How Circumcision Impacted My Life

• How circumcision impacted my life.

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  During my first pregnancy I never gave a second thought as to whether or not to circumcise. (Sometimes I wonder if I had known that I was having a boy if I would have done research because I spent HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS researching vaccines, natural birth etc but never came across any circumcision info!) I didn’t know that NOT circumcising was even an option. It was necessary! The Bible said to do it, it was cleaner and it was just what you do! Right?? I felt sorry for those poor babies that got circumcised in the hospital because the “right way” to do it when they are 8 days old (the Bible says so) and use pain medication.
  

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• I made a well baby check up appointment and took my tiny 6 lb baby in to be circumcised. My mommy heart was screaming NOOO!!! But everyone was saying you have to! If you don’t he will have to get it done when he is older and it will HURT! This won’t hurt him and he will not remember it happening, so it won’t be traumatic. I signed the consent form (or maybe my husband did??) and handed them my precious baby boy. The doctor assured me that “this is a pain free circumcision office, we make sure the baby doesn’t feel a thing”. When they walked out of the room I thought I was going to throw up, I felt so sick, I wanted to cry! I assured myself this was the right thing to do! God said it was necessary OBVIOUSLY to prevent infections, and it was just a little snip of skin off the end, kind of like cropping a puppy's tail.
  

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• He was right down the hall and my mom could see the back of the doctor the whole time, we never heard a sound. When they brought him back to me and pulled off his ADORABLE cloth diaper that I had so lovingly sewn while I was pregnant, I almost threw up! His tiny, perfect little penis was MUTILATED! It was bleeding, red, swollen and looked SO SORE! The doctor instructed me on how to put petroleum jelly and gauze over the exposed glans until it healed to protect it from urine and feces and to make sure the gauze didn’t get stuck! OUCH!
  

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• The next few days were hell! I ended up staying with my parents for a week and made my mom change his diapers because I would end up a hysterical mess with every diaper change. He would SCREAM AND CRY hysterically the entire time, no matter how gentle I was! I put SO much petroleum jelly because I was NOT going to let the gauze stick to his poor penis. At this point, I started doing research. How could this be right? He was in SO MUCH pain and I could not even give pain medication because he was so small! This wasn’t just a little snip, they CHOPPED OFF a huge piece and left him bleeding, raw, red and swollen!

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  First I looked at what the Bible said. I am not sure why I put so much stock in what the Bible said in the first place, honestly. I do not regularly attend church, I lived with my boyfriend, I got pregnant before I got married, but for some reason I decided “chop your babys penis” was one of the rules I would follow, without even checking to see what the Bible actually said?? I felt/feel SO foolish! What I found in the Bible shocked me! Circumcision was an Old Testament ritual, very much different than modern circumcision, I might add. The New Testament VERY strongly speaks against circumcision!!! WOW! SO MANY people are misinformed and it makes me SO SAD and is very upsetting.
  

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• Then I started looking at reasons people circumcise and the myths behind them and was shocked and horrified. The purpose of a foreskin, to protect against infection?!?! What?? It provides sexual pleasure? For the man and the woman?! Protection from UTI? Thousands of men and children have botched circumcision, causing pain for the rest of their life?! Hundreds of babies die every year in America from circumcision!?! America is the only country to do this unnecessary procedure for cosmetic purposes? The majority of the world is intact? The biggest percentage of Americans are choosing not to circumcise now! Why had I not heard this before!?!?
  

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• I was crushed and sad that I had put my poor baby through all of this pain for nothing! I decided at that point I was going to share that information with everyone and assumed everyone would be equally as horrified. Boy, was I ever WRONG! The mean comments, the making fun and the people that just choose to ignore just crush me! How can a mother, knowing what I was telling them, still choose to circumcise their baby?!? Some things I will never understand.

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  I wish my story ended there and I could say he healed up fine and has not had any issues since the pain of healing. Sadly, that is not the case. In order to help you understand a little better I will explain how the foreskin and circumcision work.

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• As a child, the foreskin is fused to the head of the penis to protect it against urine and feces. As the boy hits puberty, some are sooner, the foreskin retracts on its own. When they circumcise a baby, they have to rip the foreskin off of the head of the penis, like if you were ripping your fingernail off of your finger! This leaves the head of the penis unprotected. It is supposed to stay covered and protected, except for when a man has an erection, because it is a mucus membrane. This has lead to problem after problem for us. The head of his penis would crack and bleed and he would cry in pain! I ended up talking to Ron Low from TLC Tugger and he sent me some of his soft plastic cones to put on the head of his penis to protect the sensitive glans until he is old enough to restore. In circumcised, adult men, their glans has rubbed against their underwear for so many years they grow layers and layers of calluses, so I can only hope the cones will help prevent this. Between babysitters and my husband all of the cones got lost. This began the days of my 2 year old crying that his penis hurts, he doesn’t want a diaper on, he wants to “hold it” meaning, sit with his hand cupped over his penis to protect it. I slather it in lavender essential oil mixed with coconut oil or almond oil to help with the chaffing and the pain. I am going to try using a bottle nipple that has been cut as a cone to protect him since the others got lost.

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  When he cries in pain, it kills me and crushes my mommy heart. I would never do anything to hurt my baby boy and here *I* have caused him so much needless pain! I only hope that he will forgive me one day, when he is old enough to understand and use this as a lesson and stop this circumcision madness and cycle of abuse.

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• contributed by B.C.