I circumcised my boys

Posted by Sarahbear on March 15, 2010

I was asked this question on Formspring recently:

Hi, I’m a bit confused by your tweets about circumcision. Maybe you could do a blog and I will get it …

I recently watched an episode of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit about circumcision. The information on the show wasn’t really new to me, but it was presented in a non-confrontational and matter-of-fact way. I guess the best way to explain the recent tweets about circumcision is to start at the beginning…

I was 18 years old when I got pregnant with my oldest son. His father and I were very young and very naive. I don’t even think I knew what I was suppose to feed a baby at the time. I gave birth less than a month after my 19th birthday. While I was laboring (comfortably thanks to my epidural), my nurse stepped in and asked if I was going to have my son circumcised. I had a absolutely no idea what it was. I looked at my husband and he nodded at the nurse, so I did too. My husband is circumcised as well but neither of us knew what it involved. It was just something ‘routine’ as far as we knew and the insurance covered it.

Two years later I was pregnant with another boy. He was circumcised shortly after birth. One year and one day later I gave birth to our third son and he  was circumcised shortly after his birth too. We never even saw their penises while they were intact. The nursery swept them off to do all the medical stuff right after they were born, and my OB/GYN did the surgery before I got to see them again. It wasn’t until my fourth pregnancy that I began joining different online parenting groups and learning about circumcision. That time I was pregnant with a girl so it didn’t really matter. Plus, everyone in those parenting communities had such a holier-than-thou attitude that everything they said wound up irritating me.

Here I am, almost eight years after the birth of my oldest son, now fully understanding the consequences of circumcision. It was actually information in this sex-positive community that helped me to understand the function of the foreskin. I regret the decision to circumcise my boys, but I don’t beat myself up over it. It was a mistake.

My husband and I have been discussing foreskin restoration. He’s going to begin using various instruments and manually stretching his foreskin in an attempt to regrow enough skin to cover the head of his penis. One reason we’re doing this is to improve his sensitivity sexually. It should make sex more pleasurable for both of us. We also want him to have experience restoring his foreskin so that when our boys are old enough he can sit down and talk to them about what we did. He can explain circumcision and what it did to their penises and let them know that there are several options they have to restore their foreskin. Of course, it doesn’t replace the nerve-filled tissue that was removed, but it will function like a foreskin in most other aspects. We want to apologize to our boys for making the decision to alter their bodies without their consent and do whatever is necessary to help them restore their foreskin if it’s what they want.

I hope this answers your question.