One Mama’s Thoughts

Yesterday, Sir Twizzler got circumcised. Yes, he was 18 days old. The hospital that I delivered at stopped doing circumcisions after birth, two years ago and I suspect that it has to do a bit more with money than not having the OB’s perform the surgery rather than the Pediatricians.

This post may possibly be controversial for some, others may not care so much, but I’m just getting some things off of my chest.

When the Cellist was born, I was 19 years old – and Papa Nicholes was 20. We were young, not as information savvy as we are now, and kind of just went with the flow of lots of stuff. There were several things that I wasn’t going to budge on. Breastfeeding (because they tried to give the Cellist formula because he was jaundiced a bit) and pacifiers/bottles. However, in my head, circumcision was just what was done to little boys who were born. Welllllllllllllll, I’ve changed my tune a bit, and I found a bit of hope in hearing that the hospital didn’t do circumcisions at the birth anymore. I was holding on to some hope that Papa Nicholes would find scheduling the appointment a bit irritating and just say – you know, we can do without it. Instead, yesterday I found myself in a crowded waiting room with other moms – some looking just as anxious and irritated as me, and others ready for the surgery.

This sparked an interesting discussion in the waiting room. Most of the women really didn’t care about the entire act of circumcision, they were just more affected because it was happening AFTER they had been released from the hospital. I however didn’t like the fact that a piece of skin from my son’s penis was being surgically removed even if down the line he may not remember the entire experience. I don’t know. I got used to changing his diaper and not having to remove gauze and make sure that everything was healing. Maybe it has to do with me being 10 years older than with my son. Maybe it has something to do with me not seeing a newborn boy for the last 10 years also. I’m way too emotional with this.

Make no mistake about it – I support the decision and point of view of Papa Nicholes, basically wanting all of the males in the house to look the same and not leaving Mr. Twizzler out of the “club,” however I think that maybe he would have been okay with looking different down there. Who knows.

So now we begin the healing process which should take the rest of this week and weekend, and then I should be okay.

I did post a question about the decision to circumcise on the facebook fan page – and that prompted some of the pages fans to give their reasons for doing or not doing it. Most of the statements regarding having a child circumcised had to do with cleanliness and having to teach the man child how to keep it clean. I had one lone fan who hadn’t circumcised her last two boys because of a bad experience that she had with her first son being circumcised and she in fact did research before coming to her decision. It’s interesting to see both sides of the line – however you really can’t have buyers remorse much when you DON’T circumcise because there’s always the opportunity for you to change your mind. Once it’s done – it’s done and has the possibility of maybe having to be corrected. Bother.

Hopefully, I’ll be okay in a couple of days seeing as Mr. Twizzler is not nearly as fussy as I anticipated him being.

Now, those who don’t agree with me on this choice – I’m hoping that if you do decide to comment – you will at least be respectful in doing so. 🙂