Not circumsizing your son--what was your experience?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:we had our first circumsized after we were told that his not being circumsized lead to the UTI that kept him in the NICU another 2 weeks. He had complications and lost nearly 1/3 of his blood requiring a blood transfusion. Thankfully there are no long term issues, but I will definitely veto circumsizing if I have another boy.

I'm sorry! Poor baby and such awful advice from the doctors! I'm the PP whose son had a UTI and was given the same advice. It makes me so mad- anyone can get a UTI and often they are misdiagnosed in babies because it is so difficult to get a clean urine sample from a catheter. My baby was only two months old and the docs really pushed me to circumcise him too. Luckily, my in-laws are European doctors and they told me it was unnecessary.

We did circ after a UTI, but ours sounds like a much different case. DS spiked a VERY high fever at 2 wks old, UTI spread to blood. Was in the hospital for a week. Ultimately diagnosed with Grade 4+ Vesicoureteral Reflux and one very low-functioning kidney. Grade 4+ reflux is so bad that just one more UTI would result in corrective surgery, and his kidney is so weak that, rather than correcting the reflux at that point, they would just remove the kidney. Recent, medically sound, studies show that circumcision in cases such as these has a big preventive effect on UTIs, which are otherwise quite common with high-grade reflux.

So we saw it as circ'ing to prevent the high possibility of a future kidney removal. Docs were supportive but never pushy--we definitely felt like it was our decision alone. The circ itself was fine--he cried a lot the first hour after, and was out of sorts all day, but was totally back normal within another day or two. The ped. surgeon (Marmon) did a great job, and we've never had any problems since.

We also had our son's frenulum clipped to correct a severe tongue tie at 5 days old--another surgery that some might describe as painful and unnecessary--and after these two experiences, I really feel like circumcision is a much smaller deal than so many anti- folks make it out to be.

I am the PP. It wasn't a much different case, actually, although thankfully my son ended up not having kindey reflux. He was losing a dangerously high amount of weight on a daily basis he had pretty severe direct hyperbilirubinemia, which made him a "Dr. House" like case, because a UTI was not on the list of causes for the symptoms he had in the books of the director of the NICU. What I found when I finally was sane enough again to do more extensive research did not support circumsizing as a way to prevent further damage. (This was several years ago)

Don't get me wrong, I still feel it is a personal decision and I would never try to talk friends out of it. But we were the unlucky ones with life-threatening complications, and it wasn't worth it. My son had survived pulmonary emphysema, a collapsed lung and all kinds of other issues by the time he ended up with complications from an elective procedure, so imagine the devastation and guilt on my end.

[Anonymous]

My friends baby had a urinary tract infection.
The baby was not circumcised. The doctor that treated their son was Jewish so they thought it was funny that 'he' had to care for a patient with a 'different' penis.
Everything worked out fine

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:we had our first circumsized after we were told that his not being circumsized lead to the UTI that kept him in the NICU another 2 weeks. He had complications and lost nearly 1/3 of his blood requiring a blood transfusion. Thankfully there are no long term issues, but I will definitely veto circumsizing if I have another boy.

I'm sorry! Poor baby and such awful advice from the doctors! I'm the PP whose son had a UTI and was given the same advice. It makes me so mad- anyone can get a UTI and often they are misdiagnosed in babies because it is so difficult to get a clean urine sample from a catheter. My baby was only two months old and the docs really pushed me to circumcise him too. Luckily, my in-laws are European doctors and they told me it was unnecessary.

We did circ after a UTI, but ours sounds like a much different case. DS spiked a VERY high fever at 2 wks old, UTI spread to blood. Was in the hospital for a week. Ultimately diagnosed with Grade 4+ Vesicoureteral Reflux and one very low-functioning kidney. Grade 4+ reflux is so bad that just one more UTI would result in corrective surgery, and his kidney is so weak that, rather than correcting the reflux at that point, they would just remove the kidney. Recent, medically sound, studies show that circumcision in cases such as these has a big preventive effect on UTIs, which are otherwise quite common with high-grade reflux.

So we saw it as circ'ing to prevent the high possibility of a future kidney removal. Docs were supportive but never pushy--we definitely felt like it was our decision alone. The circ itself was fine--he cried a lot the first hour after, and was out of sorts all day, but was totally back normal within another day or two. The ped. surgeon (Marmon) did a great job, and we've never had any problems since.

We also had our son's frenulum clipped to correct a severe tongue tie at 5 days old--another surgery that some might describe as painful and unnecessary--and after these two experiences, I really feel like circumcision is a much smaller deal than so many anti- folks make it out to be.

I am the PP. It wasn't a much different case, actually, although thankfully my son ended up not having kindey reflux. He was losing a dangerously high amount of weight on a daily basis he had pretty severe direct hyperbilirubinemia, which made him a "Dr. House" like case, because a UTI was not on the list of causes for the symptoms he had in the books of the director of the NICU. What I found when I finally was sane enough again to do more extensive research did not support circumsizing as a way to prevent further damage. (This was several years ago)

Don't get me wrong, I still feel it is a personal decision and I would never try to talk friends out of it. But we were the unlucky ones with life-threatening complications, and it wasn't worth it. My son had survived pulmonary emphysema, a collapsed lung and all kinds of other issues by the time he ended up with complications from an elective procedure, so imagine the devastation and guilt on my end.

I'm really sorry--I didn't mean to minimize your awful experience at all, but rereading it may have come across that way--I was just trying to give a different experience. And when I talked about studies supporting circ in "cases like this," I meant "kids with high-grade reflux" specifically, not just UTIs. I'm still not sure if we'd have circed without the reflux/kidney issues. But I know going into it I was terrified and would have hated myself if something bad had happened and would have felt horribly guilty. In the end, I think *we* did the right thing for *us*, but what others choose in a different situation may be different and that's fine too.