Just do me a favor.

If you're going to cut your baby, despite having the knowledge that it's unnecessary, that there is no way to properly anesthetize a baby, that they feel extreme pain, that it alters their brain wave patterns, that it carries risks including death... DON'T TELL ME ABOUT IT!! If you know all that stuff (and if you know me, you know that stuff) and you still decide to cosmetically alter your perfect little baby to suit your own preferences, then at least have the courtesy to let those of us who know better, live in blissful ignorance.

I try to save them all, but like anyone else, I do not succeed in that. Another little baby I could not save will be strapped into a circumstraint tomorrow morning, and mutilated. I literally feel sick every time I think of this thing happening in our society, in this very country... right down the road from me. It is just so cruel and barbaric. I walk among people who do this to babies. It just blows my mind. How can they think it's ok? How can they honestly believe it's their choice to make? The only ones I can even remotely begin to understand are the ones who do it for religious reasons. I still don't condone the practice, but I can understand their reasoning for doing it. The vast majority are not doing this for religious reasons, though.

I've known it was wrong ever since I started researching it when I was pregnant with Erin, but until I had a couple of sons, it was just a theoretical thing. There's a vast ocean of difference between the abstract, "Would you cut a baby?" and the very concrete, "Would you cut Orren and Chaiyo?" It was never so much as a consideration to cut our boys. It literally never crossed our minds. When Orren was born, and we refused the Vitamin K injection, our midwife asked us if we were planning to have him circumcised. I was surprised by how visceral my reaction was. I held Orren a little tighter, and said, "Absolutely NOT!" She laughed, and commended us on our wonderful choice to keep our son whole and perfect. I laughed at my reaction, but in truth, you just don't know how much this whole circumcision thing flies in the face of every parental instinct out there, until you hold your son for the first time, and see how amazing and beautiful he is, and then have someone ask you if you want to cut a piece off him. My heart literally skipped a beat just to think of the idea.

It's that moment that comes back to me every time someone talks about getting their son circumcised. The thing that kills me the most is that most of them talk about it in such a cavalier way, like in the same tone that they would use if they were telling me they were going to hit Albertson's on the way home for a gallon of milk. Again, while I still don't condone the practice at all, I have a lot more respect for parents who at least take it seriously. While I have no desire to hear about the plans for a bris, I would rather hear about that than this other crap, because at least some thought goes into it, and it's not just one more box to check before going home. The tone of these people's comments about getting it done just show that they haven't thought it through.

In light of this, here are some facts about routine infant circumcision that every parent should know:

FACT: More neonates (babies 4 weeks or younger) die of complications from circumcision every year than SIDS and car accidents combined. 117 babies died of circumcision related complications in the US last year.

FACT: The US Navy released a study in 2011 showing no difference in disease transmission rates based on circumcision status.

FACT: During circumcision, 20,000 nerve endings are severed, and the amount of skin removed would be equivalent to the size of a postcard if removed from an adult and laid out flat.

FACT: Plastibel is not cut-free or painless. The foreskin is fused to the glans until the age of roughly 10 years old, so it must be ripped away (think of ripping a fingernail from the nail bed. It's the same idea.), then crushed, and tied with a string until it falls off. Does that sound painless to you?

FACT: The EMLA cream that doctors often tell parents is used to numb the baby for the procedure, carries a label specifically saying that it is NOT for use during circumcision, and that it is not an adequate anesthetic for such things. If your doctor told you that your baby would be anesthetized with that stuff, he is lying.

FACT: After he's done cutting it off, the doctor will then sell your son's foreskin to a cosmetic company. Do you want your son to suffer so that Oprah can have her $500 an ounce face cream? (Yes, Oprah uses face cream that contains cells from human baby foreskins. The company substantiates this claim.)

FACT: It is more work to take care of a circumcised baby than an intact one. For an intact boy, you just wipe like a finger. Only clean what's seen. Forcible retraction is harmful, studies show, so don't do it. When you circumcise, you have to keep an open wound clean, while it resides in a diaper 24 hours a day.

FACT: Intactivists are obsessed with one thing only, HUMAN RIGHTS. It doesn't matter what part of the body it was customary to cut off without the consent of the person whose body it is. If it were earlobe removal that we were talking about here, we'd be just as against it.


Don't cut babies. It's a really shitty thing to do.

At very least, if you take all this information, read all the studies that are out there, and still decide, for whatever unfathomable reason, to do this, I do not want to know about it. It just makes me feel awful, and I will never look at you the same way again. Maybe this will change when my boys are older, and our decision on this isn't so fresh, but right now, as I have these two little boys, who are so perfect, it's just offensive that there are so many people who would have cut them to shreds just for being born male. My mind simply cannot comprehend how someone can reconcile that decision in absence of religious reasons.