Newborn circumcision

[Mumtobe2025x3]

Hi all,
my son is five weeks old. My husband is Muslim and I’m COE. When we were pregnant we had discussed having my son circumcised when he was a couple of weeks old due to my husband’s religious beliefs, which I agreed to.

Of course marrying a Muslim man I knew of what came with it when it came to having children etc. we have discussed our sons upbringing and he will be taught both cultures, religions and celebration Christmas and Eid etc. my husband is quite westernised so he’s not exactly a strict Muslim.

I suffered quite bad baby blues and when it came to discussing the circumcision at around 10 days old I lost it and said that I couldn’t deal with it right now and my husband said not to worry now and we will revisit at a later date.

I thought i was ok with my son being circumcised but now he’s here I’m actually not. It’s been brought up again today and it’s not helping that my husbands pushy family keep asking about when it’s happening. I’m really not ready for this. We’re already having issues with his family calling my son by a different name because they don’t like the name we’ve chosen as it’s not an Arabic name!

I’ve told my husband I’m not ready yet and he accepts this, I can tell it bothers him.

Am I being unreasonable about this? Obviously I know what I married into, but as his mother and he’s here, it now doesn’t feel right to put him through a procedure that’s totally unnecessary as he’s not a medical issue.

OP, this is very difficult now because your DH and his family are expecting to go ahead with something you previously agreed with.

I think that rather than keep prevaricating and putting it off so that it hangs over you as a constant pressure, it might be best to come straight out with it and tell your DH you have absolutely changed your mind and do not consent to it.

Be understanding that for him and his family this will be very hard to understand and accept, but maybe acknowledge that to him and explain that it is equally hard for you to accept or agree to.

You have the legal right to veto this. Consent is needed from both parents to circumcise a child. Speak to your health visitor and have it put on your child's notes that you do not and will not consent to circumcision except for acute and present medical need.

It won't be easy but you are your little boy's advocate. I personally could not consent to cutting off a bit of my child's flesh in service of a religion that was not my own. But your DH will feel equally strongly the opposite. And will experience much pressure from his family.

Good luck, I feel for you.

I think you need to be clear and firm and say you've changed your mind and do not want it.

I personally think it is absolutely abhorrent. The foreskin is fused to the gland as a baby, it is a physical trauma simply separating the foreskin from the glans never mind then chopping off the foreskin with little to no pain relief for no medical reason.

Our job as parents is to protect our children from harm, not knowingly put them in harms way for the sake of tradition.

Poor baby. Please say no!!

Taken from another current thread

Other things to ask her to consider. Would she accept a daughter to only be allowed to marry a Muslim man? Would she be happy with a son being circumcised?
These are things that I stupidly didn't consider to think of at 21. When my ds was born, I point blank refused to circumcise him which was a major cause of the marriage breaking down.

This would be the hill for me.

I'd leave before anyone came near my son.

Its abhorrent

This covers it. I couldn't look at someone who wanted to mutilate my baby.

Circumcision needs to be completely banned for all children. I’m absolutely astounded that it is still legal to cut bits off a healthy child. Stop saying “maybe soon” and just say no.

Best done not at all

No, don’t mutilate your son. It should be banned.

Amidst all the hideousness of a massively premature birth at 26w was the relief I would not have to have this argument because my DH was, as it turned out, no more prepared to mutilate a 2lb baby than I was. He has survived the "trauma" of explaining to his son why their penises look different, your husband will too.

How can this still be legal? Would you be okay with your husband wanting to cut off your childs fingernails or earlobes to please his sky fairy?

Would you allow your daughter to undergo FGM? No, you'd fight with every last drop of strength in your body wouldn't you.

Well you know what to do for your son then.

(Yes I know FGM is even worse than circumcision, but they're two sides of the same coin)

Hard though it must be, you do need to be upfront with your DH and say that you have changed your mind regarding the circumcision.

Tell him that now that you are faced with the real life decision rather than the hypothetical one you have realised that you cannot, in all good conscience, consent to inflicting unnecessary surgery on your beautiful little boy. You would rather wait until he is old enough to make the decision for himself (probably as an adult) if he even wants it done anyway. You will only consent to this or any other surgery if there's a clear medical need and you would very much like his family to let the issue drop.

Personally, I think inflicting unnecessary discomfort and surgery on a baby and is awful. They are so small and cannot understand what is happening.

Nobody would ever have been allowed to mutilate a baby of mine in that way. I hope you can have this conversation with your husband and that it will be less problematic than you fear.

Circumcision is not a neutral procedure. It carries risk of bleeding, infection and scarring. It's not medically necessarily. Should you son decide to get it done later of his own accord he might choose to do so. Once he is old enough to give informed consent.

Personally it wouldn't bother me if he was called a different name by my husband's family. People sometimes have a name and a nickname and get on fine.

Why wouldn't you and your husband consider lying circumsion was done? How would they know one way or another?

This

It’s 2025, why are we still mutilating babies?

Gosh, difficult, because you said you were on board initially.

The only thing you can do now is to say, very firmly, that you have changed your mind and you can't do it. How do you think that will go down?

Similar situation , my son is now in his 20s, I couldn’t do it either, no way was anyone causing my baby pain. I
have talked about this with my son and he’s very glad I didn’t let anyone chop anything off him now!

I imagine this is hard for both of you, as you seem to have had thoughtful advance discussions and agreements about things, so your husband thinks he knows where you both stand, but it sounds like you've changed your mind. If that's the case, I think you need to reconcile in your own head that it's not that you're not ready 'yet', it's that you've changed your mind. Then have further discussions with your DH, possibly explaining that, when it was a theoretical concept, you thought you'd be ok with it, but now that your baby is here, the reality is very different (if that's part of the reason). I agree with another poster that, if neither of you can agree, the only reasonable thing to do is wait until your child is an adult and can choose to have this done, if they wish.

I understand why they are suggesting it being done earlier than later as the younger they are the less traumatic and the easier the recovery

The very idea that they know that something will be traumatic and require recovery and so seek to 'mitigate' it - when it's something that almost never needs to be done in the first place - but still go determindely ahead with it.

Suppose somebody said that they were very eager to forcibly shove a member of their family down the stairs - maybe to symbolise their conviction of the need for humility and being grounded in life, as a traditional ceremony - and were seeking advice as to whether they should choose their baby, their great grandma, their brother, parent or somebody else to do it to (none of whom know about or have ever consented to it), in order to minimise the risk of concussion and broken bones; would anybody be seriously thinking about how to answer their specific question, or would every single person be incredulous and tell them not to do it to anybody at all in the first place? People would quite possibly say that, if you're so desperate to do it, perhaps you as an adult could arrange for somebody to push you.

I'm not a doctor, but I'm not personally convinced by the suggestion that very young babies don't feel as much pain or trauma when being subjected to it - how can we possibly know this, when they conveniently don't have much capacity yet to properly communicate it to us and we don't have a crystal ball?

If you’re C of E, then 2 Corinthians 6:14 would have helped you. Unfortunately, I think if you’ve made a commitment to have him circumcised, YABU for going back on that.

Is it really less traumatic though? Or are newborn babies just less able to show that they are traumatised and therefore it's preferable to do it at that point?

How can you be pro circumcision? I dont understand

What else should we not back out of when faced with reality? Marriage? Sex?

It's less traumatic for the parents. Which is obviously the most important thing /s.

I've never really been sold on the concept of "I did this very painful thing to you when you were a baby, but you don't remember so it's OK that I removed your right to choose along with your foreskin."