Posted in honor of Griffin Starr, who entered this world perfect, suffered infection and breathing difficulties, and was taken from the NICU
to be cut this weekend. May your suffering and loss not be in vain. May many more, in your honor, be spared what you endured
at the hand of those who refused information for your sake. See below for photo credits.
After the cutting of his genitals is complete, this little baby may sleep for many hours a day over the next several days or weeks (much more than is normal or healthy for a newborn, and similar to the deep depressive-state sleep that adults often slip into after trauma). He may experience severe 'colic' for weeks and months to come, as his body attempts to heal itself and deal with the very real pain and suffering of both a festering amputation wound, and post-traumatic stress. His cortisol levels (stress hormones) remain high. His metabolic brain functioning has changed. He may have trouble nursing or gaining weight, and he has a significantly greater risk of being deemed a 'failure to thrive' case. He will likely experience pain to a heightened degree in the future, even into adulthood. And his normal sexual functioning is forever impacted as a result of this alteration in form.
There are many side effects to the genital cutting of a human baby. Today, 68% of U.S. parents, 91% of Canadian parents, and the majority of the rest of the world keep their sons intact from birth. Please, be fully informed for the sake of your child.
Full Saturday Evening Post article on circumcision:
This photo was originally printed in the December 1981 issue of the Saturday Evening Post. It was one of several images published in an eye-opening piece on the realities of infant circumcision. The horrors of this image are mild in comparison to the other photographs highlighting the brutality of genital cutting. Rosemary Romberg, author of Circumcision: Painful Dilemma, purchased the slides from the Saturday Evening Post in order to ensure they remained publicly available. She has the photos displayed on her website, Peaceful Beginnings, and granted DrMomma.org permission to post here.
~~~~
One of the saddest pictures I've ever seen.
ReplyDeletewhere's this child's mother... :'( we are such horrible creatures to treat our babies this way...
ReplyDeleteYou can see a little tear, too.
ReplyDeleteThat picture always grabs at my heart. :-(
ReplyDeleteThis is the "Welcome to our world" that close to a million American boys get every year. This must STOP! Don't our Sons deserve better than this? Don't they deserve the same protection and rights as our Daughters?
ReplyDeleteHeartbreaking.
ReplyDeleteThe picture and comments should be made available to all expecting parents.
ReplyDeleteSuch a sad way to welcome a baby into the world.
ReplyDeleteThat picture always breaks my heart. So glad my sweet boy wasn't put through this trauma.
ReplyDeleteHeartbreaking!
ReplyDeleteThis is what I think of any time someone tells me about a baby "falling asleep" immediately after being circumcised. :(
ReplyDeletePoor thing! I can't believe that people think it's better than being how God wanted our boys to be! I wish they would ban it all, even for religious reasons. How can parents put their newborn sons through so much pain? The tear in the corner of his eye made me cry.
ReplyDeleteSeeing a baby suffer from sickness is heart-tearing scene..He cant enjoy life while he grow it hurts to feel the same and see the way he did.
ReplyDeleteI know this well. I remember being with a mom and baby just before and just after. I call it the post-cut coma. What's worse is when staff lie to parents telling them their baby boy would get anesthesia. No need to tell me it was NOT beneficial to baby. I've seen it with my own eyes.
ReplyDeleteterrible...poor baby
ReplyDeleteSo sickening! I'm soooooooooooooo HAPPY I didn't put my boys through this...
ReplyDeleteMay I repost this in my blog if I give you all the credit??? http://www.natural-motherhood.org/
ReplyDeleteAnonymous (Natural-Motherhood.org) please contact DrMomma.org@gmail.com for photo credits and permission to post.
ReplyDeletePoor sweet baby. He's in anguish. No baby should have to go through that.
ReplyDeleteWHY DO THEY KEEP DOING THIS TO CHILDREN!
ReplyDeleteThat is SOOOOOOOOO sad. I'm so happy my son didn't have to go through that. He did have to have surgery on his penis and scrotum (with general anesthetic when he was a few months old), but he's intact and will stay that way.
ReplyDeleteLook at his poor little face , he looks like he is in a coma , how can people DO THIS ???
ReplyDeleteI am so grateful I didn't get my son circumcised. Especially after watching a circumcision video. Why do parents think this is okay? :(
ReplyDeleteThis is sooooo sad, I wake up sometimes at night and then I start thinking about all these babies, I feel so disgusted by society and angry of my inability to stop it ... what are we supposed to do? I feel like I talk against a wall each time I open the topic. I pray for this baby and all the others ... I am so sorry for him.
ReplyDeleteThat image is making me cry.
ReplyDeleteThis is what physicians and parents call "sleeping." Absolutely repulsive.
ReplyDeleteAnyone with half a brain can see he is not sleeping. It's so obvious something is wrong with him. Anyone that says otherwise is in denial. That picture makes my maternal instincts scream. And the tear in the corner of his eye is heartbreaking. :(
ReplyDeleteThat is the same shock that you see on nature shows when the lions are eating the gazelle but the gazelle is still alive... very sad.
ReplyDeleteBarbaric. I can imagine him feeling, "so this is what life is about? Why was my soul even born into this wretched world? Can I just go back?" ... just barbaric.
ReplyDeleteThis photo is why I live, breathe, eat, drink, intactivism, until this awful baby mutilation and torture is brought to an end. Who and where is this baby now? Who do we know in our lives that this happened to? These circumcision peddlers who do this to babies are sick.
ReplyDeleteim crying at this. this infant was in the safety of its mother's womb, intact and innocent with no fears, pain or cares. and now, he is using defense mechanisms to survive pain and trauma. excuse my french but FCK CIRCUMCISION!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI'm serious when I say this photo is haunting me! I cannot get it out of my head, it makes me profoundly sad and disturbed. It will never leave me, but within that it inspires me to fight against MGM.
ReplyDeleteThank god I learned about keeping my son intact. COULD NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS IMAGINE MY BABY ANGEL LOOKING LIKE THIS. I bawled my eyes out because he had to into an incubator thing under the bili lights, because he would be alone.. Can't imagine watching him be cut. ARGH people are soo sick!!!!
ReplyDeleteI am thankful to see all of these appropriately horrified responses to this photo. This picture kicks me in the heart. That poor baby; he honestly looks like he is wondering why this is happening to him. Why in the world do we still have people trying to justify this??? Why can't people just be happy to know that no medical organization in the world recommends it & put the fkn knife down?!
ReplyDeleteThe instant I saw that photo, without a description or explanation, I got goosebumps and a sick feeling. How anyone can look at their OWN child and claim that they were peaceful, sleepy, or didn't mind, completely baffles me. I can look at those eyes and see horrible shock and pain ...something no human should be subjected to, let alone one so new to this world.
ReplyDeletewords are not enough, this is so so sad :(
ReplyDeletethis just made me tear up. I am SO glad I put my foot down and did not circumcise our son.
ReplyDeleteIt is a common misconsepetion in todays society that circumcision is done out of a need to prevent infection and promote health. This is a lie. I grew up in a family where I was the youngest of 8 boys and none of us,nor has any boy or parent of boys that I have ever known encounterd infection from having not been subjected this, "quick, easy, paineless proceedure. Circucision is simply a relic of a dogmatic and ancient system of belief. Not only do we feel it is ok to mutilate our own children, but we then teach our children that it is disgusting and unattractive to not be cicumcised. They in turn perpetuate this barbaric practice. Parents need to wake. We are supposed to protect our childern from pain and suffering. Show them that this is a safe and accepting world,and that when you were born, you were perfect.
ReplyDeleteoh the poor darling, my heart aches for the pain hes going though, my eyes are welling up :'( xxxx ♥ how could his mummy and daddy do this to him
ReplyDeleteThe entire series of photos of this baby being circumcised (from the Saturday Evening Post) are now up at:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.catholicsagainstcircumcision.org/onebaby/index.html
Heartbreaking. I note (to myself, as she isn't really open to debates) that my mother-in-law who circumcised my DH, and attempted to convince me that it needed to be done on babies because if it's done on older boys and adult men it's just too horrible, (She argued in vain, my two boys are intact.) struggled to breastfeed her sleepy newborn, she dealt with very much colic with him and he was a very fussy baby. Her second, a daughter had none of these issues.
ReplyDeleteWe are taught as of 2009 in nursing school, there aren't nerves down there yet, so it is okay, according to the American medical community. I disagree.
ReplyDeletePeople who don't think babies understand pain need to come and spend a day with me in my job, where we routinely subject infants to painful procedures to SAVE THEIR LIVES (IV starts, NG tube insertions, inserting lines, intubations, etc). Neonatal pain is not well understood, but it is understood well enough that we now have pain scales rate the baby's coping methods during painful procedures (any baby undergoing a painful procedure is required to have 2 staff members, one to provide developmentally supportive care such as facilitated tucking or non-nutritive sucking, and if possible, the baby is skin to skin with mom, and the other to do the actual procedure. There has been a really fantastic uptake with the new standards amongst staff, and babies are coping better with painful procedures!! For example, one of my little ones slept through a heel poke the other day, which was lovely!).
ReplyDeleteIt is absolutely MIND BOGGLING to me that anyone would subject their infant to pain when they don't have to. Any parent of a NICU infant would tell you that they would do anything possible to alleviate the pain their infants have to live through in order to survive, thrive and go home (and some of it's pretty intense).
I've chatted with a couple parents of baby boys who were adamant to keep their boys intact, because they chose to educate themselves, and that they felt it wasn't their right to make a decision to wasn't theirs to make. Very cool. :D
So sad! And the little victim in this photo might be cutting his own sons today. :(
ReplyDeleteWe must break the cycle.
I dug out these abstracts recently to refute the claims that newborns don't feel as much pain as adults. Some are pretty eye-opening:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12800017
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15334328
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15777869
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10737054
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17515740
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16621747
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10390299
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10959260
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21033009
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12881937
This lit analysis is eye opening as well:
ReplyDeleteThe Emotional and Behavioral Effects of Circumcision
http://knol.google.com/k/circumcision-and-human-behavior#
So sad!! What a horrible picture :( :(
ReplyDeleteI feel like the worst mother ever. I'm in tears after reading this.
ReplyDeleteWe circ'd my son and he had all of those problems minus colic. I will NEVER forget hearing his sad little cry on his way back to my room.
He did sleep for hours and hours and hours the first few days of life which I told were due to jaundice but now I wonder. Nursing was a huge failure. And, was DX as "failure to thrive".
If I ever have another son, he will NOT be circ'd!!!!!!
AND the GD effin dr did tell me he would sleep through it and after, BULLSHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteCheertyme - You're not alone. I did this to my first 2 sons and have such deep feelings of regret and remorse. I believed the studies that said it prevents cancer and infections. I thought it was beneficial and I believed the doctor that told me it was "no big deal." You have no idea how much I wish someone would have told me the truth. My 2 younger sons are intact. When you know better, you do better, but when it comes to first two sons, I still feel like I failed them.
ReplyDeleteMy first had no issues. My second's was a nightmare. They made us wait and wait until we'd waited so long that the freezing had worn off. He was completely inconsolable. As soon as the jerk started, he was so rough that I wanted to tell him to stop but didn't want him half circ'd so I let him finish.
ReplyDeleteWe had 8 weeks of colic hell and he didn't sleep well until after 9 months. I never thought it could be connected to this. He didn't go into the coma though, he just screamed and screamed.
We're expecting our 3rd boy and they'd have to kill me to get to his stuff. Noone's touching my boy.
I am just so glad my first child is a girl. Her father and I decided, before we found out she was a girl, that if she was a boy, we were going to circumcise simply bc the father is. We didn't do any research or anything. We are so lucky she was a girl...or this could have been her. I am pregnant with my second, also a girl, but early in the pregnancy we decided that this child would not be circumsised based on the evidence. Luck of the draw for my first child. I am so thankful that so much information is available to inform parents. This is just heartrending.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you let doctors bully you into circumcision people? In Europe it's unheard of, unless you're a member of certain religious community...
ReplyDeleteFirst published .. in 1981 ... and it is STILL done ....30 years later. That is just .. disgusting... horrifying .. appalling. I am a BRIT.. where routine circumcisions are unheard of. WHY would anyone buy into this terrible mutilation I have NO idea. Why a government would allow such a mutilation to their countries children - when it is condemned world wides is beyond me.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone tracked this baby down as he must be around 30 now? How does he feel about hit amputation? How does he feel about his photo being on this page? Does he even know .... that he was hurt, and could have been intact ... and left as he was when he was born ???
Sad.
ReplyDeletewe had our son circumcised. so many above stated that they feel horrible they 'did' this to their infants sons. at the time it was considered the 'right thing to do'...hindsight does no good. my son has grown up to be a healthy; well adjusted teenager. for future reference many/most will chose not to have the procedure done...and obviously that seems to be for the best. be forgiving of yourselves and learn from the past.
ReplyDeleteThis child is a clarion call for parents and the nation to wake up. It is evident he has suffered immensely. He is red all over from the procedure. His eyes are glazed from the trauma he has suffered. I'm guessing his eyes have been wiped of the copious tears that came from them but his suffering is still there as evidenced by the single tear from the corner of his eye. The glazed look is a look of resignation to the pain he has suffered while no one listened. Everyone of those who say these infants don't feel the pain should see and try to explain this picture. They won't be able to because there is no reasonable explanation without acknowledging the abuse he has suffered.
ReplyDeleteA nation is evaluated by the treatment of their most vulnerable. This photo is an indictment of the American people because they continue to let this be practiced within their borders without appropriate action and against the medical profession because of their willingness to continue the abuse. A society is appropriately evaluated by their treatment of their most vulnerable and the evaluation of The US is they are child abusers. Yes, I am an American and I am profoundly embarassed by this.
Frank
Glad to be the British mother of girls.
ReplyDeleteAs much as I don't like the idea of religious circ at least it's not so barbaric and doesn't do the harm that this amputation does. Most of the people having this amputation done to their sons aren't even of a religion that calls for it. The Bible says that if you're circumcised you're held to the law that Jesus's death serves you nothing. That's talking about the tiny nick in the foreskin to make it bleed, not the full amputation of it! How dare Christians think they know better than doing something expressly forbidden! As Christians not much is forbidden to us we live by grace not law but this takes grace from us.
Some times I wish I had never found US parenting sites!
I love kids. I am not having children due to population, environmental, social reasons. Children should be protected and cared for, not mutilated for the hospitals bottom line.
ReplyDeletebreaks my heart when i hear people (like my own sister) tell people "he did really well with it... cried for a second then was totally calm" how do people not get it? Seriously it's not pleasurable to them it's so painful they can't react!
ReplyDeleteThis breaks my heart. We must be a voice for these babies who cannot speak for themselves. I've linked to this page in a recent blog post about circumcision:
ReplyDeletehttp://ancientwinds1.blogspot.com/2011/08/circumdecision.html
It's time to do away with this outdated practice.
As a mom who circ'd 3 of my precious babies, this subject has been the hardest for me to swallow. I was NEVER told any other way. I just assumed that every baby boy was circ'd and I had no choice. It wasn't until I decided to educate myself on this subject that I became mortified at the truth behind circumcision. I wish every day that I could go back and keep my boys intact. I have been literally sick reading and researching information. All I can do is hold my babies and apologize over and over! It makes me so so so sad. It's definitally one of my biggest regrets.
ReplyDeleteI am glad that most of you mommies can say that you are so so so glad you didn't do it....as much as it makes me so angry at myself.
I am in tears. I regret it too. I know my boys will be ok but I am so incredibly sad right now. I bet my little boys felt exactly like this on the circ board. I feel terrible.
DeleteSadly this is exactly what happened to my firstborn Son. I didn't know any better & he suffered because of it. I wish I could take back that foolish decision and leave him intact. Thankfully I know better now so I do better!
ReplyDeleteThis is so sad. My heart is breaking for all the little boys who have been mutilated in this way.
ReplyDeleteThis makes me so sick. I want so bad to reach in and grab that baby and hold him. Leave him alone!!!
ReplyDeleteI wish I could save that baby. :(
ReplyDeleteI'm an adult adoptee who had a baby very early. I was uneducated about the mother/child bond and allowed my son to be circumcized in the NICU. I am so sad about it and about the many months we were apart when he needed me the most. www.PeachNeitherHereNorThere.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteI'm so sad because my baby looked much like the picture...born early, weighing one pound, and I allowed him to be circumcized in the NICU.
ReplyDeleteBroke my heart :(
ReplyDeletePoor, sweet boy. :( Broke my heart!!
ReplyDeleteThe Photo Credit thanks Rosemary Romberg who is, along with Marilyn Milos, the leading intactivist in the generation preceding that of Dr Momma. It is by reading Rosemary's 1985 book, Circumcision: The Painful Dilemma, that I discovered the intactivism of concerned mothers, the most prevalent form of intactivism today. I am elated to learn that it is thanks to her that the now-iconic images the Saturday Evening Post published in 1981 are in the public domain.
ReplyDeleteThis picture made me cry sobbing! All I feel and see is this poor sweet innocent baby boy SUFFERING!! he is in excrucuating pain!! I just want to pick up this precious baby and love him and kiss him and remove this pain from him. He needs skin to skin contact, laid on mommy;s chest and to be held. he ame from a secure, warm loving uterus safe and then arrives to suffering and immense pain! this is traumatizing and he is in severe shock which will be stored in his brain affecting this poor baby's trust and love towards people. He did not deserve to be restrained without consent to be mutilated in severe pain. Circumcision needs to be banned and baby boys have to be saved!! This picture should be sent to doctors and hospitals and expectant mothers everywhere ! God would want us to feel love and he made us perfect! How is this baby boy doing? I hope his mommy and daddy realize they made a big mistake and are giving this baby soo much unconditional love as they are lucky he didn't die from shock. In tears over this picture..... Please lets save baby boys from this horrible pain!! Circumcision MUST be banned!
ReplyDeleteCan you send this picture tp be printed in newspaper , in new, in the public eye? Pleasee lets make the public aware!
ReplyDeleteIts really sad to see images like this. My child was a girl (thankfully) but my husband and I have agreed to never subject a child to this if we ever have a boy. He has a weird opinion of circumcision. He was fully circ'd when he was an infant (C-section birth, his mother still managed to BF tho, pretty proud of her for that). but his family was Jahova's Witnesses and when he was 5 years old he got an epic level UTI that ended up requiring exploratory surgery. B/c of their beliefs he wasn't allowed to have any kind of anesthetic, general or local. the doctors (who im sure were pretty irritated with my husbands parents at the time) were pretty much relying on him going into shock and passing out. he was COMPLETELY AWAKE for the first 10 or 15 min of the surgery. I'm not a male obviously, but its not hard to imagine what it would be like to be a 5 year old boy having your most sensitive bits flayed open on a medical table. He remembers a lot of it QUITE vividly and has a huge scar running along the bottom of his shaft from just below the head all the way down... the only positive aspect of his surgery (I think) is that the doctors decided to partially restore his foreskin. still dont know why they did it, but at least he survived the ordeal and came out of it with something. (besides a clean bill of health, which is good). he has always been SUPER self conscious about his scars and partial restoration.... previous lovers have not been so accepting of his "deformities" as minor as they are. I personally am thankful that he was partially restored. sex would probably be quite uncomfortable otherwise, and scars have never bothered me. anyway..
ReplyDeleteknowing what he knows b/c of going through something like that... it seems he was happy to hear that I was against circumcision. lol.
This is very sad. I regret to say that I had my baby circumcised. I went into the hospital saying I wouldn't do it. I told the nurses I didn't want it done. I had a difficult labor and was sick after. My husband wanted the baby circumcised and I sort of let it happen, feeling that it was not the right thing (as a side note my husband was not circumcised at birth, he had himself circumcised at 20, he had sex before and after circumcision and did not regret being circumcised). I can honestly say that my baby had no negative effects of circumcision. He did not have colic, he breastfed well and etc. He slept a lot the first week or two but I am not sure he slept more than the average newborn. In any case he is now 8 months and every time I change his diaper I regret having him circumcised. I said if I have another boy I won't do it again and my husband has finally agreed with me. Having him circumcised is really the only thing in my life that I can honestly say I regret. It just seems so pointless. Especially when you consider that most of the world doesn't do it at all.
ReplyDeleteEven for religious reasons-people are unaware that biblical circumcision consisted only of cutting the very end of the foreskin which hangs loosely past the end of the glans, not the modern-day tearing away and obliteration of the entire foreskin. A biblically circumcised person could pass for uncircumcised, and function of the foreskin was not impaired.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.drmomma.org/2010/07/biblical-circumcision-information.html
When I was at the hospital with my client a couple weeks ago, I ran down to the kitchenette to grab ice. There was a young couple in there, their newborn baby in the bassinet sitting in the doorway. I had to do a double take.. he was so.. gone. His head was turned to the side, his eyes just wide and glazed over. I really found myself staring and analyzing.. I just knew in my heart that he had been circ'ed at some point earlier. I don't remember either of my babies looking like that. They were either sleeping, sleepy or very aware.. never just glazed. Of course they noticed me staring. I said, "Oh, he's beautiful. Congratulations." and waited for them to vacate. I felt sick.. I even considered giving them a card, but I really figured it was too late. :(
ReplyDeleteThis breaks my heart... and it is very real! I did not circumcise my son, but he ended up needing a surgical revision of his posterior tongue tie and lip tie bc he couldn't eat and wouldn't gain weight. It was a laser treatment (the best way to do that) and they said he would be able to nurse afterward only if we didn't give him the numbing gel, bc it would have made his whole mouth numb. Well, he was so much like THIS after the surgery that he wouldn't nurse anyway. :'( I wish I could go back and give him the gel...and I am CERTAINLY grateful that we did not circ him! For a while after the surgery I kept saying "I am so glad it went well for him, I cried more than he did!"
ReplyDeleteI was torn when I was pregnant with my son. His dad is not circumsised and I am very sensitive down there and sometimes have problems if in the heat of the moment he doesn't go wash of real quick. I didn't want to subject my son to the procedure but it's not fun dealing with him being uncircumcised either. Plus I worked for a pediatric urologist who stated that it was better for many reasons to do it and its better to do it now then later. I went ahead and had it done and I about lost it. His dad stayed with him but I was in the other room and heard all the screaming. I was going crazy!!! But was convinced I was doing the right thing. I am pregnant again and having a boy and the Dr I am seeing now says she doesn't really see a reason for it so I am researching more and seeing this photo and hearing about issues that boys go through after I don't believe I will have it done to my baby. All the issues with the PTS that are listed after the procedure my son had. I couldn't get him to feed right, he slept all the time and had crying fits everynight. I hate that I did this to him and I wish I could take it back. I really really do. I am going to try to not beat myself up too much and just learn and not do it again. Thank you for the info.
ReplyDeleteI don't see how any pareny can look at their child's face like this and see peace! This poor boys defeated and dazed look of pain always always triggers anger, sadness and so much guilt...Why do I feel guilty but dr's feel nothing and parents feel pride? I hate circumcision so much is sickening to me that anyone can accept it! Yes I understand it's ingrained but it's just too weird for me to see how skinning genitals of an healthy newborn could ever be seen as normal! Poor baby boys, born to a society that sees you as property and too stupid to even bathe :(
ReplyDeleteThis picture has be crying. I'm beyond happy I didn't have my baby circumcised. :,(
ReplyDeleteIt is wicked, should be banned. We don't do this in Britian- the NHS says operations should be necessary- this is not!
ReplyDeleteMy sister's son who had both of his kidneys swollen when born had to undergo 7 days of hospital (NICU) admission, a surgery and circumcision just to avoid any urinary infection in future.
ReplyDeleteThis picture reminds me of my nephew who would have endured the same pain while his genitals were mutated. It is painful even for those who look at the face of the child. He seems he wants to share his agony, but unable to do so.
Hope God is there taking care of them, helping those tiny ones bear their pains.