What to Expect when Your Baby is Circumcised

When we found out that we were having a boy, I told my husband that it would be his decision about whether our baby would be circumcised or not. As you may have guessed, I had no strong feelings one way or the other about circumcision. Frankly, I had never discussed it with my doctor. My husband decided that our son should be circumcised, and when he was born we let the doctor know our wishes. What I did not expect was the emotional toll it took on my husband and I, or the duration of the physical pain our son went through after his circumcision.

When the doctor came to my room to get our son, I broke down sobbing. The doctor was actually very nice about it, and reinforced the notion that I did not have to have him circumcised at all. When I told her that I had left the decision up to my husband, and that we agreed that our son should be circumcised, she was very reassuring. She said that the procedure would be very fast, and that he would probably be back in the room with me within twenty minutes.

While the doctor was performing the circumcision, I waited for our son in my hospital room. When they brought our baby back to me after about a half hour, he was already sleeping peacefully. The nurse reported that everything had gone well.

Just a few minutes later, my baby boy-who had rarely cried - began screaming wildly. I tried everything to soothe him, and then tried changing his diaper. He had wet his diaper, and the process of urinating was apparently very painful. Each time he wet himself over then next three or four days, he had the same frantic scream. We found ourselves on high alert after every feeding, making sure we were ready to change our baby's diaper at the first sounds of discomfort.

After the circumcision, my husband and I were both very surprised at how swollen and red his penis was. We knew what the surgery entailed, but actually seeing the result of the surgery was still shocking. At each diaper change, we had to liberally apply petroleum jelly around his penis to keep it clean and to keep it from sticking to his diaper. This process lasted about two weeks, until his penis had finally healed. During those early weeks, my husband was terrified to change our son's diaper because he was afraid of hurting him. In fact, my husband nearly passed out the first time he tried to change our son's diaper after the circumcision. The sight of the wound was very disturbing for him.

If you have no strong opinion about whether or not to circumcise your baby boy, consider these statistics. According to the National Inpatient Survey (NIS), in 2005 about 56 per cent of baby boys are circumcised before they leave the hospital. This number is a decline from the nearly 85 per cent of boys circumcised in 1965, the apparent height of circumcisions in the United States. At this point, circumcision is actually less common than leaving the penis intact in the western United States.

While I am neither an advocate for or against circumcision (it is the parents' choice to make), I am not certain that I would make the same decision again. Seeing our newborn baby boy in such pain for those early days was very difficult for us, and we felt helpless to do much other than comfort him.

Sources:

American Academy of Pediatrics, Committee on Fetus and Newborn. Standards and Recommendation for Hospital Care of Newborn infants. 5th ed. Evanston, IL: American Academy of Pediatrics, 1971:110.

Merrill, CT (Thomson Healthcare), Nagamine, M (Thomson Healthcare), and Steiner, C (AHRQ). Circumcisions Performed in U.S. Community Hospitals, 2005. HCUP Statistical Brief #45. January 2008. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD.

"United States Circumcision Incidence," The Circumcision Reference Library.