My husband comes from a pretty crunchy clan. He is the baby of a big family and we were on the tail end of adding grand babies to the crew. One of his older (wiser) sisters left her son intact (he was the first nephew born since our wedding) and we wondered why on earth she’d do that?! So we investigated and read The Case Against Circumcision (Paul M. Fleiss, MD) (1) and eventually AskDrSears.com’s article (2) on circumcision and decided before we were ever even pregnant with our first child that we would not make a decision to take a part of his body unnecessarily and without his consent. I think it took us maybe 15 minutes to read the Case Against Circumcision article and make our decision. It was that convincing. Many risks and zero benefits, we were sold.
Three years later we found ourselves expecting our first child, a boy! We were thrilled! I don’t recall any strange inferences from our medical providers (midwives and pediatricians) that he should be cut. In fact, I recall my midwife being relieved that we made the choice of intact-as-default.
Something that always amazes me is the great lengths women will go through to avoid tearing or an episiotomy during labor and birth. Why then do we hand over a precious, whole, healthy baby to have HIS privates cut?!
We went on to have two more whole boys.
We have never had any problems with infections or UTIs. Any kind of redness has been easily and quickly healed by an Epsom salt/baking soda bath and some herbal salve.
I am a bit of an intactivist (as non-confrontational as I can be) and I have given information to several families who made a choice to not circumcise their children. Of my personal friends and family, I would guess that 90% of the boy children are whole. It goes to show you aren’t going to have a freak-kid with all his parts. He’ll just be one of the crowd.
I will never regret my choice (like it was really mine to make!). We went on to have BEAUTIFUL Babymoons (there was no blood, no wound care, no crying from pain – for the babies, it was a different story for Mama). We had amazing breastfeeding relationships right from the start. I cannot imagine caring for a circumcision wound during those first precious weeks.
I am forever thankful to my sisters in law who spoke out against circumcision before we had children (even the sisters with girls only are very vocal about the intact message). My three sons will be forever grateful too.
I hope that our story encourages your family to consider intact-as-default as well! Many blessings!!!
1. http://www.mothersagainstcirc.org/fleiss.html
2. http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/pregnancy-childbirth/whether-or-not-circumcise
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