Circumcision

[Caroline248]

Okay..who is doing it, who is not? I decided I don't want to. I know I am going get some opposition, both my DH and DS are circ'ed. I don't really want to hear all the reasons we shouldn't/should do it, I can see an influx from the Case against Circ board..... ( I know the reasons)...just looking to see how everyones partner feels about it. How would you ahndle it if your husband wanted to??

Caroline

[Kabes]

I think it's terrible and don't want to. DH insists that we do. I told him I would go along with it under 2 conditions 1- He has to watch one first 2-He has to go with our son and comfort him while its being done. I hope dh changes his mind after seeing one. If he still insists on doing it I will have anesthesia (local) for my baby. Honestly though, I can't bear the thought of it! Thank goodness the first two were girls.

[chrissy]

Noah isn't circ'ed and none of my sons will ever be. My dh is circ'ed and until I read about it during my first pregnancy I had always just assumed we'd do it. It was kind of a battle with my dh, but now he is glad we didn't do it. My MIL thinks it was the wrong decision, but who the h@ll cares what she thinks about my son's penis. It's really none of her business.

Kabes, I am so sorry you are in that position. I know that when I was dealing with dh I showed him a bunch of stuff on the web about it. I don't have any of the sites offhand but I know there are pictures and they are really horrible. Also, if you do have a son, after his birth I would ask your dh if he honestly looks at his son's penis and thinks there is something wrong with it that requires surgery.

[Caroline248]

Here is a link I got off the Circ board, I think it is a video that shows one being done...maybe your DH can watch it. I don't want to....so I have no idea if it is graphic or what...


http://www.intact.ca/vidphil.htm


Caroline


Edited....I glanced at the site...only look at this if you realy want your husband to know what relly happens..I didn't look too much, but wow....

[plantmommy]

I deferred to dh for Cullen... he wanted him to "look like daddy", as stupid as that is, and I didn't do much research, and went along with it, and regret it horribly.

Aside from the actual procedure, with ds, the bit of foreskin left repeatedly would try to readhere, in small places, and because it's not like a totally uncirc'ed, it would easily get accidentally retracted and be injured. Poor baby had more than a few periods of an ouchy penis in his first few years.

This time, knowing much more, and knowing this is another boy, I just told him we were NOT putting this boy through it. When I expressed myself strongly, he just accepted it and said ok.

[Mom2baldie]

We dont circ. If my husband wanted to, honestly I would tell him flat out its just not going to happen. I know thats not the best approach with everyone though, but it does work with my DH. I also gave him some info from Mothers Against Circ...(the website) showing that an intact male has more sensitivity during intercourse, so therefore more pleasure. He thought that was interesting. Thats what ended up making him feel more comfortable with leaving our boys intact. I personally feel there are much better reasons than that though.

[mama2annabelle]

No way!! Thankfully my DH totally agrees with me (he is circ'd by the way). Our friends and family think we're crazy, but just as someone else here said...who cares what they think about our son's penis. It really is no one else's business. I do NOT think it is okay to put a newborn through that just so he'll "look like everyone else".

[Lazuli]

We've talked about this already and my husband is just fine with not circing if we have a boy. I'm glad it's a non-issue for us. He's asked me not to share any of the details of how the procedure is done with him, he'd rather not know what his parents put him through.

[cottonwood]

We don't circumcize. In the beginning neither of us had strong feelings about *not* doing it (we didn't know much) but it just seemed pointless and too much of a hassle to bother, so we didn't (it probably helped that no one was pressuring us to do it, and we had a homebirth so nobody was asking if we wanted to.) At the time, though, if dh had really wanted to I'm sure I would have gone along with it, because like I say I just didn't know any better.

There is no way I would allow it now, no matter what my husband thought about it. Since then I've actually put some thought into it, and I just believe that my son's rights to his own body come before my husband's rights to his son's body. My feeling is that *no one* has the right to make the choice for someone else to permanently alter their body by removing one of their healthy, functioning, valuable body parts. Edited to add: I don't believe I have the right to allow it, either.

[Kabes]

Caroline- Thanks for the link! I can't go there, but I will show it th dh. I can't even go to the Circ. board anymore. It makes me sick to think about putting a baby through that.

Lynsey- I usually just put my foot down too but since I've already done that (re: homebirth), I don't think I should 'press my luck'.

[Caroline248]

Well, I brought it up to my husband again, and his thought is that our oldest is circ'ed and he doesn't know how he feels about making them "different" from each other. I countered with the fact that our oldest is also cross-eyed, does that mean if this one comes out with straight eyes we should surgically have them crossed just so the boys will look the same??? He kind of thought for a minute, and agreed to re-open the conversation. But he stated that he is definatly FOR doing it at this point.

I don't really want to put my foot down on it...we really don't do that with anything in our marriage. These are not MY kids, they are OUR kids, and we have to discuss this...but I can manipulate!!!

Well..it;s a start..

Caroline

[4under6]

We circ'd Donny, because we just never gave it a second thought (dumb, dumb, dumb) and he has had the same issues as Plantmommy's son. Readhering, adhesions, UGH. His penis just doesn't look normal. It doesn't look circumcised, but it sure doesn't look intact, either.

We regret it every day.

When I got pregnant this time, I researched and researched, and decided there is no way we are circ'ing Finn. Regardless of what my husband thought (he's circ'd). But when I told husband about my choice and gave him some facts, he simply said "Ok. I don't want it done to him either. There's no need."

We feel bad for Donny!
I hope he doesn't continue to have issues with his penis. He has had so much trauma down there, aside from the screwed up circ!
In November, my husband was holding him up over the kitchen sink to wash his hands, and he slid down, and the cupboard handles below the sink caught him on the scrotum and ripped the scrotum right down to exposed testicle. He had 17 stitches to his scrotum. My husband nearly passed out, honest to goodness. He has yet to bring himself to look at the wound, even though you can barely see the scar now.
Poor little guy!
He healed fine, and they think his testicle will be perfectly fine in the future. Hopefully.

[oceanbaby]

We thought we would circ before ds was born, but decided not to when he was 2 days old.

About the 'looking like daddy' thing: That was my dh's reason initially as well. When ds was a few weeks old, I was talking to dh's sister and she asked if he had circed ds. I said no. She then mentioned that their father, who was born in another country, is not circed either. Dh had no idea! So apparently not looking like his daddy didn't harm dh that much, considering he was almost 30 years old before he realized it!

And yes, your argument about the crossed eyes thing is what I would be using. If you have big breasts, and have a dd with small breasts, are you going to get her implants so she looks like you? It's really a ridiculous reason when you think about it.

[chrissy]

Oh my gosh, poor poor Donny!!!

[cottonwood]

Wow, Caroline, that's tough. I think about it this way... if I had a sister, and she had been circumcised (had the hood of the clitoris removed,) would I have wanted my parents to do the same to me *only* so that she wouldn't be alone in it? Well, to be honest, no.

[sistermama]

Kind of off topic - Its funny how quickly your son's uncircumcised penis becomes "normal" looking to you! I guess I see ds a lot more than dh, but dh sure looks weird to me now!

[Tree Swallow]

Absolutely no circumcision planned for this baby, and my son, age 7, is intact as well. It seems that with even a small bit of education, people could be easily convinced to leave boys alone! Sadly that's not the case. But fortunately Christopher's father, who is circed, actually broached the topic with me and it was a no-brainer once we read just one article about it.

Now I'm expecting boy #2 with my new husband and he is also circed BUT was immediately convinced of the wisdom of leaving little boys alone. I frankly can't understand the mindset of men wanted to have it done, though my brother is one of these. My SIL remains upset that it was done to their son.

That said, what continues to irk me is the misinformation. I know of one woman who did not circ her son, on the insistance of his father. Good, right? Well she took no steps to inform herself of the care (or rather, non-care) required by an intact penis and insisted that he regularly and thoroughly pull back his foreskin and scrub, scrub, scrub. He complained that she always had to nag him to do it.

Can you guess the result? Just this month he was circumcised at the age of 8. Sadly, I'm afraid that she will tell the tale of how her son "had" to be circumcised, adding to the misinformation.

I know of more than one child that was circed based solely on the "evidence" of a coworker, whose son similarly "had" to be circed. I don't know the details, but I suspect they were similar to the other case. I wish I could tell the mother of the 8-year-old the correct information, but at this point it would probably just make her feel bad. I just can't understand why she didn't inform herself!

[Mom2baldie]

Caroline,

I completely agree. Riley, Paityn and #3 are our children, not mine. But the thing is, Rileys and this ones (if I have a boy) body are NOT ours. They belong to them and them only. My husband nor I have the right to make that decision without their consent.

[chrissy]

ITA Lynsey!

[JenInMpls]

We will not circumcise a boy. After all, he has no one in our house to compare himself to. We also have no religious considerations. Quakers don't much care about the state of one's penis.

I'm sure our moms have no opinions, either, and all of our friends who have even asked about it (which may be 1 or 2) were supportive.

I have a friend whose older son is circ'ed and her younger not, and they have had no difficulties with potty training, questions, etc.

A friend of mine, an M.D., hates doing circs and always uses 2x the amount of local anesthesia, but the babes still get fussy because they can feel something going on down there. I can't imagine what it must feel like when the anesthesia wears off, though, and then you put ammonia in a wound? Owie.

j