Top ten reasons not to circumcise your son

[Pat899]

i liked the comment to answer "is it good to have forskin or not?"

answer... "is it good to have eyelids or not?"

[EricaLynn]

Originally Posted by Galatea Hi Amanda, I am glad that this is going to be easy for you and your dh. Once you start thinking, it really is an easy non-decision. The foreskin is attached about 1/3 to 1/2 the way down from the tip in an adult. But it is all one continuous piece. You really have to see a picture to understand. But once you see the newborn penis, and realize it is almost ALL foreskin, you see how horrible circumcision is. As for infections, girls get way more infections than boys, and yet they just give us creams, and we are fine. Boys can use the same creams and medicines, too. It is another excuse to hide the purely cultural motivation. You can find several animated videos on YouTube of this if you look. WARNING: THIS IS AN ANIMATION OF MALE GENITALS. DO NOT CLICK IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE COMPUTER-ANIMATED MALE GENITALS. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8voOaGouDM

Thanks for mentioning this! I didnt realize it until I saw my own sons boy parts, I realized that if we had circ'd him there would be almost nothing left Luckily dh waited too long to call insurence/drs etc about the circ, so intact he stays! (because he is too old and large now to do it without general anasthesia, so its not even up for dissucssion anymore)

[THBVsMama]

[Everywhere]

Okay, I have read some info too, about how intact males are more prone to certain types of infections. (the margin is really really small, but the stats I read said it was still there) So I asked the Dr about it (the first time we were pregnant with a boy) and the Dr said that honestly he sees more infections in newly circumcised boys (as in, the open/healing tissue gets infected with staph or other bacteria) and he said those infections are more serious and harder to treat.
But if you think about it, if you leave a piece of your body attached, of course there is going to be more of a risk of that becoming infected later in life than if you, um, removed it. It can't get infected if it's not there. But apply that to any other body part.... Toenails get infected much more frequently than foreskins do, and we don't permanently remove those at birth, do we? Just so they don't have a chance of getting infected? And toenails don't really serve much of a purpose... I used to be in the Navy, and so was exposed to lots of foreign males (most of the rest of the world doesn't circ) I'll just say that the foreskin not only has several purposes, but very, very beneficial purposes at that

But yea, the rate of infections in intact males is so low (the Dr quoted me at or less 1%) it just doesn't make sense to cut it off just to prevent it when there are other, pretty useless, body parts that get infected way more often and we don't remove those.

Also, I have both sons and daughters and my girls have gotten LOTS of infection and my sons haven't gotten any. And that's pretty normal I think (I think like 1 in 3 girls will have an infection before adulthood) but I don't hear anyone out there thinking of surgeries we can do on baby girls to try to prevent these infections...

Sorry to ramble so much. At first thought, the infection stat/argument can seem convincing but if you actually sit and think it out and compare it to other situations, it just doesn't make sense at all.

[Fleece Be With You]

I'm sure this has been mentioned on this thread already, but there is no organization to keep track of complications from circumcision, and there ARE complications. My son could have bled to death if I had not noticed that there was a TON of blood in his diaper a few hours after his circumcision. As it was, he needed a transfusion and emergency surgery to remove the plastibell, and stop the bleeding. I was immensely thankful that we waited until he was 6 weeks old and breastfeeding was well established, so I could comfort him. It was the most awful thing I have ever been through in my life, and I sincerely hope no one else ever has to experience it.

[Raquelita]

A helpful visual for what an uncirc'd/intact penis looks like is a turtleneck - when you're pulling a turtleneck over your head (and your head is still inside the shirt) the turtleneck part is like the foreskin, it covers the whole head and can be rolled back to allow it to 'see' .

[ajane]

I just wanted to give a quick update that my baby boy was NOT circ'd!!!! DH *finally* let me make the decision and was supportive of it. So, my little man was the first boy in my side of the famiy to be left intact!!! Hopefully, I've started a new thing!!!!!

I'm SO glad I left him intact and couldn't be happier!!!!

We were just at my brother and his family's house for Thanksgiving and she was shocked we didn't have him circ'd. I ended up leaving her speechless b/c I came back with every "concern" she had with a very good and true answer!

Thanks again for this thread and ALL of the support!!!

[Galatea]

Originally Posted by ajane I just wanted to give a quick update that my baby boy was NOT circ'd!!!! DH *finally* let me make the decision and was supportive of it. So, my little man was the first boy in my side of the famiy to be left intact!!! Hopefully, I've started a new thing!!!!! I'm SO glad I left him intact and couldn't be happier!!!! We were just at my brother and his family's house for Thanksgiving and she was shocked we didn't have him circ'd. I ended up leaving her speechless b/c I came back with every "concern" she had with a very good and true answer! Thanks again for this thread and ALL of the support!!!

That's so great! Thanks for telling us! I am glad you were able to shut down criticisms, too. Congratulations!

[burnsis]

Originally Posted by ajane I just wanted to give a quick update that my baby boy was NOT circ'd!!!! DH *finally* let me make the decision and was supportive of it. So, my little man was the first boy in my side of the famiy to be left intact!!! Hopefully, I've started a new thing!!!!! I'm SO glad I left him intact and couldn't be happier!!!! We were just at my brother and his family's house for Thanksgiving and she was shocked we didn't have him circ'd. I ended up leaving her speechless b/c I came back with every "concern" she had with a very good and true answer! Thanks again for this thread and ALL of the support!!!

[Toby_99833]

Originally Posted by ajane I just wanted to give a quick update that my baby boy was NOT circ'd!!!! DH *finally* let me make the decision and was supportive of it. So, my little man was the first boy in my side of the famiy to be left intact!!! Hopefully, I've started a new thing!!!!! I'm SO glad I left him intact and couldn't be happier!!!! We were just at my brother and his family's house for Thanksgiving and she was shocked we didn't have him circ'd. I ended up leaving her speechless b/c I came back with every "concern" she had with a very good and true answer! Thanks again for this thread and ALL of the support!!!

Congrats!

My little boy will be the first male on either side of our family (that I am aware of anyway) that will be intact.

My sister is very anti-anti-circing. I say it that way because I don't think she is FOR circing neccesarily. I think mostly she is just of the average mindset of baby boys get circed thats just what happens. However her boyfriend is Jewish and she takes offense to people who are against it. When I told my mom that I would never circ my son because I didn't think it was right she got really angry and started going off about how any son she has will be circed because they will be Jewish and how dare I judge, etc, etc.

I was just like WOW. I never even got on the subject of circ for religious purposes (even though I have plenty of opinions about it). I just hope that seeing my son will change her mind. It was just really shocking because she is not Jewish, will not be converting and has never been the kind of person to just do something because someone else said to. Frankly I don't even think she has had that conversation with her BF about it. They are not even engaged and are no where near having kids currently and this convo was about 3 years ago.