About This Video
To learn more, visit: http://www.nocirc.org/
Make the INFORMED decision on circumcision- the ONLY decision you will choose after watching this informative video- don’t circumcise your baby boy OR girl.
If you are planning a hospital birth for your son, you should expect hospital staff to approach you at some point in the first day or two after your son is born to ask about circumcision. There are many long-term reasons to leave your son intact,1 but you may not have considered the more immediate benefits to you and your new baby.
No American medical association recommends infant circumcision as a routine procedure. The reason that American medical associations (and the vast majority of medical associations worldwide) do not recommend routine infant circumcision is because it is not medically necessary.2 And as Lamaze’s Healthy Birth Practice Paper #6 details, “experts agree that unless a medical reason exists, healthy mothers and babies shouldn’t be separated after birth or during the early days following birth.”3 Consequently, unless there is a medical reason to circumcise your newborn son, it is inadvisable to agree to this unnecessary medical procedure.
Immediate Consequences of Routine (Medically Unnecessary) Infant Circumcision
1. Circumcision Causes Pain and Stress: An infant’s foreskin has more than 240 feet of nerves, 20,000 nerve endings, and 3 feet of veins, arteries, and capillaries — circumcision removes all of them, causing the infant tremendous pain.4 Research has conclusively demonstrated “that circumcision has significant physiologic impact on newborns, mainly due [to] pain.”5 Serum cortisol (a hormone released in response to stress) concentrations increase during and after circumcision,6 and “[h]eart rate, respiratory rate and blood pressure increase, and oxygen saturation decreases, during and shortly after circumcision.7
After circumcision, the penis has a raw, open wound. The newborn’s surgically exposed glans is re-injured by abrasion and contaminants because it is encased in diapers (including the baby’s own feces and urine, which breaks down into ammonia). Disposable diapers themselves are also often irritants, because they are laden with chemicals, dyes, and fragrances that cause further pain.
2. Circumcision Interferes with Breastfeeding: Circumcision negatively affects breastfeeding, regardless of whether infants are given Acetaminophen (Tylenol) to help manage pain immediately after circumcision. Some circumcised males are unable to suckle at all after the procedure. Mothers who leave their sons intact have a better chance at establishing a healthy breastfeeding relationship.8
3. Circumcision Disrupts Sleep: After circumcision, babies’ normal sleep patterns are disrupted. Researchers believe this may be a mechanism to cope with the stress of the procedure.9 Infants who do not get enough sleep or enough quality sleep are at risk for additional significant stress.10
4. Circumcision Can Interrupt Normal Bonding and Causes Emotional Trauma: Lamaze recognizes that “[i]nterrupting, delaying, or limiting the time that a mother and her baby spend together may have a harmful effect on their relationship and on breastfeeding success.”11 The significant stress, disrupted sleep patterns, and breastfeeding problems experienced by circumcised babies all have the potential to interrupt the normal, healthy bonding with their caregivers. Bonding is interrupted because “the circumcision procedure frequently causes the newborn to withdraw from his environment[,]” including his mother.12
Moreover, circumcision causes emotional trauma to parents. Over 80% of parents regret their circumcision decision in the first six months of their sons’ lives. 13
Protect Your Newborn: Leave Him Intact
Unless there is a medical reason to circumcise, you and your son can only benefit by deciding to keep him safe and close to your side after birth. The newborn period is so beautiful and fleeting. There is no reason to traumatize your baby or jeopardize your breastfeeding relationship by exposing your son to needless pain and stress.
If, after thoroughly researching, you feel that the decision to circumcise is one that you must make, please wait until after those fragile newborn days. Remember, you can always decide to circumcise, you can never decide to take it back.14
For the references or to comment on this article go to, http://codenamemama.com/2010/06/10/ci…
Educational Resources
Pamphlets for Expectant Parents
http://www.nocirc.org/publish/
Deciding Whether or Not to Circumcise Your Son?
http://www.intactamerica.org/
What is Lost to Circumcision
http://www.cirp.org/pages/
“How Male Circumcision May be Affecting Your Love Life” by Christiane Northrup, MD
http://www.coloradonocirc.org/
Danish Study- Male circumcision leads to a bad sex life – November 14, 2011
http://sciencenordic.com/male-
“Circumcised men have more difficulties reaching orgasm, and their female partners experience more vaginal pains and an inferior sex life, a new study shows.”
Sadly, medically unnecessary circumcisions take the lives of too many infants each year, and other children suffer the effects of botched circumcisions their whole lives. Below is a list of some publicly known tragedies, with updates in the Comments section.
http://wisewomanwayofbirth.
A growing number of men who wish they had been left intact (not circumcised) are benefitting from non-surgical foreskin restoration. You can learn more about this at http://www.norm.org/
“Unspeakable Mutilations: Circumcised Men Speak Out” by Lindsay Watson, 2014- In this book, 50 men, of widely differing ages and from varying walks of life, explain how circumcision has harmed their self-esteem, physical well-being and sexual experience.
Circumcision’s Psychological Damage
https://www.psychologytoday.
The Psychological Impact of Circumcision Upon Men, In Their Own Words
http://
No national medical association in the world today recommends infant circumcision, including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). In its 2012 statement on circumcision, the AAP claimed that “the health benefits of newborn male circumcision outweigh the risks,” yet it also stated that “the true incidence of complications after newborn circumcision is unknown”. The AAP lacks the evidence it needs to make a comparison between risks and benefits.
The AAP’s statement was met with strong criticism from a large group of European and Canadian doctors representing various foreign medical associations, in the AAP’s own journal “Pediatrics.” Infant circumcision is not practiced by most of the rest of the world, except where it is done for religious reasons by Jews and Muslims. You can read what these doctors wrote at http://pediatrics.
In 2014, the United Kingdom’s National Health Service stated that the risks of circumcision outweigh the benefits, the exact opposite position of the AAP. See http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/
One young man sued the retired doctor and hospital (Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip, New York) where he was circumcised unnecessarily as an infant, against his will and without HIS consent. He received a financial settlement. You can read about his case athttp://www.cirp.org/news/
A group of doctors called Doctors Opposing Circumcision (DOC) was formed by physicians opposed to non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision. You can learn more about them at http://www.
Wow, how detached from reality and yourself do you have to be, to hear a baby screaming in agony and pain, and say it doesn’t hurt. That doesn’t make any sense! Doctors are detached; a part of this stems from schooling, upbringing, (indoctrination) and they use their profession as a means to say they care about others, (due to what it means to be a doctor) but how? if you think certain groups of people can not feel pain, are exaggerating their conditions, or whatever biases you internally have. We as a people are so detached from ourselves we almost don’t believe anything we see, hear, touch, or taste until someone in the institutionalized authority tells us their “educated” OPINION. Great authority use facts and logic.