It seems I forgot

klmno

Active Member
about one of the *important* conversations with difficult child- about, well, what some parents have doctors do to some boys when they are born.

We were watching tv last night and the word "circumcision" came up. difficult child, of course, asked what that was. I said I thought he knew (really- I thought we'd had this talk a long time ago- if we did, he must have been pretty young and then forgot). Soo, then he asked- you didn't do that to me did you? Oops! And, he's asking why, etc. Yo, boy...
 

totoro

Mom? What's a difficult child?
Oh my gosh! Too much too soon too fast. Sometimes I am glad I have girls. I know I will regret those words...
 

crazymama30

Active Member
So is this one more thing I need to worry about discussing? We have not discussed it, but guess we should. Ay, there is always something.
 

klmno

Active Member
LOL! I really believe that I mentioned this when I was teaching my son to bathe himself correctly when he was very young. I guess now he is thinking about all "his parts" in a different way, so I need to go into a little more detail- and I'm thrilled about that....Not! This seemed much simpler when he was 4 or 5 yo.
 

Andy

Active Member
Another something to look forward to? I better start figuring out my words.

And Totoro, my dad has four daughters, no sons. He had us do the work that boys normally would do (hauling in wood, mowing lawn, ect.) When someone asked him if he would have wished for a son, his reply was, "No, When you have four girls, the boys will show up eventually."

So, you will have boys at some point - just don't have to teach them certain things (if you are lucky)
 

witzend

Well-Known Member
I hated that decision! In hindsight, I am glad we did it. He never would have kept himself clean, and no one wanted to have that discussion with him!
 

klmno

Active Member
by the way- if your sons are anything like mine, prepare yourself for the sudden shrill and yelling out "YOU HAD THEM DO WHAT TO ME?" It was at that point that all my sound reasoning behind that decision left me and I completely went blank about why I made that choice.
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
LMAO....I guess there are pluses to having other males in the household. I honestly cannot remember having this conversation.
 

klmno

Active Member
Yes, Janet!! But guess what- and I swear this is true- I remembered who actually made that choice- his father!! I haven't told him that yet- I was waiting for a good time for us to discuss this again because last night I did kind of put him off because I was stunned. Anyway- I was thinking about it today, and it might help him to know that before his father left my life (while I was pregnant)- he said he would prefer that I have the baby and raise it myself, he carried in the brand new crib that I ran out to buy (not because of that but because I wanted to keep the baby), and I didn't leave him musch choice but to make this decision. Once I found it this was a boy, I told him He HAD to be the one to make that decision since I simply am not qualified to do it! So- maybe this will make difficult child feel better.
 

MyFriendKita

Active Member
Just tell him it helps prevent infections. We did not have difficult child circumcised (I left it up to husband, and at the time we had difficult child, they tried to persuade you not to have it done by showing you gory pictures of the procedure). From the ages of 5-8, difficult child had very frequent strep infections, and each time he also got a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) (uncommon in boys). The pediatrician told us it was because difficult child wasn't circumcised.
 

klmno

Active Member
Thanks, I'll tell him that is what we thought, but I do want him to understand that there isn't a right decision or wrong decision in this case. I think I heard about 50% of parents are choosing each course. So, now I kind of wish I hadn't gone along with it. I just want him to accept himself, and understand that it isn't like he's going to be "different", but the boys that haven't had this aren't "different" either, at least in our country. I thought about telling him how it could have been-
 

Jena

New Member
hi,

my brother isn't either. my parents had to have that talk with-him many years ago as well. they explained their reasons basically infection, etc. he was fine with-it. he accepted it and changed in gym, used lockers, showers, etc. and learned to accept himself as he is. my parents didn't make a big deal out of it which i think actually helped him with it. he just took it as no big deal.

good luck, yup gotta love those talks.........

i had to tell difficult child this year the "birds and bees" talk, not fun........due to what she heard from other kids i had to clear it up for her. ofcourse she was totall grosed out and looked at me like i was totally insane.lol.......guess she was really buying the two people's love creates a baby as i told her for years. yet i had to do the whole sperm egg thing.
 

Wiped Out

Well-Known Member
Staff member
I'm glad husband had that conversation with difficult child! We didn't have difficult child circumcised because he was already 4 weeks old when we brought him home plus the doctor advised against it.
 

klmno

Active Member
Speaking of the "birds & the bees" conversation- I have to tell this. I thought I had done a wonderful job explaining to difficult child how things worked- from a scientific, yet sensitive standpoint , when he was in elementary school. Then he came to me a couple of weeks later saying he had a question about it. Since I thought I'd done such a great job and was prepared for more, I jumped in there with "sure son, we can talk about any question you have". His question was something like "well, how long is the fertilized egg in there before it hatches"?:faint:
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
I have three boys. I also have a mate who isnt circumsized. Now when my boys were born it was the normal thing to have done. Well it was on the first two. Basically no one really even asked me if I really wanted it done it was just kinda scheduled and I was like...sure...ok. However, when Cory came along, Medicaid didnt pay for it and the parents had to prepay the amount for the surgery because it was considered elective and no one told us this before we had the baby. Now considering we had been told Cory was a girl up until HE popped out of me, this wasnt something we were prepared for at all...lol. Obviously being on medicaid...we were poor. We didnt have the money and by the time we did, I didnt have the guts to even consider having it done to my poor little baby. Besides, his daddy wasnt circumsized so what difference did it make.

Well...fast forward a few years. Something seemed to be always going wrong with the skin around the head of Corys privates. (good lord he would kill me if he knew I was telling this...lol) Anytime he took antibiotics he got yeast infections. No matter how much we cleaned it, it just got bad. His skin was also extremely tight and small. It would crack and bleed. One day he hit it just playing in the living room on the rug and it bled all over. Off to the pediatrician and the urologist and they decided at age 4 he needed to be circumsized. That was an ordeal!

What was an even bigger ordeal was convincing him that he couldnt show everyone he came into contact with his surgical site...lol. The way they stitched it up it looked like he had a little crown of stitches all the way around it. He wanted to show everyone. Try convincing a 4 year old difficult child that he cant drop his sweatpants to show everyone his little crown on his pee pee. LOL.
 

Marguerite

Active Member
When my sisters had their children, to circumcise or not circumcise was done based on choice, and part of that choice was based on whether the boys would feel 'different' to other kids, or to their father. My eldest sister's husband wass not circumcised and so the boys were not, either. However when the eldest was 6 years old it became obvious that he had a problem - the foreskin was too tight and needed to be surgically loosened. He had, in fact, a partial circumcision, but under a quick general anaesthetic. It was quick, it was simple, he barely noticed any difference afterwards. He is now 40 and the father of 5 boys. I believe he has had to have at least one of his sons done too, for similar reasons.

By the time we had our boys, the 'thing' in Australia was to NOT circumcise boys unless there was a strong medical reason to do so. At least that was in the public hospitals. A friend of ours however found the opposite - the private church-based hospital put a lot of pressure on the mothers to have the boys circumcised. She and her husband were happy to do this anyway, because it made the boys "like daddy".

husband & I were happy to not have the boys "done". After all, they aren't generally in a position to compare themselves with their father - husband hasn't generally been in a position to 'show himself' to his sons (or his daughters, especially!) so why worry about whether the boys are similar? Besides, the difference between the appearance of an adult's genitals compared to a child's, can easily account for any visual differences.
Our friend who had her sons circumcised - I remember the problems she had with sons 1 and 3, especially. With the first one, he had problems with the dressing and infection - I had not seen a circumcision before, not so fresh (another of my sisters had her boys circumcised with no problems) but to me, this one didn't look right, it looked a bit too extreme. Where my nephews had been manually 'snipped' and it looked very natural, this first little baby of my friend looked red and raw. A very neat circular cap had been cut off, apparently using a plastic device inserted beneath the foreskin. It seemed to me a surgical "one size fits all" and therefore a bit risky.
When she had her third son, I was even more concerned. This time it seemed they had taken off not only every skerrick of foreskin, but a portion of the tissue behind it as well, so a portion of the shaft of the penis looked like raw flesh. By this stage it was the mid 80s and very few newborn circumcisions were being done anywhere, except at this particular hospital. If I had wanted to have difficult child 1 circumcised I would have had to fight for it.

By the time I had difficult child 3, I would have had to medically justify it, in order to have him circumcised.

However, there has been pressure towards circumcision again, from a source which I personally find surprising - a bloke I used to work with who always seemed to me to be the hippy type, the free-loving, forward-thinking "break with traditions" researcher. He claims to have evidence that circumcision protects against a number of potentially nasty diseases later in life, and also conveys protection on the female partners, against HPV (and therefore cervical cancer).

When we were at school we were taught about how the explorers Bass and Flinders sailed around Australia in a very small boat called "Tom Thumb". So here is a howler from an Aussie exam - "Bass and Flinders circumcised Australia with a forty foot cutter".

It's often remarked that Tasmania was the result. It's about the right shape...

(and the bit of water between Tasmania and the mainland is called 'Bass Strait' - well, it wouldn't want to be called 'Bass Crooked', would it?)

Marg
 
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butterflydreams

Guest
I remember when difficult child was circumcised. His father and I were both in the room and watched. It was pretty quick and simple and difficult child SLEPT through the whole thing.
 

hexemaus2

Old hand
I've never had to have this discussion with either of my boys. Their father wasn't. He was a German citizen & in his day/culture, this was a religious choice, not a medical one. He didn't see the point in having it done. The way he saw it, you were born with it, it had a purpose, why tamper with it? So we didn't have the boys "done." (I've never had to deal with any of those issues personally, being female and all, so I left the decision to him.)

It's never been an issue we had to discuss. Even recently when I had a similar conversation with difficult child 1 (before we found out she was having a girl) the boys didn't seem to express any interest in it either way. They are the way they are. We've never had to talk about it. They have just sort of always known that some guys are, some guys aren't. They aren't. Period.

We did have some issues with difficult child 3 when he was younger. The pediatrician mentioned the possibility of needing to have him circumsized, but the issues righted themselves. (He was getting frequent infections because he wasn't cleaning himself properly, even after being taught what to do to prevent it.)

I will say, husband always said NOT having it done was better in his mind. Things like jean zippers and whatnot weren't able to rub & desensitize "things." (Geez, I can't believe I'm saying this in "public" lol.) I guess he & "the guys" had talks about that kind of thing in high school & again in the military. He thought not having it done made his "adult life" much better. :redface: Maybe now that my boys are older, if I ever have to explain our choice, I'll tell them their Dad was looking out for their later sex lives. lol. (I'm sure that will require some therapy for them. lol.)
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
When my kids were born, it was before the ultrasounds were sophisticated enough that they could tell the sex of the baby - or if they hd an idea of which it was, they didn't tell you. You found out in the delivery room! Since I already had a daughter, I was naturally hoping that the second one would be a boy. I hoped for a boy right up until the day that I was sitting in the OB's waiting room reading a little booklet and came across a very graphic picture of exactly how they did it! OMG!!! I had no idea!!! And that very same day I decided it would really be nice to have two little girls instead of one of each!

Of course, it turned out that he was a boy and his father insisted on having him done. I think it was the most difficult guilt-inducing thing I've ever done to hand him over to them over so they could take him off and do it! They bring them back screaming, you stick a bottle in their mouth, and they fall asleep. At first I worried a little about "making permanent alterations" to the body he was born with ... but now that he's got four tattoos and several piercings, I don't feel so guilty about that any more!
 
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