Circumcision At Two Months of Age

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!