(If you don't want to read this long ol' post about circumcision I at least recommend that you scroll down to the very last paragraph and read that...it has nothing to do with circumcision, plus you can laugh at my expense.)
I cried in birthing class the other night. Not a sobbing cry but a tear or two falling down my hormonal yet glowing face. (HA!) We talked about circumcision. I knew that Mike and I would have to have this discussion sooner or later. I dreaded it. I know how I feel about it(against) and I know how he feels about it(leaning towards for). I don't have a penis, obviously, so part of me thinks that I shouldn't have a say in this decision and that it should be up to the person who has the penis. But then I get all mother-y and protective and think that it is my duty to protect this little being. Which it is. I think I have just as much a right as Mike to assert my opinion and help make this decision. So, I did some research.
PERCENTAGE RATES
One of the reasons Mike mentioned having the baby circumcised was because of looking different from his peers. No one wants to be teased, especially about your penis (I assume.) So the first thing I looked into was what the circumcision rates are in the United States. This chart shows the percentage of newborn boys being circumcised in the hospital. I found it at baby center dot com:
| Region | 1980 | 1990 | 2000 | 2006 |
| United States | 65% | 59% | 62% | 56% |
| Northeast | 67% | 63% | 65% | 64% |
| Midwest | 76% | 76% | 81% | 78% |
| South | 56% | 57% | 64% | 55% |
| West | 62% | 42% | 37% | 34% |
They do point out how some circumcisions take place at home or in a doctor's office so the actual numbers are a bit higher than what we see here. But it is a 6 year old survey.
You can check out a color-coded map of state by state percentage rates here. That map is a wee bit more current than the chart above. In this 2010 article they talk about a steep drop in circumcisions in the U.S. from 2/3s in the '80s and '90s to fewer than half between '06 and '09. I think that if circumcisions are on the decline here in the States and we don't have our baby circumcised then perhaps he will not be singled out as "the weird penis having guy" because many of his peers will likely be uncircumcised as well. Well, here's a question for the men: How often did you see your friends' penises? I don't think I ever saw my friends' vaginas. Maybe girls are more modest, I don't know. Anyways, I think having conversations with our boy, when he's old enough and ready to talk about this stuff, is a good thing. I think discussions and conversations are good to have even if they may be tough ones to have.
COST
Luckily I have some mighty good insurance and although I haven't looked up how much my insurance would cover a circumcision I have a feeling it might be just a co-pay (which is $20. This is the cost of all of the prenatal care I'm receiving, a one time payment of twenty buckaroos. At work the ladies who have had babies while working here joke around by calling their kids their $20 babies or some are $10 babies back before our co-pays went up.) Anyhoo, when looking up costs I found that Medicaid won't cover it because circumcisions are considered "medically unnecessary" and the costs could fall anywhere between $100 - $800 dollars.
HISTORY
I just went-a-reading articles at www.historyofcircumcision.net/, CIRP (Circumcision Information and Reference Pages) reference library, and good ol' Wikipedia. Here is my general summary from what I read at those three sites: The history of circumcision goes back to before the Biblical account of Abraham (I don't know much about the Bible but I do know that Abraham comes up in Genesis and that's the first part of the Bible so that's pretty early on. I know this because I saw R. Crumb's exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Modern Art. His book, The Book of Genesis, is based on a compilation of the illustrations in his exhibit.) Circumcision goes back far before Abraham possibly to eastern Africa. There are many theories on why people began circumcising men or boys. One was to "purify" people by reducing their sexual pleasure. Another is as a religious rite of passage to mark a boy entering manhood. If you click on that Wikipedia link above you will read in the first paragraph lots of other different theories. The Jews do circumcisions as a religious ritual and have carried this ritual into modern times. Abraham had only the tip of the foreskin removed up to the part where it connected to the glans. Nowadays they retract the foreskin completely from the glans, which is actually fused together! Read this from cirp.org:
"Much later in the Hellenic period, about 140 C.E.(aka A.D.), the
Jewish authorities modified circumcision procedure to make it
impossible for a Jew to appear to be an uncircumcised
Greek.10,11,20,30 A radical new
procedure called peri'ah was introduced by the priests
and rabbis. In this procedure the foreskin was stripped away
from the glans, with which it is fused in the infant (See Normal.) In a painful procedure
known today as a synechotomy, more foreskin was
removed than before and the injury was correspondingly
greater. With the introduction of peri'ah, the glans
could not easily be recovered, and so no Jewish male would
easily be able to appear as an uncircumcised Greek.10,11,20,31 This radical modified
procedure eventually was adopted by the medical profession
and is the circumcision operation used today."
That is the procedure that is done today.
CLEANLINESS
This is what made me fearful of the thought of not circumcising the baby. Just by what I've heard it sounded intimidating on how to clean your baby down there. I've heard about smegma and how it can get infected. But then I read this article called "Only Clean What is Seen" - it is a biased article that is anti-circumcision but it put my mind at ease about the care for the mysterious uncircumcised penis. There really is no need to worry about getting a q-tip out and the canned air and a magnifying glass and cleaning out that complicated boy part. It's really not that complicated.I really like what the instructor said about this. If the Dad is circumcised and the son is not (a lot of people choose to circumcise or not based on whether the Dad is circumcised or not so that they look the same.) Our instructor said that little boys only see the difference in size, "Daddy is big, baby is small." And by the time that baby has a comparably sized penis to it's Dad they aren't bathing together any more or seeing each other naked if at all. And if they do then the boy is probably at an age where you can have a discussion about it. I have a couple of boy cousins who were not circumcised. One is my age and he is still uncircumcised. His younger brother decided to get circumcised in his early 20s. He chose to do it. I like the idea of getting to decide for yourself.
PROCEDURE
This is what made me cry in class. Mind you I can't even put a live worm on a fishing hook without tearing up, I'm serious. I have chosen not to put pictures up of circumcision procedures because they are just way to traumatic for me. It felt like my heart broke a little bit when I saw the pictures. If you are curious you are more than welcome to do a Google search on it. In class Mike asked questions about how it can effect the baby mentally as an adult. Does the trauma stay with the little human? Probably but probably not in a way where they can't live on happily. You can read these articles here about studies of circumcision linking to personality trait disorders and about one study that was stopped due to trauma. Honestly, I didn't really read those articles fully. The men in my life who have been circumcised seem fine and lovely and healthy to me. Future implications weren't really a concern to me, whereas Mike was more curious about it, which in turn made me a little curious. If we do circumcise the boy I don't think he will be mentally or emotionally disabled because of it. I on the other hand will be an emotional wreck. In class we were shown a picture of a baby that had his arms and legs secured down, like this description from askdrsears.com:
"Baby is placed on a restraining board, and straps secure his hands and
feet. The tight adhesions between the foreskin and the glans (or head)
of the penis are separated with a medical instrument. The foreskin is
held in place by metal clamps while a cut is made into the foreskin to
about one-third of its length. A metal or plastic bell is placed over
the head of the penis to protect the glans, and the foreskin is pulled
up over the bell and the circumferentially cut."
To those of you who have had your sons circumcised is that accurate? I also found this more lengthy explanation from nymag.com:
"No matter who performs a circumcision—an obstetrician at the hospital,
or a mohel at a bris—the operation is more or less the same every time.
So how does it work?
First comes anesthetic, at least in the hospital. Some mohels
use none, and simply work fast. Others administer a few drops of sugary
syrup or sweet wine to help distract and sedate the baby. Still others
use a topical cream. Doctors, as well as some medical-school-trained
mohels, sometimes administer a penile block, a set of anesthetic
injections. The first needle goes in under the pubic bone, where the
nerves are. One or more injections follow, and those subsequent needles
“go into numbed areas,” says Dr. Jed Kaminetsky, a urologist.
Now the cutting begins. The opening at the tip of the
foreskin is stretched and held open, usually with surgical clamps. Then
the doctor or mohel makes a snip up the center of the foreskin with a
pair of surgical scissors, peeling the two halves back to make a flat
sheet of skin. At this early stage of life, the foreskin is attached to
the underlying skin by thin membranes, and has to be picked away,
typically with a little sticklike tool.
From there, most circumcisions are performed with one of three instruments. The Mogen clamp—similar
to the traditional rabbi’s tool known as a Mogen shield—clasps the
flattened foreskin between two wide, flat pieces of metal, and a scalpel
is run along their face to trim away the foreskin.
Another option, the Plastibell, is a small
sleeve that’s slipped over the tip of the penis, under the foreskin. The
cutter simply ties a tight suture all the way around the base of the
foreskin, cinching it against the plastic cylinder. Then the excess skin
is trimmed off with surgical scissors, and the Plastibell’s handle is
snapped off and discarded. The tie stays in place; so does the
Plastibell. Over the next several days, the remaining bit of foreskin
withers and falls off, taking the string and Plastibell with it.
Then there’s a more complex device called the Gomco clamp.
It’s a stainless-steel gizmo that allows the doctor or mohel to pull up
the foreskin around a steel cap, tie it taut, and then slice neatly
around the penile head.
After the procedure, parents should check for bleeding every
half-hour for the first few hours. There’s usually some swelling, which
goes down after a week or so. Parents should also check for fevers,
which can indicate an infection, and keep an eye out for yellowish pus
or any other evidence that the wound isn’t healing properly. Most
important, though, is plain old hygiene. Change diapers frequently, to
keep the wound from getting contaminated, and add a dab of Vaseline to
the scab each time so it doesn’t stick to the diaper."
The issues for us are concerns about our boy looking different from his peers/being teased and putting your baby through a medically unnecessary procedure. Mike and I had another discussion about it last night. We will eventually come to a decision. We are having good, mature talks about it. It's a good sign that we can have these mature talks when it comes to making decisions for our little one because it won't be the last time we have to make a decision in regards to him.
On a lighter note. At the end of this birthing class I farted so loud that it unmistakably belonged to me. It didn't help things that I was sitting on a hard plastic chair that made the sound reverberate and practically echo. It was so embarassing and Mike and I laughed in the car on the way home. I have no control of my body right now. OY.
No comments:
Post a Comment