Ear piercing of babies, what do you think?

[mamadadawahwah]

Sometimes i think i live in a romany gypsy camp the number of babies i see with pierced ears and jewellery dangling from their little wrists. Having never adopted the courage to get my own ears pierced, i cant imagine piercing a little baby's ears. Its brutal and so common! What gives with this practice? In my opinion, its mutilation. The dangling bracelets are a health hazard to little ones, and i fear they could break their arms if they got them tangled in their sweaters.

What gives with this?

Babies feel pain. Even the foetus feels pain.
Numerous lines of evidence suggest that even in the human fetus, pain pathways as well as cortical and subcortical centers necessary for pain perception are well developed late in gestation, and the neurochemical systems now known to be associated with pain transmission and modulation are intact and functional. Physiologic responses to painful stimuli have been well documented in neonates of various gestational ages and are reflected in hormonal, metabolic, and cardiorespiratory changes similar to but greater than those observed in adult subjects. Other responses in newborn infants are suggestive of integrated emotional and behavioral responses to pain and are retained in memory long enough to modify subsequent behavior patterns.

None of the data cited herein tell us whether neonatal nociceptive activity and associated responses are experienced subjectively by the neonate as pain similar to that experienced by older children and adults. However, the evidence does show that marked nociceptive activity clearly constitutes a physiologic and perhaps even a psychological form of stress in premature or full-term neonates. Attenuation of the deleterious effects of pathologic neonatal stress responses by the use of various anesthetic techniques has now been demonstrated. Recent editorials addressing these issues have promulgated a wide range of opinions, without reviewing all the available evidence.197-201 The evidence summarized in this paper provides a physiologic rationale for evaluating the risks of sedation, analgesia, local anesthesia, or general anesthesia during invasive procedures in neonates and young infants. Like persons caring for patients of other ages, those caring for neonates must evaluate the risks and benefits of using analgesic and anesthetic techniques in individual patients. However, in decisions about the use of these techniques, current knowledge suggests that humane considerations should apply as forcefully to the care of neonates and young, nonverbal infants as they do to children and adults in similar painful and stressful situations.

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circumcision, yet another unecessary practice. One that is not only dangerous but one which leaves the boy open to infection. Good comparison!

maybe someone will start another circumcision thread, havent had this topic for a while. For all the newbies anyway.

we have - last week or so

I think that "we think" babies dont feel pain the way adults or older children do. We only think it, to justify what we do to the poor mites. How come they scream when they get vaccinated, or if they fall out of their cots.

Of course they feel pain, and imo they feel pain just like us. Maybe even more so, because they dont have the ability to tune it out like we do. We can carry on with a bad back or a headache if our "mind" is on something else. I dont think babies can do this. They are all ecompassed with the "present" and what is happening to them at any present moment is what they feel most. No they dont remember to the point of being able to recount it verbally in later years. But i think all pain is stored up in our bodies from conception to death. Physical and emotional pain. Its so convenient to say babies dont feel pain or less pain. They dont have the voice to express it. My dog might not remember if i whack him around the room as a puppy but is that any reason to do it in the first place?

I'm wondering about cruelty in neglect with you lot who have posted continuously on this thread?
Do you actually have children and where are they and who's looking after them?

ear piering well I am against non necessary medical procedures against my kids, but would not dream of labelling another mother a bad mother because of her choices - if I happen to think ear piercing is a bad thing, then I do, but I would not go up to someone in a street and say
oi you are a sadist/bad mother/chav/common/slut for piercing his/hers/their ears!!!!
Which is what has been done at times here, likening MN to a street IYKWIM.
Opinion is perfectly fine and right, but it is better dispensed with a little more tact, kindness and diplomacy except if you are a lady fish called Cod of course...

My mum had my ears pierced when I was 6 months old and apparently everytime I went past that shop I would still cry for a few years afterwards.
She can't understand why I'm not in a hurry to get my 6mth old daughter's ears done.

By contrast my cousin always wanted hers done but wasn't allowed till she was 16 and could go alone.

I plan to wait till my daughter is old enough to ask for it done.

That's my plan with ds too - if & when HE asks for it to be done, he will presumably be old enough to understand that it'll hurt a bit - at 12 I was quite happy with the (minor) amount of pain as a trade-off against the oh so fabulous glamour of pierced ears!

Actually, that's another reason not to have a really young child's ears pierced - why deprive them of the sense of a 'rite of passage'/successful campaign fought against boring old mum & dad?

I am anti circumcision too.

I just can't imagine why people would choose to put their child through unnecesssary pain.

It's not so very many years ago that babies were operated on without anaesthetics because people claimed they didn't feel pain. That would be unthinkable these days. Of course babies feel pain. and I agree with Mama, that the memory will probably be stored up in their subconscious somewhere.

Some children cry when they have their hair washed or brushed or put up in ponytails. There is the hygienic reason (absent in ear piercing) but a lot of this is done for aesthetic considerations. You try and minimise the pain but these are rituals children put up with every day.

Well, it depends on where you live. Here is frowned upon and I wouldn't do it. Back at home it seems like a sign of femeinity or even something that help strangers to recognise the sex of the baby (why would you make your baby suffer so her sex can be easily identified, I will never know). Tiny ear jewerly is a usual gift during the first year.