People's Experiences
To make it easier to find relevant experiences, you may want to use the page search function (Press Ctrl F in most browsers). Feel free to repost any of the collected experiences on this page on your own blog, site, forum or wherever it will be helpful and informative to do so. Also be sure to check out my Feedback Page which has many more parent's experiences.
If you would like to watch mothers, fathers, doctors, nurses, etc talk about most aspects of this issue then I recommend this youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/Bonobo3D
Experiences:
Mothers
Husband Learns in Twist
On a personal note, I hadn't done the research with my first son, but by the time my second son was born, I knew I didn't want him circ., but my husband insisted. Despite MANY discussions, (some heated) he would not change his mind. He didn't think it would be right to have one son circ. and the other one not, even though I tried to reason w/ him and point out the boys would not be comparing their penises- he also used the argument about circ. penises not not being as clean and hygienic, and his sons looking like him- again, do father and sons really compare them?
I refused to sign the circ. papers at the hospital and left it to my husband- and I didn't go to either circ., but INSISTED they use lanocaine it is like novicane and numbs (and the hospital assured me they did all circ. w/ lanocaine), but it just makes me cringe to think about both my boys even having shots there- I really can't even think about this too much, b/c it makes me SO upset. It is the one point that my husband and I argued over more than anything w/ all the decisions you have to make. Sometimes I think I should have been stronger for my sons, and not finally given in, but after birth & pregnancy I was just too tired to fight about it anymore. I hope one day, I can talk to them about them and tell them I really didn't want them circ. - I hope they won't hate us down the road for this.
Finally (sorry this is so long) I am still really angry at my husband for choosing this, and talk about irony- after son #2 was born, he was telling his parents (when I wasn't there) that I didn't want baby boy circ. and he went on and on w/ his parents on about how hard it was to keep uncirc. ones clean, etc., His father got up and left, and then his mom told him that his father was uncirc. My husband had no idea- so I guess that proves fathers and sons don't compare their penises. He felt awful about going on like that w/ his father, and THEN decided maybe I had valid points after all- Jeez... I just wish our sons didn't have to go through this b/c of his issues.
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When your husband wants it
I told him he had to convince me that there was a legitimate reason to do circ AND that we were at least going to wait a full week after the birth before getting it done.
I'd done my research, watched the videos, read the articles. I bookmarked them for him, told him that I wouldn't consider his side until he'd actually done some research and then gave him time. I brought it up periodically, mainly asking if he'd actually looked in to it, and if he had any questions, but I didn't fight him.
We're both from Indiana, and it's just a given that you circ. Even with our daughter (didn't find out the gender), there wasn't even a blip on my radar of this being something to be researched. We had to go online and look up an intact penis when I was pregnant with our son, because neither of us even knew what it looked like.
He did end up researching it, and watched the videos (I showed him a teaching video, too, so that the emotion was taken out) and he still wanted to circ. But, he couldn't come up with ANYTHING other than the fact that he was, and it was simply uncomfortable to him because it was different. He acknowledged that it wasn't a valid reason at all, it was just hard for him. I did ask him if his dad was circed, and he couldn't answer. So, there went the whole 'being different' argument.
He never could come up with a valid reason, and when he told me when our son was a few weeks old that he would still be okay circing him, I immediately burst in to tears and just sat there sobbing. At that point, he told me that it obviously meant more to me than it did to him, so he was okay with leaving our son intact. He remained indifferent to the decision even after he was born, though. He finally, this week, told me out of nowhere, that it wasn't odd anymore to have our intact when he wasn't, and that he was actually glad we made the choice we did.
Honestly, I wouldn't have let our son be circ'd, even if he disagreed, but I do respect him, and I understand that his feelings are genuine and valid. So, I never made him feel like his opinion didn't matter. I approached it in a matter of fact manner, and while I would counter him during our discussions, I never shut him down. I hoped all along that he would come around, and he did, thankfully, and we never had to deal with him feeling ignored or disrespected or shut out.
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Husband Fights Fiercely then...
I had a very complicated and dangerous pregnancy, I had Placenta Previa and was on bedrest. I told my husband that we would not circumcise our baby- my #1 reason was because I had lived in Europe and I knew that the foreskin was an important part of male sexual anatomy... and respecting it in that way- I did not think this was the sort of decision that parents should even be allowed to make... you don't cut another person's penis... period.
But the problem was, my husband who was circumcised could not IMAGINE that a foreskin was a part of a penis, because he didn't have a foreskin... and his penis was FINE... not DAMAGED! He could not get over that leap between him being sexually fine and another man being fine with even more sexual anatomy than he had. He was in a state of panic between common sense and self defense. Our fights were fierce- I was astounded at his reaction- he did not seem like himself- it was like he was a robot who was programmed with a execute circumcision command... and my putting an unplanned obstacle in that path made the whole system go berzerk.
The most upsetting scene of the whole time was my husband curled in a fetal position on the couch with a pillow crammed over his crotch crying... and still demanding that we had to do this. For me it was like watching regression therapy- I was seeing my husband relive the pain of his own circumcision... his outward body clenched in such a self defensive curl- emotionally he was begging to have a solution to this pain... and the solution that he thought he had found was to circumcise the baby... to make circumcision right. It was the only way he could convince himself that circumcision is a reasonable thing to do to babies...to men.
I guess the real him won out... he took the time to do some research in private (where he did not need to feel embarrassed to learn or cry or whatever) and he came to realize that circumcision is not good for babies, and that we would NOT be circumcising our baby. The turnaround was fast- and a good thing too- because when the baby came 5 weeks early in a torrent of blood with a 18 inch blizzard shutting down the interstate- our family needed unity and love and trust. I was still KO from the emergency c section when the Dr asked my Husband when we would tell him the BAD news about the circumcision- my husband was the one who said WE AREN'T
The Dr was happily surprised. "Where are you FROM?" he asked... assuming that no one from here (Cincinnati area) would not habitually circumcise their baby.
It wasn't till years later that the irony of that comment became more clear... my husband talked to his parents about his circumcision, to tell them about how circumcision had effected him and that he was now restoring his foreskin non-surgically to try to un-do some of that damage... What his parents told him was a real shock. He was circumcised without any parental consent- he was in the nursery and the circumciser cut the baby without even asking. He made the boy NOT match his father... every man in the family was intact- but that Dr took the intact baby and cut him without asking a single member of the family- all would have said no if they had been asked. No one told this boy the truth, no one told him that his circumcision was not something chosen for him- that it was a horrible sign of a lapse in security... dad out of town and mom on KO drugs from a c section... and a hospital with a universal circumcision program...
NO wonder all the dads in Cincinnati are insisting their sons be circumcised... they were all circumcised whether their parents wanted it or not. The hospital system of a few decades ago was erasing our common knowledge of human anatomy and sexuality. Was distorting our idea of normal. When surgically modified is the presumed given. It's not given... it's taken.
It took me, a transplant from somewhere else, to carry in the seeds of doubt about the rightness of what was happening. That doctor knew that something was up when that dad said no... he knew he had been exposed to some outside thought- because the program to erase male knowledge of their own anatomy here is Cincinnati had been so "successful"
I hope that this father gets the compassion and support that he needs and I hope that he has the courage to bravely uncover the history of his own circumcision and to question his motives in doing this to his son. It is very hard work. I recommend the history book by David Gollaher.
I also hope that this mother has the courage to protect her child. This is not something that needs to have an agreement. If either parent wants to protect the child from the cutting motivation of the other parent- they have full power to protect the child. The benefit of the doubt will always lie with the child and the rightness of his body. The onus is upon the person who would cut him, to prove it must be done. Even in court, this argument has never been made- circumcisers are powerless if the child has an advocate. Circumcision only happens in the absence of protection. The is no need to make a case for NOT circumcising, the child is born that way- he got the genetic program for his penis from his father, his foreskin comes from his father... it is the GIVEN.
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How to talk to your husband
Some men are swayed by videos of the procedure, others go for cold, hard facts. There's an episode of Penn & Teller's if he's the type that like irreverent humor. The biggest part of the battle is knowing what your husband responds to best.
One thing to keep in mind is that some men react very badly to the idea that circ is unnecessary. Think for one minute about what it would be like to try to wrap your mind around the fact that part of your penis was removed when it didn't need to be. Even if you never think it's especially harmful or even if you have no memory of it, your mind's natural defense mechanism is to fight that information in any and every way possible. It sounds like you've done a really good job outlining why you're questioning it, and you would be careful to reassure your husband that you like him just the way he is, but I still wanted to throw that out there.
I didn't think about that when I first brought it up to my husband, and he wasn't just resistant, he basically told me I was crazy and he wouldn't even discuss it. (This isn't like him at all.) I had to totally rethink my approach and be a lot more sensitive to his feelings. What finally resonated with him was the idea that it wasn't his penis or mine, it was our son's. He (our son) would be the only one who would have to live with the potential consequences of our choice to circumcise, not us.
In the end, just giving my husband time to process all this really heady and confusing and upsetting (to him) information made the biggest difference. He went from stonewalling me at every opportunity to now loudly and proudly explaining why "we" chose to keep our son intact when people ask. (You would think now that it was all his idea, lol ) It didn't happen overnight, but it sounds like you've got time to work on it. Just don't get discouraged if it takes a while for him to really hear you and be able to look at your concerns objectively. It's not unusual.
I also wouldn't worry about looking different. There are tons of families with boys with mixed statuses, and I think that factor is way overblown. I grew up in a family where all the boys were circumcised but one, and I don't remember a single comment being made in spite of the fact that the boys bathed together all the time. In fact, it was such a non-issue that once we got well past the age where the intact boy was running around naked all the time, no one but me and one other person even remembered that he wasn't circumcised (and you could definitely tell).
Even if they do notice, the explanation is so simple that I can't imagine why it would have to go beyond a simple, "When Daddy and big brother were born, we thought it was healthier to have that skin removed. By the time you came along, we realized that wasn't true, so we didn't have it done to you." Every person I've spoken to with an intact son and a circ'ed husband and/or older boy has said that their sons are totally accepting of that, and invariably relieved that they aren't also circumcised.
Good luck!
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Changed My Mind
I am a parent whose mind was changed about circumcision. I have 4 boys, the oldest two circumcised, the youngest two, not. I thought nothing of it when I had my two oldest, their father had been, everyone else did it, or that at least was all I heard, so I decided to go ahead and have them circumcised. But then along came my 3rd son. Born premature, he spent the first week of his life in the hospital under oxygen masks, in incubators, and the last thing on my mind was circumcision. Once he was well enough to bring home, all I could think was after all he had went through getting here, why would I even dare to put him through the pain of circumcision...that was my last thought about it until my fourth son. After Jared though, and our decision not to circumcise, it was so easy finally knowing the facts from living them, to decide as with Jared, not to circumcise. I have two beautiful circumcised boys, and two beautiful uncircumcised boys, that is what matters. Also, briefly, I know alot choose circumcision because they feel it is required for religious reasons, that is not true. If you believe that, and decide yes, then that is your decision, but your child is not any less a child of GOD if you decide not to circumcise. With the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ came salvation for us all including those uncircumcised...many may not realize this. It is what is in our hearts, our acceptance of the Lord, our faith, not whether the penis is circumcised or not.
To end this, I wish you all blessings and peace, now I must go deal with an excited 2 yr old who just realized his foreskin retracts and isn't going to let Mommy off the hook til she says cool!!
Study, read, learn and make an informed decision!
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Forced Into It
As a mother at 17 years old, I was forced by mother and my (now) ex-husband to have my first son circumcised. I had then what I believe now to be a very enlightened physician. He informed me that there was no real medical reason to circumcize my son, and that it was indeed very painful. This was in 1982, when practically every male in the U.S. was being cut. When I told my mother and husband that I did not want this done to my baby, and that I saw no reason to do it. all hell broke loose. I was not prepared for the emotional onslaught that followed. Every stupid reason in the book, they threw at me. Last and worst, they accused me of being a bad mother, told me that the trusted and respected doctor was full of sh*t and that it was going to be done whether I wanted it to or not.
I am since remarried, and have a 22 month old son. When I was pregnant, my husband and I decided that we would not circumcize our baby if he was a boy. Coinciding with our discussion on the topic was a news report on that very subject, and my eldest son saw it. He asked me if we had any plans to circumcize the baby, if it were a boy. We told him no. He looked at me and asked why I decided to have him circumcised. I told him the story, and he was utterly disgusted. His point of view was that it was done to him and he had no say in the matter. For me, I can never forgive nor forget the powerlessness and helplessness that I felt when they took my son to mutilate him, nor that he was needlessly wounded out of sheer ignorance and unquestioning stupidity. Any reason to circumcise is merely an excuse for cosmetic surgery on a helpless infant. It is as ridiculous as giving a baby a nose job.
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Since When Did Ignorance Become a Point of View
I had my son circumcised because I was ignorant. My nephew was circumcised at the age of four because his doctor- who should have known better- was concerned that my nephew's foreskin could not be retracted. At the time I didn't know that this is totally NORMAL...and so I had my son circumcised at birth, thinking it would spare him the trauma of "having" to have it done when he was older. I have since become educated about normal foreskins and realized that circumcision of non- consenting people of ANY age is wrong and a mutilation.
My son is now four. Recently we were reading his baby book together, and he began to spontaneously share memories of his birth- things that my husband and I had never told him. Then he said something that totally horrified me and filled me with a guilt that will NEVER go away. My little son, who has never been told about circumcision and never had it discussed in his presence, told me that someone had held him down after he was born and "cut his wink off." Please, if you are considering circumcising your child- DON'T DO IT!!!! Not only is my son permanently mutilated, but the trauma of this event is still with him. He remembers. I pray that somehow, this story will help someone to realize that it is NOT "just a little piece of skin" and it does NOT stop hurting right away. Please don't make the same mistake I did!!!
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Kept our ENTIRE son!
My son was born 11 days ago, and he will remain intact! We didn't find out gender ahead of time, and when I first mentioned it to my husband, he indicated that we'd circ. I really didn't have a strong feeling about it, but did discuss the what-ifs with my doctor (who also is baby's doc). Although he does perform circs when parents request it, he told us that there is no medical reason to circumcise and that he would recommend against it unless there was a very strong reason that we had to do it.
After my son was born, my husband and I had another conversation, and it turned out that he'd rethought his position and didn't see any reason to circumcise unless it was medically beneficial!
As far as I know, this is the first little boy in our extended family who will be intact, so I feel like we're entering new ground. But I'm thrilled that my little boy can go through life as God made him, and not have to recover from surgery at such a young age.
A huge thanks to all the posters here who helped me make a more informed decision!!
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It's MINE!
Funny story from my 19 month old second son today. We were taking a shower like we do together pretty much everyday. I noticed the tip of his foreskin was a little red, and he had a piece of fuzz stuck to it so I was going to wipe the fuzz off and look at the tip to see if it was a problem or just a bit irritated from his concentrated morning pee in the overnight diaper situation. About the time I touch him he turns away from me quickly and says "MINE". My mouth just about hit the floor. He has been so in love with the word mine lately, but he has never used it like that. Well I thought I guess now is a good time to do some groundwork about private parts and all, but since he is only 19 months old I didn't know what he could understand so I kept it simple I just said "You are right honey, that is yours. I'm sorry I should have told you what I was doing first. I was just going to help you wash it, but it is yours so you can wash it yourself." And sure enough he took one of the little cups he plays with in the shower, filled it with water and washed down the outside of his penis. Then gave me a big grin and said "MINE" again.
He rinsed it a couple of times to make sure it was good and clean and we got out of the shower. I was just laughing to myself thinking well that blows the "a boy won't take care of it" argument right out of the water. I mean if a 19month old can clean himself surely an older child can right? I'm sure he can't be that hygienically advanced. I'm just wondering if I handled the private parts angle well enough. And suggestions on that for me? Any way I thought you all might get a kick out of the story.
Again, thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!
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I thought I would just defer to him
My newborn is intact, thanks in part to this discussion board! I want to thank everyone who has posted on this particular discussion board. When I found out I was pregnant with a boy, I was very upset about having to decide whether to circ or not. My husband is circ'd and I originally thought I would just defer to him. However, how could I hurt such a beautiful new creation as my son? I found lots of information on this discussion board which convinced me NOT to circ. And my husband was easily brought to the no circ camp.
I also want to share that I almost circ'd him at the hospital when the doctor asked if we wanted a circumcision. For some crazy reason I said yes , but then started to cry. The doctor said she could see I was in conflict and spent some time discussing it with me without putting pressure on me to go either way. (My husband was not there at the time). She ultimately said she would not circ unless both parents were in agreement and that we as parents needed to discuss it more before making a decision. I am eternally grateful to her as well because neither my husband nor I wanted him circ'd after we thought about it. I guess I was feeling pressure from family and feeling vulnerable and alone in the recovery room at the hospital.
My precious boy is now 2 weeks old and I am so glad he is intact. He is the first on both sides of the family and amongst our group of friends. So while people may not understand our decision, at least I know from this discussion board that there are others out there who are like us.
[Response by Yulia: Congrats on you beautiful whole boy!!!!! This is very important that you and your husband read this -- Warning for Parents of Whole Sons]
Thanks everyone for your support and well wishes. I am feeling very happy that my son is intact. I know I made the right decision. And thanks Yulia_R for the link about forcible retraction. I'll be sure to be extra vigilant.
As it turns out, the pediatrician who spent time talking with me in the hospital has sons who are intact. I've written her a thankyou note, and have switched to her as our pediatrician. The nurses in the hospital were also glad we decided against circumcision. One confided she thought it was a horrendous thing to do to a newborn and doesn't understand why its so prolific.
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We Argued Until He Saw What It Was
Hi all,
never had a chance to post much here but I have lurked thru-out my pg. During my pregnancy, my husband and I would get into heated debates re circ and always left me so angry because I cry when I get stressed out and can't ever win. When, last March we found out we were expecting our first son. We continued to argue over circ and I just gave up and said "whatever".
On June 15th, 2007 we welcomed our little boy to the world. We had a beautiful birth at home, in the water, unassisted. He weighed 10 lbs, 1.5 oz and was 21 inches in length. My mw came moments after the birth to check on us. Everything was as perfect as my LO. My husband insisted that I make the circ appt for a week later so I did. I was just to exhausted to argue. A few days later though, the videos of baby boys wailing in pain reminded me of why I felt so strongly against this act. So I thought to myself... Why don't I make my husband watch this???? He has a penis... He should feel this pain.... So, off to MDC I went to play the video for him. He agreed to watch it. I saw hime cringe at the procedure and stare at his peacefully nursing son. He got off the couch and asked my if "that" was legal. I said what? "That" is a circ... What do you mean? He then said, "they don't use anesthesia?" Bottom line was that he feels that being in the 21st century in America, there should be no reason for anyone (even an adult) to experience such pain.
Now to the present. I have a beautiful son who is intact. He was more convinced that everything would be fine after reading some of the posts here. He especially got the most from the "How to care" thread. You all are awesome and I thank you a miilion times over!!!! My il's are a bit shocked but I just remind them that his penis belongs to him so lay off!!!! My family on the other hand is totally for no circing. My Dad made a point of calling us everyday to check to see if our son was still intact!!! . My husband's co-workers have sons and the majority of them are intact. My circle of friends son's are all intact.
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Husband Demands It
I was in a similar situation; I shut down my maternal instincts and let my first be circ'ed, b/c I didn't know any better, and I immediately felt horrible about it. When I got pregnant with my second, I knew I did not want to circumcise him, but my husband was adamant that we do it. Long story short: I did not allow it; hubby did not challenge me after the birth (though we had had some pretty ugly fights about it before the birth!), and now, he is fine with it and even admitted one time that he knows it causes decrease in sexual sensation and that the only reason he ever wanted it in the first place was so he would "be like me."
The most important thing for you to do is to educate yourself thoroughly on circumcision--the lack of need for it, the risks, the details of the procedure, etc. Watch the video. Follow the links in the stickies. You need to have more on your side than just emotions, because there are a lot of commonly accepted myths out there that people use to rationalize circumcision, and you need to be prepared for that.
Next, I would not keep trying to argue about it. It is not good for you while you're pregnant. And the more you bring it up, the more defensive your husband will get. Few circ'ed men want to be backed into a corner where they are expected to admit that they are missing something important and that they were essentially sexually abused. I let it drop about 6 months into my pregnancy and didn't bring it up again. I also didn't talk about it much with my husband after the birth. I think, for him, he was almost relieved to have me stand my ground without nagging him to agree with me--that way, he didn't have to (in his mind) acknowledge that his parents may have made a mistake with him.
Also, when you do have to discuss it, stay away from the "Intact guys have better sex" argument. That is so NOT what a circumcised man wants to hear!!!! Focus on the risks, the pain, the lack of medical necessity, the interruption of bonding and breastfeeding, the "His body, His choice" angle, and the fact that you will feel as violated and abused as your child will.
Bottom line is, Your husband cannot really demand it. He does not have the right to demand parts of your child's genitals. You will be the one who is asked to sign the consent form, and you do not have to sign.
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5 yo son just asked me if he had a foreskin
i was reading another thread on TAO and my second son walked into the kitchen. he has been reading for quite some time now (he is 5y and 1mo), so he happened to read the following siggy: "think before you cut, a foreskin is there for a reason"
he struggled a bit with "foreskin", but pretty much sounded it out. obvious next question...what is a foreskin? i told him it the skin that covers over the head of a boys penis, to protect the head.
he got a weird look on his face (realizing he probably didnt have this) and then came the dreaded question. My first son is 12 1/2 and hasnt figured out yet that he is cut...i thought i had some more time before having to face up to this. My second son is super precocious, so i guess it doesnt really surprise me that he got to this point already.
i took a deep breath and said "no, honey, you dont have a foreskin, but you did when you were born"
then i burst into tears. what a mess.
he asked me what happened to it, did someone cut it off? and i said yes, i asked the dr to do it. i told him i was very sorry, and that i thought it had to be done so a boy would be healthier. (this is actually a lie. it was true with my first son, when i was 17 yo myself. by the time i got pregnant with my second son, i knew the facts. i cut him b/c my husband had left me and we were having big disagreements about everything related to the child. i knew i wasnt going to do any vaxes, and i knew that ebf meant i wasnt handing the db over for stbx to take out for the day, so it seemed like if i gave in on circ, i could use it to bargain for everything else. a yr later, out of the blue, xh asked me how someone as fruity (his word for crunchy) as me could circ. turns out he would have been cool w/leaving our son intact. i could have killed him barehanded at that moment.)
so i lied to my son about why i circed. i thought we were done, but i could see the gears turning...i knew what was coming.
"did it hurt mommy?"
i swear i cried so hard i could barely breathe.
i told him i made the dr use a medicine so it wouldnt hurt, but i think it might have just a bit. he asked me what the skin looked like, but i was wary of searching the net for a pic, so i asked him if he felt okay pulling down his pants a bit. he did, and i pointed to the loose skin and asked him to pull it over the head a bit and then showed him my finger and said it sort of looked like that. we looked at the scar (he is super fair skinned, he has the same scar as his dad, plus a tiny skin bridge).
i told his again that i was sorry, and that if i ever had another baby boy, i would NOT do it again. and he said "if you tried mommy, i would put my hand over his privates and yell STOP!"
i asked him if he grew up and got married and his wife had a boy, would he take away the foreskin from his son. he told me "no way! that would be dumb to do to a baby!"
i feel so sick. i was there for the circ. my first son was 7.5 at the time, and he was so upset to hear his baby brother crying in the next room. i feel so disgusted with myself. how can i be the kind of mom who nurses and cosleeps and is so attached to her babies. i dont beat my kids, i try to speak to them with the same respect i want back...and yet, i am the person who caused the most physical pain either one has ever felt.
i feel like throwing up right now.
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Doctors trained in Female Anatomy, cutting male anatomy?!
I so regret having my first son circumcised. I was young. I was stupid. I will never be responsible for having that done to another child ever again.
When I was pregnant, I found and loved Dr Sear's The Baby Book. I read what he said about circumcisions. But when the pediatrician I had picked out said she recommended it to all her parents, I figured what did I know....
So I let some MORON doctor, who couldn't even be responsible for a decent delivery, cut my poor newborn baby. Why on earth should a doctor who went to school and studied FEMALE ANATOMY and works with FEMALES all day long be in charge of surgery on a 2 day old MALE baby?
Anyhow--I cried when I saw what they did to him. I cried when I changed his diapers and he cried when the diapers touched him. I cried when the ring around his poor penis got all yellow and gunky. I cried when he cried as the pediatrician 'inspected' him for infection.
Why on earth do we insist on having elective SURGERY on our newborns? Why do we live in a society that presents this as a procedure, not an invasive surgery?
When i was pregnant with my second son, my husband was concerned about him not 'matching' and what would I say to my first son about it.... I looked my son in the eyes and told him that I am sorry. That I didn't know better. That I did what I thought was best--and yet still need to say I'm sorry, because what I thought was best just wasn't good enough. I should have researched. I should have asked. I should have done something other than blindly following.
my second son is intact and we haven't regretted it for a second. Amazing, when you think of all the years of regret I've had and years of regret yet to come over having my first son circ'd.
Do yourself a favor. Hold your baby in your arms and don't let go. Not for anything. Look your baby over from head to toe and realize that he is perfect just the way he is.
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Finding Out is Only Half the Battle
When I was expecting my son, I checked into misc.kids.pregnancy. That is when I started to read posts from people who spoke out against routine infant circumcision. My first reactions to those posts were at a very visceral level. I was horrified, almost sickened, by the thought of strapping a brand-new baby down to a board and slicing off a part of his genitals. And when I learned that this is often done without anesthesia, I just couldn’t believe it.
Later, I began to think a bit more about the long-term effects of circumcision. I started to see this as a very ethical issue. What right does one have to make such a decision on the behalf of another person? Some of the reasons that I have heard cited in deciding to circumcise seem so lame. I’m sure you’ve heard them all. That’s when I started to post to some of the kids newsgroups, especially the pregnancy newsgroup.
Most insidious, I believe, is the subtle message that I got at the hospital after my son was born. When I was in labor, I was asked if I had a son, would I want him to be circumcised. I said no, and thought that was it. But the topic came up again several times during a two-day stay, mostly by the nurses. The final straw came when the pediatrician who examined my son showed up in my room and said, “Hi, I’m Dr. X and will be circumcising your son.” Over my dead body!
Then, when my son and I were discharged, the nurse gave me instructions on how to care for my son’s circumcision. Then, two days later, we saw a nurse practitioner who also started talking to me about circumcising my son. What’s the message in all of this? Luckily my own pediatrician is very supportive of my son’s intact status.
Julie
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Too Much Pressure
My poor son got circumcised even though I had read everything about it. 8 years ago, when he was born, I was set on the fact that he would not be circumcised or vaccinated. I researched as much as I could on the topics. Unfortunately, they convinced me otherwise in the hospital on the circumcision (oh, where were those wonderful midwives back then?). So, after giving birth, day one I was strong: NO CIRCUMCISION. Day two in the hospital: Uh oh, what do I do Mom and Dad? They said DON'T, the Doctors said "Do whatever Dad is". Well, with that philosophy, nobody will ever stop this insanity. So, by day 3, I knew I had to make the decision before we left the hospital. All that I kept thinking about was Locker Room Syndrome. What a shame. Thinking that I had to welcome my little newborn baby boy into this world by torturing him. Still makes me cry when I think of it. And, still makes me want to go hurt those darn Docs that mislead you so badly. They act like it's no big deal.
I had no idea just how UNpopular circumcising was becoming. I am not one to just go with the times in a situation like this, and I did. So, here's the absolute worst part. Marco was leaving the room with the nurse-- and I stop her...again. This is now the 3rd time I have changed my mind and they are really not appreciating me whatsoever. The nurse tells me it is what I need to do in order for Marco to have a "clean, normal life". The misleading info that it is so germy and horrible to clean really bugs me. What a lame excuse to cut into your brand new baby. Anyway,30 minutes or so later, they bring my baby back to me. My poor, poor Marco looks traumatized. He is silent, eyes wide open and looking incredibly frightened. That whole expressionless face tells me how bad it had to be in there. I will never forget that face. It seriously still makes me cry, eight years later.
Okay, so a day after leaving the hospital, I realize I forgot my coat there. I go back and they have stored it for me in the room where they perform circumcisions. OH MY GOSH-- had I seen this table with 3" thick velcro straps 48 hours earlier, I would not be telling this sad story today. There was a big iodine stain right at the penis area of the table. It just looked gruesome. And, I thought about how many new little babies have gone through this. Every boy I had ever known did. What a darn shame!
Michelle
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Battling for My Son
I am a woman married to a circumcised man yet we have an intact son. The decision to not circumcise was mine. My husband fought me long and hard all the way up to the day our son was born. I read everything I could get my hands on about the subject before my son was born, while my husband went on his own personal opinion that since he was cut we should also cut our son. Many fights ensued and we almost split up over it. I finally asked him to write up a Pro's list for getting a circumcision while I would write up a Pro and Con list. The only thing he had written was that: he was circumcised, it's cleaner, and it was in our religion. I asked him if he knew if his father was cut or not, he said he was sure his father was, he ISN'T, I asked him if he planned on bathing our child once a week he said NO, and then I asked him when did we become Jewish? He said we weren't. My Con list contained 10 times the amount of information as his Pro list yet he still couldn't see things my way. I finally put it to him another way. I told him "What if we have a girl and I tell you I want her circumcised?". He told me I was crazy and that was a sick thing to do, and I asked him what was so different about cutting flesh off of a male child. He told me that it was a traditional thing to do. I told him every tradition has to start somewhere but sometimes you need to take a step back and look at what the tradition is all about.
In this case it is the ritual mutilation of innocent boys who will never have the chance to even choose for themselves if they want this done or not. I feel the same way about piercing a baby girls ears. I feel a parent has a moral responsibility to let their children decide whether or not they want their bodies altered from the way God made them. If God trully intended for males to not have a foreskin I think he would have created him without a foreskin. Didn't God create Adam in His own image? I'm not even that religious but I just feel in my heart that this is wrong. Needless to say, I got my way, but I fear for all of those poor children whose parents don't take the time to think about what they are doing to their children. My son is now 4 years old and has never had any type of infection, he knows how to wash his penis correctly, and I'm sure in the future he will be more in tune with his whole body because he has a WHOLE body.
Trisha
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This boy will be circumcised
I found out I was having a boy on May 14th, 1997 -- I was seventeen 1/2 weeks pregnant and had my "level 2" ultrasound. The technician said, "I can tell if it's a boy or a girl..." I said I wanted to know. She showed me and my husband, Jonathan, a close up-- Yep! A boy!
A few months later, my husband and I were at my mom's house. Somehow, I told her, "We've decided to have the baby circumcised." "I think that's good," she commented. "Jonathan is, and he doesn't have a problem with it," I explained.
Fast forward to September, 1997. Jonathan and I had moved in with his father until Christmas. He had AOL; I'd searched the bulletin boards for awhile and went to a circumcision board out of curiosity. I posted things about how "Jonathan doesn't remember HIS circumcision" and "Wisdom teeth are useless, too..." My signature even said , "Due with #1 Oct. 19th. A boy who will be circumcised." Somehow through those few posts I made, my curiosity got the better of me and I checked out some of the sites people had suggested to me. The two that really hit home were one where I heard a baby screaming during a circumcision, and another where I read testimonies by men who were circumcised as adults, saying how much they'd lost through having the procedure done. That was enough for me to decide against having Nathan circumcised.
When the day came to interview our 1st pediatrician, I made sure to bring up circumcision. Her reply was, "It not necessary." In retrospect, Jonathan told me that this is what he needed to hear, that he didn't want to put his "Little Softie" through that, but wanted to make sure it wasn't needed. (He and I hadn't really talked about it except for me to say "We're not getting it done, right?" and he'd say, "Right.")
Fast forward to Oct. 13, 1997, 3:51 p.m. I had just given birth to Nathan. Not immediately after, but somewhere between then and 11:00 when I finally went to sleep, I was asked a couple of times by doctors or nurses if I was having Nathan circumcised. "No," I said. "Good" came the replies, with a smile.
Fast forward to Oct. 14th, 1997 -- sometime in the late afternoon. In walks a man in hospital "scrubs," pulling a wheeled metal cart behind him with one hand and carrying a clipboard in the other. "I'm here to take Nathan down to be circumcised..." he announced. (Jonathan was still asleep in the chair bed in the corner.) "I don't WANT him circumcised!" I said huffily. I already told TWO people that!" "But his name's up on The Board..." he whined at me. "Well take it OFF, then!" I practically shouted back at him. I was really mad that the "system" was so "wacked" at this hospital; that I needed to do something special to NOT have surgery on my son, that I was bugged by people who worked there to have it done, that my message hadn't gotten anywhere.
Fast forward to a few weeks later... We'd just returned back to Jonathan's dad's house, after spending time at my mom's. I got a phone call from a nurse who was checking up on me. "How are you healing?" she asked. Somewhere in the short conversation she said, "You can have him circumcised up to 2 months of age without anesthetic..." I think I replied something again, about how I didn't WANT him circumcised. Thinking back, it seems strange that "without anesthetic" was a PLUS to her! My guess is that she wasn't supposed to ask me that, but noticed that he wasn't circumcised in my records and so took it upon herself to
try to talk me into it.
Rewind to a week after Nathan's birth... We were at my twin cousins' 5th. birthday party. I really didn't make it out of the bedroom to any of the festivities because Nathan needed feeding, the changing, then cleaning the electric rental pump, etc., etc. However, I do remember standing in the kitchen and overhearing my mom say to my aunt, "They didn't have him circumcised..." I'll never know what my aunt replied, though. She had the twins circumcised and their younger brother, too. She told me just recently that "It's PRIVATE"...
Fast forward to 2/98. I'd been sent a copy of "Whose Body, Whose Rights?" to borrow. If I'd ever had any doubts about not having Nathan circumcised -- which I DID around then because he had a slight inflammation on his penis one morning -- this got rid of them in a QUICKNESS. I don't understand how someone could watch a circumcision and still have it done to their baby anyway...
So, my decision still stands. And I've learned a LOT since Nathan was born about this subject. I've written a website with what I've learned. It's a pity, though, that I have to "fear" the ignorance of American doctors on the natural penis -- that they might try (again) retracting Nathan's immature foreskin and/or try to cut it off...
Jennie
Her website here: http://www.circumcisionquotes.com/
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No One Told Me
During my pregnancy with my oldest son I read "everything" - or so I thought. I really thought that I was educated about pregnancy, the mechanics of birth, and parenting. I wasn't sure about circumcision, but all of the articles that I read seemed to make it seem "50-50" or a personal choice. I never read anything that made me oppose circumcision, and my husband is circumcised, so we decided to do it. Also, my father-in-law wasn't, and he said how "unclean" it was.
When the time came in the hospital, my husband had gone home to shower, so I was all alone. When the nurse came to take my son, a pediatric resident was in my room conversing with me. My son was nursing at my breast, and every instinct in my body told me not to let him go. The doctor and the nurse told me he would be "fine" and that it would be "over in a minute". My husband and I had decided together that we would have him circumcised, and I felt like I had to follow through.
I sat in my room and sobbed while he was gone. The resident poked his head back in my room a little while later and told me- "he's fine -- he's sound asleep". I told myself it must be the hormones making me emotional. When they brought me to the nursery a little while later to show me how to care for the "wound", I almost fainted. When I saw my son- my little baby- lying there, and how raw his penis looked I broke down in tears. The nurse told me he was "fine" in a very condescending manner. I was horrified.
Once home, I tried to forget about it. He healed "normally", and in those crazy days of new parenthood, there was plenty else to think about. Then one day I opened the new Natural Baby catalouge. Inside there was a letter from the owner telling the horrors of circumcision. It hit me like a brick wall. I could not believe what I was reading. That night I went on the internet and did a search. What I found shocked and devastated me. I sat there looking at my sleeping baby and sobbed. I was so angry!! Why hadn't I known? Why wasn't this information made available to all expectant parents? Why didn't I trust my instincts? How could I have done this to my son? It was my job to protect him and I had failed.
The thing that really got to me was that the doctor came back in and assured me he was sleeping peacefully. I now know that it was too much for him to take and that he was either in shock or had completely shut himself down. The image of my innocent baby lying there, strapped down and being violated, without me there to intervene will haunt me always. I will never forgive myself for not knowing better. I will never forgive the medical personnel that didn't inform me. I will never forgive the mainstream parenting books and magazines that fed me sugar-coated information and left me so ill-advised. I also have a lot of anger towards our society for letting this barbaric practice continue in relative silence.
My son is now a healthy three year old, older brother to an eight month old intact baby brother. My husband and I aren't worried about explaining the difference to them. We plan on sharing our experience with them, and hopefully illustrating how important it is not to take things at face value, or letting someone else think for you. I pray that they will always trust what's in their hearts and not what someone else deems true or acceptable.
As for my husband and I, we've learned a lot , too. I wish I could go back in time and protect my son, but I know that I can't. However, I feel that I owe it to him to learn from this experience and think I am now a more confident, and better informed parent because of it. I never question my instincts or let society decide how we raise our children. I also hope that other parents can learn from our mistake, and spare their sons-- and so I will always be vocal in my opposition to circumcision.
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At the last moment
I am ashamed to say that our decision to leave our son intact came down to the very last second. My husband and I were literally struggling with the decision, until finally one of the doctors came in on the tail end our conversation, and heard me say, "I just don't know what to do...I don't think I want to do it..." She came around to the side of the bed and said, very matter of factly, "it is purely a cosmetic surgery, there is no medical reason to do it, if that helps any..." She didn't say it in a way to convince us either way, she just told us the facts and smiled.
I still see her as my sons angel . I shutter to think which way we would have swayed because of our ignorance.
If every expecting parent could hear and take those word in...all those little baby boys could sleep peacefully and naturally in their mothers arms instead of the trauma induced sleep that unfortunately does not last long enough to keep them from feeling the sickening pain...After all...
...IT IS PURELY COSMETIC...
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He didn't want to see it
I am SO GLAD we decided not to circ! I had mixed feelings on the subject, never having seen an uncircumsized penis, hearing other mothers' tales of how it was better for their sons ie: cleanliness, reduced risk of infections and the usual. My husband wanted our son circ'd as he is. We argued about it many times and I was torn between my desire to please my husband, the fact that most of our friends' sons are circ'd, a friend of mine due 3wks after me who said there was no way they wouldn't circ and this very strong instinct/feeling I had telling me it was wrong. Finally I told my husband that if he felt that strongly then he would have to take him himself, stay with him during the procedure and then look after his penis till it healed. I KNEW there was no way on earth that he would do this (he won't even go to the ped's if there's a needle involved) and so that was that.
I have to admit though that I had questioned my decision many times wondering if I did the right thing, would my son develop problems later on, would he worry that he looked different than his father and etc. Oddly enough my husband has always been glad we decided not to circ, it seemed once I he had a reason to back out he was okay with it.
My sister-in-law badgered me constantly after my son was born, saying that I had to pull back his foreskin and clean under it every time I bathed him. When I told her male genitalia was self-cleaning, the same as female, she said I was setting him up for infection and that I would be sorry and might as well have him circ'd right away because he'd develop scar tissue and have to have it done anyway. I consulted the pediatrician on it and she said not to touch it until he is two and then I should start gently pulling it back and cleaning. Now I know even she was only half right and to just leave it alone (although at 20mths he won't leave it alone, it's amazing how far he can stretch that skin!).
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His Ego Wanted It
It was a huge issue between my husband & I. He wanted - I did not. He brought up the "I have a penis so I should decide" and so I asked him if something similar were happening with our daughter's vagina/breasts does that mean I don't have to consult with you because I have a vagina?.....He didn't like the thought of not being consulted.
He said he wanted our son to look like him...to which I replied he will NEVER look like you. He may take after you in many respects but there will also be many differences...would you like him to have plastic surgery to change those characteristics so that he will "look like you"....He thought that was just silly. He said he would be made fun of by other boys. I told him that the percentage of kids being circ'ed/not circ'ed are becoming more equal so it is just as likely that if circ'ed he may be the only one in class. I also said that my brother (born 1975) is not circ'ed and having talked to him he said he was never teased because of it. He said it was cleaner. I said so are boys that much more stupid than girls? Because there are some folds on girls that if not cleaned are the perfect bacteria growing crevices....If we can teach our daughter to clean herself properly than why can't we teach our son? He didn't like the idea of boys being thought to be less smart.
We went round and round....finally I said I seriously see no need for the surgery and why would we want to have our newborn son go through (in my eyes) a needless surgery. Once removed it can not be put back. If at some point there is a NEED or he wants it done...then it will be HIS choice, but it is not ours. I don't know if that sunk in or he just decided not to fight anymore with the pregnant lady (me). But he agreed not to circ.
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Fathers
Time does not heal all wounds
"I am the father of a circumcised son, unfortunately he is one of those little boys in which "no reliable statistics" are known, he suffered complications from surgery. A hospital-born infection entered at the circumcision site, the result was seizures and profound brain damage. I'll watch my son go to be a man in a wheelchair, he does not speak, he does not see. Dr. O failed to address the real benefit of circumcision; it's parked in the circumciser's driveway. Today circumcisers have the audacity to charge $150 for a fifteen minute procedure, one hour's work will make monthly payments on their BMW. Medical insurance groups are wisely dropping the procedure from their health plans. The mutilations will stop when we TAKE THE PROFIT OUT OF CIRCUMCISION.
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Hospital Tactics
"When our son was born the nurse came into the room to get him. I asked what she was going to do. She replied that the doctor is going to circumcise him before we take him home. I told her that my wife and I had not been consulted about that and that we did not agree to have the baby circumcised. I told her that we are not of that religious belief and that we do not want the boy circumcised. In spite of my protest, she continued to move toward the door with the baby. Seeing that she was not paying attention to what I was saying, I moved to block her from exiting through the door. She told me it was doctor's orders and that the doctor was waiting. I told her very firmly, "NO". She left the baby and walked off much disturbed.
After a short time the doctor contacted me. He told me that it was hospital policy to circumcise all male babies before they left for home. I politely told him that this is one baby that they are not going to circumcise. I further told him to prepare the mother and the baby to go home at once. He then proceeded to tell me about all the problems that can occur if circumcision is not performed. It was a very long list of terrible things. He was surprised when I told him that I had never been circumcised and that I have not experienced any of those or any other problems. Again, I told him to have the nurse prepare the mother and the baby to leave immediately or I am taking them just as they are. I was told that I would not be allowed to take the baby home without circumcision I stood my ground, "Get them ready to go!" He then said that the baby must stay in the hospital until the bill is paid. Where upon I took my cheque book from my pocket and asked how much the bill was. I had to go down to the business office to pay the bill. On the bill was a charge for circumcision I told them that the boy was not circumcised and that they should deduct the fee for that. After some argument they finally took the fee for circumcision off.
We never saw the doctor again. However, we did receive calls from his office stating that they had made arrangements for us to take the baby to a pediatrician. we told them WE would decide what to do, not them."- Dr. C.P.
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Have Access to Running Water?
On August 12, 1996 my wife and I had a 11 lb 5 oz Baby BOY!.
Initially, when finding out it was a boy by ultrasound, I was preparing for the ultimate decision and was confronted by my wife, among most other women/mother figures, both inside the family and out with a strong instinct to "cut it off" or you will be sorry. Being circumcised myself at birth, I have never known any difference and had heard that circumcision is "not needed if you keep it clean". My mind was set then and there. I was dedicated to preserving something for my son that I never had.
Quickly, the decision was made for this to be my decision for our son as this involved a very male portion of his anatomy. I found several nurses, mothers, fathers to be in agreeance with keeping a man intact and am pleased with his intact state and intend to tell him later that I wish I were but cannot blame my parents for what they were told by doctors in the early 60's. Note that my father is not circumcised.
Alex, North Carolina
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That's just the way we do things
Like most Americans, I had no clue what circumcision was, exactly. As a child, I was told that it was simply something that boys had done. Instinctually, I knew it was wrong since it made no sense that every single male would be born defective. While at college in the late 1990s, I was browsing the web and came upon the topic. It was a crudely drawn diagram of normal male anatomy and the subsequent removal of the foreskin. It struck me as very creepy and primitive.
A few years later, I got married and soon was expecting my first child; a boy. Prior to finding out the gender of our child, I revisited the circumcision topic. I read all of the alarmist literature on the subject; doctors and parents talking about how circumcision prevents UTIs, penile cancer, cervical cancer, and all sorts of random infections. It struck me as fearmongering. I found out that no organization in the world recommends routine circumcision and haven’t in a long time, with the single exception of when circumcision advocate Edgar Schoen led the AAP circumcision task force. I found out that infant circumcision for is almost unheard of in most of the world and is seen as a religious ritual, not a medical procedure.
Later, I learned that my initial impression of fearmongering was correct. Girls get more UTIs than any boys and are treated effectively with antibiotics. Penile cancer is more rare than male breast cancer. Denmark has lower rates of penile cancer than the United States despite not circumcising babies. Cervical cancer is caused by HPV. The American Cancer Society doesn’t recommend circumcision to prevent any cancer. And most random penile infections are caused by improper care and can be prevented with correct care and treated with antibiotics or antifungals.
Worse, most of this was well known back before I was born. My father’s pediatric book, circa 1975, even said that circumcision was unnecessary and risky.
My son was born and, of course, the most common question asked by family wasn’t (to my wife) “How are you feeling?” or “How is your baby?” It was “So when are you going to have him circumcised?” as if making him a member of the American snipped dick club was the most important thing.
By this time my parents were well aware that I think that routine infant circumcision is a horrible way to start out life. At one point I asked my mother why she would do something like that to me. Her response was, “That’s just the way we do things.” No emotion. No apology. Just a curt response. Later, she told me that their doctor recommended it. Of course he did. He gets paid for it! The doctor excuse might have flown if my parents weren’t in the medical field, but they are. My father is a doctor. My mother is a nurse. In the 1970s, it was difficult for a non-medical person to have access to medical information, but they did have access. In 1979, the AAP did not recommend circumcision. They should have shown less blind trust and done their own research.
I hate being circumcised.
Again, for all you naysayers who think that all men, without reservation, love having a snipped dick:
I’m a man and I hate being circumcised.
I know I have problems due to being circumcised. They became even more apparent when I started restoring my foreskin. I have a traditional 1970s circumcision. In other words, the doctor shoved as much as he could plus 10% in his Gomco clamp and cut it all. Prior to restoring, my erect skin was so tight it was shiny and uncomfortable. Hair was pulled up from my scrotum onto my shaft. My glans, after years of exposure, barely had any feeling at all. The only part of my penis that actually had remotely intense was the small area on the underside of my glans where my frenulum was. Honestly, it was almost like having a dildo that could pee between my legs.
I have been restoring for about two years now. Its been a huge improvement. I don’t have tight, hairy erections anymore, since I have enough skin to accomodate my natural size. Since my restoration device covers my glans, I have significantly more sensation. I can actually feel oral sex now. The extra skin restored part of the “gliding action” (google it) which makes for new and very pleasant sensations during sex for both my wife and I. Still, there are a lot of parts that restoration can’t fix, that are just gone. Baring some huge scientific advance, I doubt I’ll ever know what sex should feel like.
Well, at least I protected my son.
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Look Like Dad?
It couldn't hurt to point out the awful truth, that circumcision DOESN'T make a child look like his father. At best it may make him vaguely resemble his father's current penile appearance in 20-30 years when only he ought to care about what's in his pants.
But don't let the dad kid himself: that's not circumcision's intent nor result. Circumcision doesn't make a kid LOOK like his father, it makes him LACK like his father.
That's the awful truth: that it DOESN'T WORK, except to cut the kid's genitalia "down to size". Unfortunately, given a choice, many boys and men would prefer to be full-sized. And that is why circumcision is a wrongful act when it is forced on someone else.
For the record, my penis is circumcised, NOT whole; but my son's IS whole, not circumcised. He looks natural, but I have an ugly scar. He has a complete set of erogenous nerves, while many of mine deadened at that intentional wound. Shortly after I was born somebody tied me to a board and took a knife to my central genital organ without the benefit of anesthetic. My son was cuddled. The difference in the way we were treated is stark. I claim I was abused for the sake of a doctor's profit. My son was protected from child exploitation at the point of a knife.
We didn't "decide not to cut him", instead we acted as good stewards of his body. We kept him whole and his options open. We did not carve his body in my image. It's hard to think of anything more unlike stewardship than that. Anybody who can't get over his kid having more genitalia than he does doesn't deserve to have power over a child's body.
Children who are whole have a sounder basis for self-esteem, in that they are "all there". Nobody thought their opinion was so worthless that part of their body could be hacked off without asking. Nobody hurt them. Nobody intentionally disfigured them. Nobody damaged them. People took CARE of them rather than wounding them. Their question is easy to answer: "why is my penis/clitoris bigger than yours/theirs?" Answer: "because you're lucky".
Parents who keep their children whole never have to answer the really tough questions: "Where is my foreskin?" "Did it hurt?" "How come my friends could be trusted to keep clean but not me?" "Did you really think I'd rather have a scar than a part that feels good to move?" "Are you so vain to think that I would want to look you so badly I'd let someone slice off part of my PENIS? Especially, when the other choice would have been to look NORMAL!" And the toughest question of all:
"How could you have done this to me?"
Parents who get asked this question belatedly come to realize why we have laws against assault and battery, and circumcised boys are left to wonder why nobody protected them. Of what value is the love of people who cut your body in vain? How does one best thank someone for a needless amputation - with a knife or a gun? Sometimes they realize that the only way to get it back is "premature reincarnation". The worst is that until they die they will carry around the knowledge that it was done to them "on purpose."
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Kellogg's Legacy
I was cut at birth. I don’t hold it against my parents; they are products of their time. I have five sons and one daughter. None of my boys were circumcised. I figured God knew what He was doing better than a cereal-maker-wanna-be doctor. I also studied the subject a whole lot before marriage, and after getting engaged we discussed the subject - I explained what circumcision was and it grossed her out.
When the boys have gotten old enough to voice their concern as to why my penis is different than theirs I simply tell them doctors used to say it was a good thing to cut the foreskin off, but we know better now. I let them know how lucky they are and they smile, relieved they aren’t loosing theirs anytime soon. I get five minutes of sympathy and the subject disappears until I bring it up when we have early-teen discussion about the body, etc.
I have had major battles with female nurses who were out to cut and one male doctor who was too stupid to see past a 90-year-old textbook. But I won each time. One nurse threatened child neglect charges on me - I threatened sexual molestation charges on her.
We followed the advice of American doctors by pulling the foreskin back - stretching as we were told... until a British couple were shocked by our doing it and assured us there was no need. (They have more boys than us.) We didn’t do it with our last two boys and have had no problems with tight skin.
I have had talks about the body with all my children, and even my daughter understands the foreskin has a purpose. I believe all my grandchildren will be intact.
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Protecting My Family
Like thousands of boys in what is supposed to be the most advanced nation on earth (?) I was cut at birth. I’m also the proud father of six year old and two month old INTACT boys. Fortunately I learned the truth and myths about circumcision before my two sons were born. When my first son was born 6 years ago I emphatically refused to have him circed. To the point my wife and relatives thought I had lost my mind. I went to the extreme to make the hospital nurses put PostIt notes on his crib saying “DO NOT CIRCUMCISE!” I even threatened them with a lawsuit if he was cut “by mistake.” It is my “welcome to the world, son,” gift to them.
The next day my second son was born and the pediatrician came to “claim” my boy’s foreskin.
“Do you want to circumcise him NOW?” he said to my wife. Before I could speak up she replied, “NO!” “Then when do you want to circumcise him? TOMORROW?” (you could feel his insistence in his voice). To my surprise she replied, “NEVER!” “Oh! Then I need you to sign (the circumcision REFUSAL form...” he replied and left empty handed. (I couldn’t believe I have to sign a REFUSAL form for circumcision! Do they also have a tonsillectomy, appendectomy, etc. REFUSAL form? Does it make sense to have to sign anything for NOT having an amputation performed?)!
Boy, I felt proud of my wife that day for defending her son’s birthright. I guess she finally got the message...
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Body Memories
A few days after the birth of our Son, we took him back to the hospital to get a circumcision. My Wife could not watch the procedure so I stayed in the examination room with my Son while the procedure was being done. I watched as the Doctor stuck a needle into my Sons penis with anesthetic to numb him from the pain and put this metal contraption on it to hold back the foreskin for circumcision. My Son wailed like a banshee in pain and it was an incredibly heartbreaking procedure to witness. Part of my heartbreak was that my Son’s arms were bound to his side and he could not move. After it was over, I gave him a bottle and he seemed to calm down right away.
I’m telling you this to lead up to what is somewhat bothering me. I read an article entitled, ‘Mohels to Mozambique’, which talked about the issues concerning circumcision, which mentioned how Dan Bollinger had flashbacks of his circumcision even though he was only a few days old. They made it seem like that was a ridiculous notion because at that age it was “biologically impossible”. Well, I believe it 100% because that seems to be an issue with my Son.
He just turned 2, and from the moment he received his circumcision until now, he does not like his Mother or myself to touch anywhere near his penis. If we need to wipe him while changing his diaper or clean him in that area when he gets a bath, he makes a fuss, sometimes cry, or may just try to block you from touching his penis or the undercarriage at all. Myself or my Wife is with him 90% of time so we are positive that he has not been touched down there inappropriately by friends, family members, or childcare personnel. First of all because we dont have him around anyone who has that type of history, secondly, because we had him checked out at our family pediatrician, and thirdly, because he has disliked any kind of touching in that area since his circumcision.
So, I strongly believe that people can have flashbacks. I cannot explain any other reason why my Son hates any kind of attention to his genitals, except that he has some kind of memory of the horrible pain he experienced while getting his circumcision. Of course, the article went on to talk about how more and doctors are not advocating circumcisions like they used to and how the benefits are “not sufficient to recommend routine neonatal circumcisions”, and that, it is an unnecessary procedure that has no known positive bearing on a Man’s life.
I don’t like is the fact that my Son may still have some residual memory of the experience he had at the hands of his pediatrician. My reason for this letter is to say that I do believe that men may have flashbacks because of the reaction my Wife and I get when we are near our Son’s genitals, and to say that I do not believe it is “biologically impossible.”
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Recovering in more ways than one
A few years ago, my wife and I were eagerly awaiting the birth of our fourth son. One day, while changing my third son’s diaper, I recognized his behavior as consistent with avoidance of actual pain. An internet search on penis pain led me to discover that circumcision is not harmless and beneficial as was represented by our past pediatrician. Instead, it always diminishes a boy by eliminating thousands of nerve endings and exposes his glans to unnatural abrasion which will lead to desensitization and may lead, as was seen in my sons case, to pain.
This newfound knowledge profoundly impacted me. For several weeks I cried when I would think about the mistake I had made with my first three boys. I was also disturbed to think that up until that point in my life, I had not realized that I might be missing something myself. In fact, until I was an adult, I was not certain if I was even circumcized. My anguish gradually turned to determination. Working to ensure that other parents did not make and suffer from the same mistake as me has been therapeutic. I have worked on the Medicaid Project and spoken to many people as well. I also have begun a personal improvement project of non-surgical restoration of my foreskin.
Although genital mutilation or amputation or circumcision or whichever euphemism is chosen, is sad, there is life beyond it. I hope those suffering from the trauma, either physical or emotional, of undesired genital alteration find consolation and peace.
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Loss is the Norm
In my suburban Chicago late 70’s/early 80’s upbringing, it was the norm. Everyone was circumcised.
My mom explained it to me when I was a pre-teen—in graphic detail. When I say graphic, I mean she took my penis and pulled the shaft skin up, covering the glans, and then showed me where it was cut. She also told me how afterwards, the skin often “got stuck like glue” to the glans and my pediatrician had to force the skin back to break the adhesions. My mom told me that she continued to pull it back until I was bathing myself.
It didn’t bother me much until I had my first real girlfriend and my first sexual encounter. When it was over, she asked if I enjoyed it. Of course I said I did, but in reality I was thinking to myself, “I waited how many years for this?” It was mediocre at best. Mechanical. Tiresome. When it was done, I was relieved. I didn’t see the big deal.
I was flabbergasted. I thought sex was the end-all. I was worried. Maybe there was something wrong.
I wasn’t until college when I had access to “USENET”, “Gopher” and this new-fangled program called “lynx,” which offered me access to to the “world wide web,” that I started reading similar stories. Apparently I was desensitized, circumcision being the culprit.
I read all the articles I could and compared the written text to my own penis. My glans was gray and wrinkled. The shaft was scarred with evidence of cutting and torn adhesions. I learned that the glans was made of the same tissue as my girlfriend’s clitoral glans, yet when I touched hers, she jumped to the ceiling. When she touched mine, it was a resounding, “Meh.”
I hate my mother.
Fast forward 5 years, I have a wife (not the girlfriend form high school). We were expecting. I told her “no circumcision”. I presented her with all the evidence, and had to admit my own handicap. She agreed.
I had a girl 2 years later, and another boy 3 months ago. The policy is the same whether girl or boy. We’ve had no infections. No hygiene problems. In fact, by my mother’s account, she had to spend a good portion of time tending to my wounded penis. I have to spend no more time on my son’s than a wipe and a powder. The child will not be made fun of in the locker room. The child is not going to look like you no matter what.
Don’t hurt your children. Don’t let the doctors cut them.
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Welcome to America! —now hand over your foreskin
I was born in New Zealand in 1946, to a local Kiwi girl and a G.I. father from Wisconsin stationed in NZ who was intact (not circumcised). Whether out of deference to my father—on active duty in New Caledonia at the time—or an ethical whim, my NZ birth doctor left me alone. In 1946 in NZ, the ‘sand myth’ (that intact Allied soldiers fighting Rommel’s tanks in North Africa got irritations from sand under their foreskins) had not yet taken complete hold. By the late 1950’s circumcision was nearly universal in New Zealand. I was born on the very beginnings of that wave, and made the ‘cut’ as it were, but only, alas, for a time.
I traveled back and forth from NZ to the US as a babe-in-arms, then toddler, several times, and finally fetched up in the USA for good in 1951, at age four or five.
My mother was instructed to forcibly retract the foreskins of her intact sons at each bath, common (and stunningly ignorant) medical advice of the day, not entirely eradicated in 2006. She says now she hated the task as we screamed and bled and she pitied us, weeping over us as she did as she was told. In those days, mothers, especially immigrant war-bride mothers, did not question the judgement of the doctor, no matter how counter-intuitive the advice seemed. Forced retraction seemed to her completely cruel and pointless she says today, age 84, through tears. And of course I have since showed her that her intuition was correct—foreskin retraction is cruel and stupid.
A brother, one year my junior, survived her ‘care’, if that is what forcible retraction could be called. He is intact today and very proud to be so.
But I did not escape so easily.
Perhaps I developed adhesions and an inelastic foreskin, the common and predictable result of forcible retraction, (even according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, widely known for their deep affection for their members but markedly less so for their child-patients). Or perhaps because my foreskin was still naturally adherent to my glans, despite my mother’s efforts. Whatever the reason, I was circumcised, without anesthesia, merely strapped down, soon after my arrival in America, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1951.
My mother weeps today to remember, from the waiting room, hearing me scream for her.
I have no memory of the event whatsoever. Mum tells me that I hid under my bed for days, refusing food or appeals to come out, crying myself to sleep. Then, she tells me, I suddenly appeared and made no mention of the event ever again until adulthood.
I have been urged to get counseling to retrieve the buried memory. To those well-meaning friends who have encouraged this I have two words: Fat chance. Let sleeping dogs lie.
Unfortunately, as the first and second children of ten, my brother and I shared a bedroom all our early years until age 17-18 when we both left home together to attend university in New Zealand. In our youth my brother had taunted me with the fact that he was intact and I was not, a source of some aggravation.
I now know that my circumcision was a complete fraud, either the result of an iatrogenic (Ed: doctor caused) proxy injury, years of horrific retractions by my mother, or my lingering natural balano-prepeutial lamina, the natural connective membrane of boys, which like the hymen of girls, can last as long as 17 or 18 years without harm or worry. Or more likely—sheer greed. Never mind, that physician is long dead.
The only sequelae, (clinical result) to use a physician’s term, is that I have the fastest ‘vaso-vagal’ reflex on the planet, able to faint dead-away at the mere combination of green walls, fluorescent light, the smell of isopropyl alcohol and the sight of lab coats. I have hit the floor upon the mere presentation of a tongue-depressor. Luckily I have a nurse-wife who advocates for me and always escorts me to doctor’s appointments, or draws my blood herself, a blessing. I long ago inserted a letter in my medical records, on legal stationery, that suggests that I should be protected from falling and be allowed to lie prone for all medical procedures. As a warning, it seems to work. I would like to think kindness is in evidence here, but it might be just be my legal stationery.
I have had a lifetime of vivid nightmares of being restrained and cut, and a terrible life-long fear of knives, to the extent that I cannot abide those magnetic knife holders some people use on their kitchen walls, which expose the blades all in a row. To be fair, the nightmares have faded as the years have gone by, and I cheerfully chop vegetables. At 60 years old, the worst nightmares only happen to me a manageable 3 or 4 times a year, though they are profoundly disturbing and take days to shake.
I deeply regret that my only son, now 34, is circumcised. I was told it would be better at birth than what happened to me at 4 or 5, and I suckered for that immoral pitch to my eternal regret. My son tells me our family history of genital mutilation dies with him, which is most reassuring. He is bored with my regular apologies. But I take my bitter regrets of what I did to the poor helpless lad in 1972 to my grave.
Mostly, I am a normal, outrageously outgoing and optimistic guy who has managed nicely, despite the efforts of Anglophone physicians. Some day all this circumcision silliness will be history, and the doctors and parents of 2050 will wonder what those cruel idiots of 1870-2006 were thinking. Human progress is a slow business, we could all agree.
But at least my grandsons, when they arrive, will know and feel what it is like to be real, complete, whole, intact males, with full sexual sensation, who look like Greco-Roman statues, not like mutilated slaves!
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Doctors, Nurses, Etc
Too Late
I work as a maternity nurse and if I had worked in this field when my son was born I would NEVER have had him circumcised. The OBs don't believe in any anesthetic, except sugar water, and it totally makes me ill to have to assist doctors with these awful procedures. I try to let moms here know that there is not any medical reason to do this to their babies, but this is not a real popular view around here. As my uncircumsized dad told me when my son was born, "Leave his little joint alone! God made it the way it is for a reason!" I realize in restrospect that he was right.
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Sensitive Wounds
While I was in the hospital I came across many women who did have their sons circumcised - but offered no reasons as to why - I guess they just thought it was the thing to do. This one woman I shared a room with had her son circumcised the second day she was there. When she got him back, he was in a deep sleep and she stupidly said, "Oh, well , they must have given him something for the pain. Look how well he's taken it." The nurse assured her they did not. Then, one-half hour later, when she couldn't wake him, she started to get worried. I bet the little thing was in shock.
Anyway, I had gotten to know this baby's cries, and they were distinctly different after he had the circumcision - like a howl of an animal in pain. I waited through the first crying episode of this kind (about a half hour) biting my tongue and crying, when the mother Said, "I don't know what's wrong with him. he's eaten, he's changed. What can it be?" [...duh....] I said to her, "Could it be that he's peed on his circumcision site?" Unbelievably, this had never occurred to her. Sure enough, this was the problem. I was so annoyed and felt so bad for her baby for his pain and for having such a dopey mom. And this woman actually had a masters degree in Education!!!! I think if you're going to choose for your son to be circumcised, you should at least familiarize yourself with the procedure and its consequences.
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Put down the knife and step away from the baby.
One of the circumcisers here laid down his knife last week. So last Sunday we gave him a bouquet of orchids and a thank you note. There were eight conscientious objectors on duty that day to sign the note. It always was kind of bizarre that he was doing circumcisions anyway: he works out of a holistic office, and believes in gentle births, but he’s been doing circumcisions for years. He’s shy (yes, a shy circumciser!) so he never did tell us what made him decide.
It could have been the office visit that Sharon paid him earlier in the month (he’s her daughter’s doctor) when she told him what was on her mind. She said to him, “you have such a kind heart. But your hands do such cruel things to babies. I can’t understand it.” Or maybe it was something he read in the newspapers. It could have been some of the books and a video that Mary lent to one of his office colleagues. We’ll probably never find out. Who knows, maybe like Mary-Rose, it all came to him in a dream.
Betty Katz Sperlich and the Santa Fe Nurses (NM)
For more detail on their protest read here: http://nurses.cirp.org/R.N._Conscientious_Objecto.html
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Saw It Done
During my training to be a Registered nurse I was required to watch first hand a circumcision done on a newborn.
I was not prepared for this...I NEVER realized that it was the way it was. It looked like that poor child was being sacrificed to a demon god!
I will never forget the screams. I have since had two children with all the various childhood bumps and ailments and I have NEVER heard screams of such intense fear and agony come from either of them. Any belief that this was a painless procedure went straight out the window. The baby displayed all the behaviors of an adult human strapped down and
subjected to the most horrific and intense torture imaginable. No wonder it fell into a semi-coma like state afterwards..it was exhausted and shocked beyond belief. (I have since read that adult torture victims also do the same.)
Of the two others there witnessing the event, the man, (in his mid twenties) had to sit down as he was shaking so hard. The older woman, a mother craft student, fainted half way through the proceedure. We all agreed afterwards that we'd never ever allow such a thing to be done to any of our sons.
Eleven years later and I have two boys...6 and 2. I have never had any problems at all related to their intact foreskins. penile hygiene is a none event. Recently my six year old has learned to pull back his own foreskin in the bath to clean it. There is still less then half a centimeter of it adhearing to his meatus on the right hand side, but he knows as I do that it will separate fully in time and not to pull on it as this will make it sore. I haven't a clue about how much of the disattatchment process has occurred with my two year old. It'll happen in it's own time, just like his older brother and there is absolutely no medical reason for forcing it.
And lastly... Having seen many penises as a nurse I am of the opinion that a neat covered manhood is far more pleasant to look at then one that is rudely exposed.
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Typical Hospital Pressure
"It seems that a few hours after my friend Deb's delivery and while she was still sedated a nurse came into her room and told her that she had forgotten to sign a consent from regarding her baby. She took the paper and fortunately was able to read and understand it before she signed it. It was a consent form for circumcision. She informed the nurse that she had not forgotten to sign it. She and her husband had refused to sign it because they did not want the surgery performed on their son. The nurse then asked, "Don't you want your baby to be normal?" Deb said she told the nurse, "Yes, we want our baby to be normal, that is why we do not want his healthy normal body violated and I would suggest that you do some reading and research on what is and what is not normal in the care of an infant male." Can you imagine, just how close this came to violating their wishes. It makes me wonder how often this might be a standard rather than an exception".
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He Lied To Me
I was thrilled and knew from the moment of conception in my heart that I would be having a little boy. I wanted to be the best mom that I could be to my sweet baby that was on its way.
I will give you a little bit of my background. I am a Pediatric Registered Nurse. I went through nursing school and the topic of circumcision was never discussed. All of the literature that is used in today's[2004] medical schools all picture the circumcised penis as the norm. I live in an area of the country where it is highly uncommon not to circ. I can honestly say that I have never seen an intact penis in my nursing career. I ignorantly thought that circumcision was something that was medically necessary and that it was beneficial. I naively thought why would the medical community propagate something that wasn't necessary? I never witnessed a circumcision as a nurse or a student nurse so I truly didn't understand what the procedure entailed.
I found out at 24 weeks gestation that I was indeed pregnant with a little boy. I never researched circumcision before he was born. I honestly thought I was doing what was best for my son when I handed him to the Doctor the day after he was born to be circumcised.
That day is the greatest regret of my life.
I specifically asked the Doctor who would be performing the procedure if he would be using proper anesthetic because I didn't want my baby to be in pain. He assured me that he would be using Lidocaine. I felt comfortable and trusted this physician with my child. After my son developed complications from his circumcision I requested his hospital records. This is when I learned that the Doctor had used only sugar water on a pacifier for anesthesia! The Doctor lied to me. He did not use proper anesthesia for my poor baby boy. I shudder to think at how my son suffered at that Doctor's hands during his circumcision.
Caring for the circumcision was an incredible ordeal. The circumcision site was red and raw and bloody. It had to be cleaned at every diaper change and my son would shudder and cry in pain. It then had to be covered in Vaseline and covered with a gauze 4 x 4. He would cry any time that he urinated. I am sure that the urine burned on that open wound. It eventually seemed to heal and I thought everything was okay.
At 15 months I was changing my son's diaper. I noticed a white mass at the circumcision site. I pushed on it and it began to come out of the side of his penis. I continued to push on the area and a large marble sized white pea emerged. Where it had come out there was now a huge hole in the side of my son's penis. I was alarmed to say the least! I hadn't ever seen anything like it and I am a Pediatric RN. I though it was an abscess of some sort.
The next morning we went to the Pediatrician. I had the white mass in a plastic bag. When we went in the Pediatrician looked at it and began to laugh. He explained that my son's circumsion had healed wrong and that the skin had reattached to the glans of his penis. He told me that this happens in up to 71% of circumcised boys. He said that the white mass was a smegma pearl that had developed in the pocket that his adhesions had left.
The pediatrician then did something that makes me sick to this day. He grabbed the head of my son's penis with two fingers and his remaining foreskin with the other hand and RIPPED literally ripped the skin loose. My son screamed and writhed in pain. He bled and it left a red raw wound where the pedi had ripped the skin loose. I asked the Doctor what he had done. He explained to me that the adhesions had to be ripped loose otherwise when my son was a teenager and had his first night time erection that they would be ripped loose then and would bleed. He said it would be better to do this now than to have him traumatized as a teenager. He then instructed me and my Husband that the skin had to be ripped loose at each diaper change otherwise it would grow back in the wrong place again.
We followed the Pediatrician's instructions for several months. My son began to scream before we even took his diaper off. He was so traumatized that if you even tried to wipe his penis with a baby wipe he would begin to beg you not to and cry.
I finally realized that something was seriously wrong with this whole situation. I began to research circumcision. That is when I learned the truth about the procedure. I learned that it is purely cosmetic and has no medical benefit. I also learned that the pediatrician was correct when he said that 71% of circumcised boys develop the penile adhesions my son has. I also learned that ripping adhesions loose can cause scar tissue to develop and cause permanent nerve damage. We could have permanently injured my son even further if we had continued to follow the pediatrician's advice.
I am horrified that my Poor Baby Boy has suffered so needlessly because I made the decision to have him circumcised. I get out pictures now from the day he was born when he was still intact and whole and I want to cry. He was so perfect just the way he was born and I took that away from him. I feel such incredible guilt when I think about all of the pain he has gone through. It makes me sad every time I change his diaper or I put him in the bath and I see his poor little penis.
I would never circumcise another child. I would urge anyone who is considering it to rethink their decision to circ. Even my Husband is now against circumcision.
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Botches
While in nursing school I watched a resident perform HIS first circumcision. He totally botched it and it took about an hour. He never re-numbed the area, so the poor little guy felt EVERYTHING.
My nephew is 3 and the first time he was circumcised the incision site fused to the head of his penis and had to be redone. Now the doctor's need to redo it again because his body has consistently been treating it as a wound and building scar tissue. It is necessary now because if/when he gets an erection the skin tears away causing more scar tissue to build.
Also I have known 3 friends with baby boys that had theirs botched and had to have additional procedures while little.
Scary stuff
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I used to assist in cutting babies
I am a former labor and delivery nurse for a major hospital. When I first started there, I assisted in infant male circumcisions. I hated it from the first but it was a part of my job, and I had children to feed.
The first circumcision I assisted in is burned in my memory forever. The screams of that poor child will never leave me. The doctor assured me that the baby felt no pain, that he wouldn't remember it, and that he was only mad because he was restrained. In order to make it easier on myself, I chose to believe that.
We were trained to never tell the parents the truth. We were always to tell them that the child slept through it, or he barely noticed, or he only cried for a minute. We would keep babies after the circumcision until they calmed down, so their parents wouldn't know how bad it was. A lot of babies did just pass out. The pain must have been completely unbearable. Very few OB's use any kind of anesthesia, believing that it's more trouble than it's worth. Only one doctor that I worked with ever used any anesthesia, and it was a lidocaine injection. Lidocaine injections hurt tremendously anyway, and the children would shriek in pain and terror as they were given the shot. I often wondered if it hurt more than the surgery would have. After that, the babies would still shake and scream through the entire surgery. Then I'd quiet them down and take them back to their parents and tell them that he slept through the whole thing and barely noticed it. Even if we didn't use anesthesia we were always supposed to tell the parents that we used adequate pain relief, which almost always amounted to a pacifier. That is what most OB's consider adequate pain relief and most likely what every child received, even if your OB told you different.
After 6 months I refused to do the circumcisions anymore, and I was willing to lose my job over it. I didn't lose my job, and I continued for three more years. But every time one of those babies was cut open it would rip at my soul. I could hear them screaming in the other room. The screams that came from the circumcision room were screams of utter agony, like dying animals. I used to pray that the babies would just pass out so their pain would be over. The lucky ones did.
I left L&D after almost four years, having assisted in nearly 100 circumcisions and been witness to hundreds more. I will be haunted by those children forever. All the babies whose bodies I helped destroy follow me everywhere I go, I can't get away from them. I now work for a pediatrician that does not perform circumcisions, but whenever I see a little boy with a circumcision scar, I can hear those screams again.
I have 2 daughters, and 2 sons. None of them are circumcised. I am lucky that my sons did not come until after my days on the L&D ward, and they were not subjected to the horrors that I participated in.
My punishment lies with realizing the horrible things I helped make happen, and living with that guilt every day. Anyone who tells you that the baby didn't notice, or slept through it, is lying. I know for a fact that no matter how well anesthetized a child is, he will be in pain. Even the children who received the blocks still screamed and thrashed in pain and fear the whole time, until they gave up fighting. Every baby boy hurts from this. The mother who says her child was looking around oblivious is either lying or is in such denial that she can't accept what she did to her child. I've been in that room hundreds of times. I know that there was never a single baby that did not notice. There wasn't a single one that didn't shake or scream. Your child was being tortured, too. Maybe you didn't know going into it, maybe you did. But don't discount his pain to make yourself feel better.
I hate myself for doing nothing to stop it, for helping it happen. I tried to tell myself that at least I could be there and hold his hand or try to comfort him, but there is no comforting a baby during that. I was just another one of his abusers, even if I tried to pretend otherwise. I helped strap down those perfect little boys and mutilate their bodies, and then lied to their mothers about how they didn't feel a thing. Instead of telling their parents the truth, which might have helped other children, I did what I was told.
Circumcision is wrong. It's as wrong as wrong can be. People who have their children circumcised are abusing them, and the doctors who perform them are doing it solely for money. A circumcision is easy surgery for the doctor and quick money. And those babies pay the price.
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Day I withdrew from Nursing School
I want to share with all of you an event that drew me into intactivism
Back in 1996, I began an OB/GYN hospital clinical as a student nurse. One day, I was enlisted to attend a ‘routine circumcision.’ I did not realize how much that event would shatter the very foundation of a career choice made in ignorance. I appeared in the doorway of the circ room and saw the little newborn boy to whom I was ‘assigned’ for the day. Twenty years-old, and not having kids of my own, I did not anticipate the lurching sensation that gripped my heart. Laying strapped down to a table—so small and new, pure and innocent, trusting, all alone, and defenseless—I walked toward the baby and wanted to grab him off the table and shelter him, to tell him that nobody would hurt him.
In walked the doctor. Loud, obnoxious, joking with his assistant, as if he was about to perform a 10 minute oil change. Not once did he talk to this little baby. Rather, he reached for his cold metal instruments and then reached out for his object of mutilation, this sweet newborn’s perfect unharmed body. As I recall the screams of pain and terro, his small lungs barely able to keep up with the cries, I turned in horror as I saw the doctor forcefully pull his foreskin around a metal object. Then came the knife, cut, cut, cut.
I stood next to the baby and said, “You’re almost done sweety. Almost done.”
Then came the words as that son-of-a-bitch said while he dangled the foreskin in midair, “Anybody care to go fishing?”
My tongue lodged in my throat. I felt like I was about to vomit. I restrained myself. My duty was to then take the infant back to the nursery for ‘observation.’ Here is where I realized I couldn’t do it. I could not be a part of such a cold, sterile, out-of-touch medical model. Rather than observing, I cradled the infant. I held him and whispered comforting words as if he were my own. I’ll never forget those new little eyes watch me as if in a haze. He knew I cared about him. He knew he was safe in my arms. He knew that I was going to take him to his mommy, but deep in his little heart, at some level, I know he wondered where his mommy was while he lay there mutilated in what was supposed to be a safe and welcoming environment.
I made a note in the chart and then caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. My chest and face had broken out in purple splotches. My next thoughts? I can’t do this. I refuse to do this. This is NOT for me. I took the baby to his mother, who was complaining about ’some pain’ she was experiencing. I never addressed her pain because I left to go to my locker. I grabbed my belongings and hoped that my rejection of this ‘medical system’ could serve as some type of redemption for the violation of that newborn that I cradled in my arms that day. The next day, I withdrew from nursing school and never looked back.
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Finally Heard the Screams
Many years ago, I witnessed an infant circumcision in person at the invitation of a mutilator. He invited me to attend, to prove to me that there is nothing wrong with mutilating babies. He also decided and told me that he would not do a complete circumcision, just a little dorsal slit, to minimize trauma, damage, injury, and blood loss. “I will cut on the center line. There are no blood vessels there.” (Right.)
I decided to go. White mutilator, black baby, southern USA, 1972 or so. With the first probe under the foreskin the baby screams a blood curdling scream and keeps screaming. With the crushing of the center line of the top of the foreskin with the hemostat the baby’s screaming and thrashing ratchet WAY up (he was restrained by tie-downs, put in place in preparation for this human hurricane they already knew from long experience was coming) and when the clamp comes off and the dorsal cut is made the baby begins to vomit—projectile vomiting—the most violent vomiting I have ever witnessed from any human being. Blood from the baby’s penis spurts everywhere. The vomiting interrupts the screaming and the screaming interrupts the vomiting. The mutilator takes out his sewing kit and starts sewing. With every puncture of the needle a new blood-curdling scream comes rushing out, with every pulling of the thread through the foreskin the baby turns bluer and screams louder and harder and finally, when I think the police are going to arrive, or the baby is going to die, or God is going to strike us all dead on the spot—the baby goes totally silent and completely limp. He passes out, knocked cold by the trauma of the mutilating. [Ed. Some babies dissociate and this may be what Mr. Lewis observed] The mutilator can now work in peace.
He finishes his sewing, cleans up, and we head for the stairs. On the staircase he looks at me and starts to talk. I thought he was going to tell me how he had never seen anything like that in his life, that babies never respond like that, or something at least. Instead, what he revealed with his off-hand question was that this was a normal operation, nothing out of the ordinary here. “Did you have any objection to that?” he asked.
I was momentarily speechless. What I wanted to do in answer to the mutilator’s insane question was kick him in his groin as hard as I could and then ask him, “Did YOU have any objection to THAT?” I supposed he would have objected to my reaction, so I didn’t do it. Also I didn’t want to go to jail; I wanted him to go to jail. So I responded calmly, “I think the baby objected to it.”
I have since learned from a reformed circumciser, who did scores of circumcisions, that he didn’t hear the babies he circumcised screaming. He was so intent on doing his work “correctly” that he literally, as hard as it is to believe, did not hear the screaming. Then, one day—why, he didn’t know—he heard it. He heard the baby and knew what the screaming meant. He was injuring the baby, deeply. He’s never done another one.
The mystery of how people can do this to babies and allow it to be done and think it normal gets deeper for me every day.
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I used to cut babies
As a medical student at America’s oldest hospital, Pennsylvania Hospital, I was happy to be on the obstetrics rotation. While still in college, I had heard an obstetrician speak enthusiastically about his optimistic specialty. So now I was enjoying helping to bring babies into the world. While professors provided good background information in formal lectures, my real teachers were residents only a few years older than I was. They took turns talking me through normal deliveries.
Almost every doctor can recall the joy of delivering a healthy normal infant. This joy was shattered one day when one of the residents said, “There are some circumcisions that need to be done, go and do them.” At the time I guess I knew what a circumcision was, but that was about it. I had certainly learned nothing about the subject in medical school. Obediently, I proceeded to the newborn nursery, where another medical student was already waiting. I felt nervous, and he looked quite nervous, too. Strapped to a board on the long counter in front of each of us was a bawling male infant. Beside the infant was a surgical tray filled with instruments. Imagine our consternation when we found there was no one to tell us what to do. Obediently, we put on surgical gowns, then surgical gloves. Then we began to try to figure out how to use what I later learned was a Gomco Clamp.
As far as I know, I made a fairly neat job of it. But my abiding memory of that day is of my colleague. He was one of the more brilliant members of our class, and was planning to become a radiologist. As for surgery, forget it. He was all thumbs. I still remember him, standing beside me, fumbling with the complicated instruments, proceeding to use them on the helpless penis before him, all the while just shaking his head!
I look back on the only time I have ever performed any circumcisions with regret and resentment. I resent having had no opportunity to study circumcision in medical school or to consider whether I thought it a treatment for anything. I resent the resident commanding me to do it, while offering no further guidance or help. In fact, I was treated just as the medical profession treats innocent new parents today. Doctors tell them a circumcision needs to be done. Before the new parent has time to consider, it is all over. Then it is too late to say no, and everyone has to live with the consequences. I was a medical student, so a lot of the responsibility was mine. I clearly violated, all in one instant, the Golden Rule (I certainly would not have wanted that done to me), the major tenet of medical practice, First, Do No Harm, and all seven principles of the American Medical Association’s Code of Ethics. Mind you, I did not realize it then, just as unwary medical students do not realize it today. Now I know there are no valid medical indications for routine neonatal circumcision. I realize much harm can be done, evidenced by the thousands of men who have written their testimony and who have told me personally of the harm done to them. Now I also realize that I violated my patient’s basic human right to enjoy his entire body intact, while all he could do was scream his tiny head off. That was some years ago, but it might just as well have been last year.
The United States is the only country in the world that, for no religious reason, severs part of the penis from the majority of its newborn males. I speak out in the hope that many parents and doctors will read this before getting swept into the cultural madness of routine neonatal circumcision. What should one do if called upon to consent to or to perform circumcisions? Just say NO! In so doing, you will be taking the only ethical position there is on this issue.
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If I had not seen it done...
I am choosing today, Mother’s Day, to share it with my friends and family. Sharing this information with all of you is my Mother’s Day Gift to myself and all of you.
I guess my story really started when I was young. Somewhere in my childhood I must have learned about circumcision as something that “gets done” to baby boys, “extra skin” that gets cut off the penis because it is “better” for them. I never questioned it as a child or teenager, it was the “norm”. Everyone in my family was circumcised (until I later learned that my mother’s father wasn’t!) and it was the expected thing to do. I too held the false thinking that boys who weren’t circumcised were “dirty”. I’m still to this day amazed that even as a young child, this thinking was so ingrained within me, as I’m sure it still is in those mothers/parents who continue to circumcise.
When I was in nursing school, one of my classmates did a presentation on the pros and cons of circumcision. I can remember her clearly saying, “Dude, there are just no pros to circumcision.” Even so, I can still remember thinking there must be since “everybody does it.” I remember being excited to have my turn to see a circumcision during my postpartum nursing school rotation. Please hear me when I tell you, I was horrified by what I saw. My role as a nursing student was to just stand there and observe. Now I am not somebody who gets squeamish or grossed out or anything, and I wouldn’t describe the procedure as gross, I would describe it as torture. It was a life changing experience for me and I need to tell you what it meant to me. I couldn’t believe what I was bearing witness to. This perfect new baby, his legs strapped down to a white plastic board called a circumstraint, betadine splashed on his genitals as the doctor jabbed him with a couple shots of lidocaine. The baby was screaming and as I watched the doctor quickly get to work with her tools a rush of weird sensations came over me. Every intuition in my body was screaming NO! It was like I was frozen and couldn’t move or speak. I didn’t want to look but I couldn’t look away. I watched the doctor repeatedly jam an instrument under the baby’s foreskin to separate it from the glans (which I later learned feels comparable to separating a fingernail from the finger by carving under it with a knife) After she separated it, she was able to cut around circumference of the penis and remove the foreskin. And then she tossed it in the trash like it was a worthless piece of skin.
When I got home that day, it was all I could think about, that poor baby and the glazed look he had in his eyes after the procedure, like he had given up, had been defeated. I couldn’t believe this procedure had become a routine thing to do to babies. I felt awful knowing that men in my life had endured this procedure. It was one of the first things they had had done to them. Some welcome to the world. And just because they can’t remember doesn’t make it right. I tried to describe to my husband that day what I had seen and told him that I could never do that to my baby. We didn’t really talk much more about it since we were still a few years away from starting a family.
Fast forward to when I became a post-partum nurse. Luckily, working nights I never had to deal with a circumcision taking place, but I did have to take care of babies in the nursery who had been circumcised earlier that day. You could tell which boys had been circumcised. They were the ones that awakened with a scream as they peed. No doubt it stung their fresh wound. It was during that time that I entered my second trimester with Noah. My motherly instincts must have been in overdrive. I remember knowing that I would never let my baby hurt like those poor babies. I took those weeks to do some internet research and my husband and I both read a couple of books that one of our doctors had donated to the postpartum unit. The Hidden Trauma of Circumcision, and Circumcision: What Your Doctor May NOT Tell You About. Everything I learned further cemented in me that circumcision is wrong. I remember the day we found out we were expecting a boy. We were so excited and felt so blessed. There was never a dilemma as to whether or not he would be circumcised. We were, and still are, at peace that both of our boys have their whole perfect bodies. It horrifies me me knowing what I know now, that had I not gone into nursing, I may never have explored circumcision and I would have “just done it.” I am so grateful I am a mother who found out before it was too late.
I have been researching circumcision information for 6 years now and try to keep up with the lastest studies and statistics. I have tried in the past to gently share this information with some friends and some family and some patients….and sometimes I just don’t have “the fight” in me or the know-how to talk to certain people about it. I am sad to say that there are some people I never even tried to educate, and now it’s too late. It can definitely be a hard topic to bring up with some people, it has taken me years to realize that sometimes social conformity is more powerful than me, but to not be afraid and to not be silent. I hate feeling sad when I hear someone is having a boy just because I’m sure they’ll circumcise him. I hate feeling that because as the mother of two little boys, I know that little boys are amazing little people with or without intact genitals. I’m not some “crazy hippy” and parents who don’t circumcise their boys aren’t part of some “tree-hugging cult” or bizarre stuff that pro-circumcision people sometimes spout off because the truth is too painful to fully comprehend.
I am a firm believer of when you know better, you do better. I’m sharing my story with you, because if life hadn’t taken me down the path that it did, I may not have learned the truth about circumcision. I just can’t fathom this barbaric “custom” going on for another generation. I can’t be silent anymore.
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