Greetings fellow intactivists! I know that i should really be posting a greeting in the introduce yourselves thread, but after lurking and reading posts from the last few days, this area of the boards is where i find myself drawn to, time and time again.
I am happy to tell you that my 9 year old son is, indeed, intact and it wasn't easy to convince others to let him remain just as Mother Nature intended him to be. From what i have read from the posts that i am not alone in this struggle (i am saddened that there is such a struggle, but i am glad that there is now a place that I, too, can go to ask questions, rant, or commiserate)
I first learned about circumsision when i was a young teen and snooping through my younger brother's baby book and found a pamphlet on the care of a circ'd penis, at the time i had thought it odd to have that in there (and still do) and also had thought that only men of the Jewish faith had it done. Well, the thought was then put in my head that circ was "normal". Then as an older teen, i was placed in a foster home, and my foster family had 2 little boys. My foster mom would let the boys run around the livingroom without their towels on after baths. I asked her what was "wrong" with their penises. She told me that nothing was "wrong" with them, they were uncirc'd. She went on to tell that she had researched it, found it horrible, and told my fosterdad to leave they boys be. In exchange for leaving them intact, my fosterdad got to pick out all the names for the boys and that was fair enough for her (although they weren't her first choices, they were still good names) So her reasoning stuck in my head (as well as other parenting methods)
When i became Pregnant, my fiance' (at that time) and i had the internet (back in 1996) and i was able to do some research on circ. At that point i had been rather neutral, except that my baby's father had been circ'd and he ended up with a skin bridge that at times made relations painful for him, and that made me start thinking that pehaps if the baby was a boy, that i shouldn't circ. With the hours i spent researching and looking at pictures, reading about botched circ's, the thing that "got" me the most was watching a video of a baby strapped down, screaming until he was out of voice and breath, and seeing that poor boy's penis raw and bleeding made me immediately vomit. (I have gone to some of the links that posters have put on here and actually found the SAME video, and I still came close to vomitting) After that I TOLD my baby's father that if we had a boy, he was NOT getting circ'd. At least he was not going to fight me on it, but my parents and my doctor were harder to fight, my doctor! oy! After i had my son, every single time he came to check on us, he tried to convince me to let him take my son and cut him! NO WAY!!! needless to say, many years later and many docs later, we still have issues.
I am now happily engaged (again, to a different man than son's father) to a wonderful man who was born and raised in England and is intact. He is great for when i ask him questions about his foreskin, in fact, i believe he thinks it a bit funny that i ask him these sort of questions and bounce "new" facts off of him. Usually the "new" facts get a "well DUH!!" answer. Like that other day when i asked him, "did you know that a man's foreskin has X amount of nerve endings, comprising something like 1/3 or 1/2 of the nerve endings in his penis?" he said, LOL, "well DUH!!" I had always thought that the foreskin was a flap of regular skin that protected the most sensitive part, and that was why it was so important, LOL, i learn new things all the time!
As i am learning new things all the time, i do have some questions for all of you knowlegeble intactivists (i love that word): Am i doing thing wrong when i teach/tell my son to pull back his skin and wash himself while he is in the shower? I don't have him use soap, just water and his hand. when he was a baby, i would gently push back the skin, never focing it-OUCH!, but would clean it with a wipe, especially if he had a messy bm. Have i desensitized him with washing this way? He doesn't complain about it hurting, and is very good about washing with reminders. Eep! I am worried!
Thank you for reading all this and i look foward to great conversations on this board!
Karin
I am happy to tell you that my 9 year old son is, indeed, intact and it wasn't easy to convince others to let him remain just as Mother Nature intended him to be. From what i have read from the posts that i am not alone in this struggle (i am saddened that there is such a struggle, but i am glad that there is now a place that I, too, can go to ask questions, rant, or commiserate)
I first learned about circumsision when i was a young teen and snooping through my younger brother's baby book and found a pamphlet on the care of a circ'd penis, at the time i had thought it odd to have that in there (and still do) and also had thought that only men of the Jewish faith had it done. Well, the thought was then put in my head that circ was "normal". Then as an older teen, i was placed in a foster home, and my foster family had 2 little boys. My foster mom would let the boys run around the livingroom without their towels on after baths. I asked her what was "wrong" with their penises. She told me that nothing was "wrong" with them, they were uncirc'd. She went on to tell that she had researched it, found it horrible, and told my fosterdad to leave they boys be. In exchange for leaving them intact, my fosterdad got to pick out all the names for the boys and that was fair enough for her (although they weren't her first choices, they were still good names) So her reasoning stuck in my head (as well as other parenting methods)
When i became Pregnant, my fiance' (at that time) and i had the internet (back in 1996) and i was able to do some research on circ. At that point i had been rather neutral, except that my baby's father had been circ'd and he ended up with a skin bridge that at times made relations painful for him, and that made me start thinking that pehaps if the baby was a boy, that i shouldn't circ. With the hours i spent researching and looking at pictures, reading about botched circ's, the thing that "got" me the most was watching a video of a baby strapped down, screaming until he was out of voice and breath, and seeing that poor boy's penis raw and bleeding made me immediately vomit. (I have gone to some of the links that posters have put on here and actually found the SAME video, and I still came close to vomitting) After that I TOLD my baby's father that if we had a boy, he was NOT getting circ'd. At least he was not going to fight me on it, but my parents and my doctor were harder to fight, my doctor! oy! After i had my son, every single time he came to check on us, he tried to convince me to let him take my son and cut him! NO WAY!!! needless to say, many years later and many docs later, we still have issues.
I am now happily engaged (again, to a different man than son's father) to a wonderful man who was born and raised in England and is intact. He is great for when i ask him questions about his foreskin, in fact, i believe he thinks it a bit funny that i ask him these sort of questions and bounce "new" facts off of him. Usually the "new" facts get a "well DUH!!" answer. Like that other day when i asked him, "did you know that a man's foreskin has X amount of nerve endings, comprising something like 1/3 or 1/2 of the nerve endings in his penis?" he said, LOL, "well DUH!!" I had always thought that the foreskin was a flap of regular skin that protected the most sensitive part, and that was why it was so important, LOL, i learn new things all the time!
As i am learning new things all the time, i do have some questions for all of you knowlegeble intactivists (i love that word): Am i doing thing wrong when i teach/tell my son to pull back his skin and wash himself while he is in the shower? I don't have him use soap, just water and his hand. when he was a baby, i would gently push back the skin, never focing it-OUCH!, but would clean it with a wipe, especially if he had a messy bm. Have i desensitized him with washing this way? He doesn't complain about it hurting, and is very good about washing with reminders. Eep! I am worried!
Thank you for reading all this and i look foward to great conversations on this board!
Karin
:
Though it's still nice to have someone help me in "breastfeeding nazi" area 
