics on how many more circs happen when the doctor is paid more.) There are a lot of ways to prevent diseases that do not involve mutilation. Let's put our financial resources and our energy into non-surgical interventions. Americans used to say circ prevented masturbation. They said baby should look like Dad (if Dad lost half his face in a car crash, should that be done to baby as well?) Then it's on to disease prevention when there are other ways of preventing diseases. The United States has an HIV rate of 0.6. Germany is 0.1. Finland is 0.1. Ireland is 0.2. The US has 3 to 6 times as many HIV cases per capita even though our men are mainly circumcised and theirs are not. Where is the disease prevention in those statistics? HIV InSite Countries and Regions Page We cry out against the mutilation of girls' genitalia yet we rationalize doing the same to boys. There is something wrong here. If an adult man wants to be circumcised then he should have that right. A baby should have the right to make that choice. Leave him alone, teach him about safe sex, find out why European countries have significantly lower HIV rates than we do even though they do not circumcise and use the $150- $527 million spent on circs to do whatever it is the other countries are doing better than we do. (In case you wondered. Every nursery job I had I was reprimanded either for giving parents full information on circs or refusing to participate. One hospital told me that a particular doctor did not want the parents to receive information so I was to say nothing to his patients. Can you imagine your child having surgery and your doctor purposely withholding information? Happens all the time.)

I am sorry your son has to go through this. However, he had a horrible complication after major surgery. His case is not a rationale for submitting healthy newborns to a disfiguring surgery.

I did lots of research with my first baby and could not come up with a good reason to do it. I left him the way he came. He is 7 now. He has not had a problem and has not noticed he is different than his dad. When he is old enough to care about the two "options", I'll explain my decision. On a funny note - we had a foster son last fall. I was waiting for my son to notice that they were different. The joke was on me. Days after changing his diaper hourly. (Serious GI issues.) I realized he was intact, too. :arrow: Talk about feeling stupid.

You should never retract the foreskin on an infant!!!! That is why the intact penis has issues. The glans is attached to the foreskin until they hit puberty age. Retracting it early leaves them prone to many issues! Infection being a big one!