Ye Ol' Snip Snip

Elijah has had quite a fun summer. It became evident that he was going to have to be circumcised last summer.

We were not happy that we would have to do it and we weren't really able to afford it. So we waited until the next summer (this summer) to do it. Hoping that the problem would resolve itself and we would have better insurance. Well he problem didn't resolve itself and one less job later we had much better insurance. State insurance. They covered most of it, much to our surprise.

But poor Elijah was terrified. For a good reason. But he was as tired of dealing with the problems as were we so he was ready for the surgery when it happened. He took a pre-surgery class and was as prepared as he could be. He even went skipping to the operation room. But afterward. Oh, afterward. I have had my patience tried to the limits. I would not make a good nurse, I can say that much.

It was painful, it was long and it was horrible. Here are some pictures. Enjoy!

Were you worried? These are not stitches related pictures. Oh and he did have stitches. Which I'd never heard of before. But I didn't have to pull the foreskin back. Instead I had to bath him twice a day.
After surgery. He stayed in this position, playing the gameboy for days. He actually started to get bed sores.
As you can tell by his mouth, he had 10 Popsicles in a one hour time period. He lived off of them.
Leaving the hospital in a wagon. Cool wagon. It had cup holders! Elijah was great until the next morning. Then the real torture began. I never want to do that again as long as I live.


Commonly asked questions:
Do we wish we'd done it sooner? I wish we had done it sooner, only to save him the pain. But I totally don't regret not doing it otherwise. I would totally make the same decision given the information we had.

What was wrong? His foreskin wouldn't retract. It needs to or sexual experiences are painful later in life. (Much, much later in life.)

Is this common? No it's not common at all. Only 5% of the population will have this problem if you don't. Just to freak you all out and to show you how strange it was, you have an equal chance of having difficulty peeing if you DO circumcise them. He never had an infection.

So why didn't you do it? Many, many reasons. But one of the main ones was there weren't any real compelling reasons to put our newborn into surgery immediately after birth. Birth is really hard on them, why make it worse? I now know a lot of lame reasons though why people circumcise. Really, really lame reasons. Sorry people. Think about it before you do it.

I won't go into scary stories about babies who almost died after the surgery either.

(For the record, there were some good reasons too, but the lame reasons stick out more.)