circumcision

Oh weegee, I have to agree that the part in the video where he says 'he took it like a man' was obviously deaf. Thar nearly made me cry hearing that baby's cry .

Flissty wrote: DH had it done and I still haven't had the guts to ask MIL why .

She probably never asked anyone why either, in "those days" (coz we're so old and all ) it was just the done thing, Mum said she took my brother back to the maternity unit to have him done and it was almost like immunisations in that if you didn't do it, Plunket looked at you funny.

Dh was dead set on it. I told him it was his decision but i was not going to be a part of it because I didnt think it was necessary.

I asked DH why and he said he didnt want Jake to be different to all the other boys and get picked on. He asked around and found out that no one he knew with a son had had it done so figured Jake would be the odd one out if he was done and that was that.

Personally as bad as it may be to have it done later on, the chances are not that high so its a risk I am willing to take. But thats just me... I wouldnt even know who to ask to do it!

Lilfatty: I'm not strongly religeous, DH is more so than me. In my religeon it's based on something G-d instructed someone to do any way my view on it is that if they didn't get it done then they would have to do it latter in life if they wanted to be strongly religeous (I'm hoping they won't go that direction he he) so I didn't want to stop that option for them or give them obvious pain latter in life (if that makes sense)? I know quite a few who have had it done latter in life because they chose to become strongly religeous which would be increadibly painful & much more so than being a baby so it made sense for us.

From the Herald this morning ...

Never once in the three and a half years that I have had a baby, then toddler, and now a pre-school boy, has the subject of circumcision ever raised its head - forgive the pun.

That's perhaps about right, because only ten per cent of the male newborn population of New Zealand undergo this procedure.

On the odd occasion it's done for medical reasons, other parents believe it to be more hygienic, but in the main the reasons are cultural/religious - the babies are Jewish or Muslim (Polynesians are also circumcised but usually later as a rite of passage).

As we are not any of the above we follow the "live and let flap" philosophy, as do most of our contemporaries. Funny, really, because most of the fathers of today's young children would have themselves been circumcised, as the procedure was routine up until the late 1970s.

But it may not be long before public health officials push New Zealanders to rethink the issue.

That's because the Center For Disease Control and Prevention in the US is mulling over whether routine circumcision of all baby boys born would reduce the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

According to The New York Times, clinical trials in Kenya, South Africa and Uganda found that "heterosexual men who were circumcised were up to 60 per cent less likely to become infected with HIV over the course of the trials than those who were not circumcised".

Routes of HIV transmission are very different in Africa from the US, and so African studies mainly involve heterosexual men at risk from female partners.

Whether this data would necessarily provide answers to the US AIDS problem, which is mainly confined to the homosexual community, is unknown.

But what is known is that the tissue in foreskins is more susceptible to HIV infection, and that uncircumcised men have higher rates of many STDs, not just HIV.

Is it a reason to preemptively remove them in newborn boys?

In the US debate, opponents of President Obama's universal healthcare plans have seized upon this new thrust in public policy to once more demonise his supposedly 'nanny-state' ideologies.

Just a few days ago, that final word in all things conservative claimed this, according to Salon.com: "It is President Obama who wants [to] mandate circumcision... And that means, if we need to save our penises from anybody, it's Obama."

It doesn't seem likely to me that President Obama wants to remove the foreskins of American males (above his other pressing issues), and I'd hazard a guess that universal circumcision is even pretty low on John Key 'To Do' list.

But that doesn't mean the debate might not be one soon coming to a newborn circle near you.

No, Daniel won't either. No hussy is going to take my boy

Wow the American's really like circumcision though anyway - It's the norm there and there are always ongoing jokes on sitcoms and the like about foreigners with 'turtlenecks'. So chances are it wouldn't be a big problem to turn the public anyway. Although talk about a 'nanny state' sheesh!

However, surely condoms are better than removing the foreskin in terms of preventing HIV?

I saw a documentary on circumcision once and the doctor likened it to removing the eyelid from the eye. It's there to keep the penis lubricated and safe from contamination.

I know of a guy who did get a circumcision as an adult though because his foreskin was unable to be retracted so he couldn't clean it properly and it was getting infection after infection.

My sister has a 3.5 year old who now has a medical reason for getting it done. He's had infections in/around the tip of his penis since he was a few months old. After the umpteenth infection he was referred to a specialist who said his foreskin is too tight and doesn't retract and so was harbouring lots of bugs that were causing the infection. He needs to be circumsized to stop the infections but the policy in NZ is not to do it till the boy is in his teens as the foreskin can grow back. He also said the things that lots of other have said ie he'll be different and that might make him self consious, and that it will be hard to find a doctor to do it even though there's a good reason. So now my sister is stuck coz she doesn't really want him to have one but he needs it and the doctors won't do it till he's at least 13 (and think how traumatising it will be to a 13 year old compared to a baby who won't even remember), and meantime he will continue to get infections every so often and there's nothing she can do about it.

We haven't had our boys done, wasn't an issue.  I think I asked Dh if he wanted Rico done, but he said no, so the subject never came up with Jett.  Dh is, I think it was just ritual back then, and his parents weren't religious at all at that time

The possibility has been raised that Kyle will need one, but our doc said you can't tell for sure until closer to age 5. He's had an infection, but luckily wasn't too serious. Hopefully he won't need to have it done.

As for getting it done for other reasons, it honestly was never even discussed in this house, but then DH isn't done, as far as I'm aware it has never been common practice in England and has only ever been done for medical reasons or for religious ones, but not the Christian faiths (as far as I am aware anyway).