Neonate & Child 2
The pain that is apparent in circumcised neonates is intensified by their lack of coping mechanisms. The further ramification of stress
hormones being triggered and released by intense pain may have adverse effects on brain development, sexual function, and behaviour.
Severe pain during infancy may permanently and irreversibly alter neurological circuitry responsible for pain perception and memory
functioning prior to and immediately after birth. An adverse painful peri-natal event like circumcision, through the process of classical
conditioning, may sensitise the infant to pain later in life. Circumcised boys displayed heightened physiological pain responses to
vaccinations four to six months after circumcision, suggestive of an infant comparison of post traumatic stress disorder, as compared
with genitally intact children. An infant does retain significant memory traces of traumatic events. When a child is subjected to
unbearable, overwhelming pain, it conceptualizes the mother as both participatory and responsible, regardless of the mother's intent.
When the mother is, in fact, truly complicit, as in giving permission for circumcision surgery, the infant's perception of her culpability
and willingness to have him harmed is fixed indelibly.
An anecdotal account from a nurse with several decades of experience with nursing mothers recounts…”Breastfeeding is often irreparably
damaged by circumcision. At the time of most circumcisions, many mothers and babies are barely getting the hang of breast feeding
and the baby is sometimes literally torn off the breast for his journey to the circumcision room. When he comes back, he is often
in shock, in a deep sleep, and un-arousable, or so irritable that he is inconsolable and will
not take the breast. The main thing with getting breastfeeding going is uninterrupted exposure of baby to mother. They are one. Anything
not crucial to sustaining life should be avoided.
The mutilation of children's genitals is such an important need in humans that whole religions and state systems have been founded
upon the practice. Yet when scholars attempt to explain why almost everyone since the beginning of recorded history has massively
assaulted the genitals of their children, they assiduously deny that it is a sexual perversion or that those who do it ever mean any
harm to the children. In his publication called ‘The Darker Regions of the Human Mind: Some Statements about Circumcisers’, Dr
John Foley recounts anecdotal episodes from his experience saying that “circumcision provides a convenient and socially acceptable
outlet for the perverted component of the circumciser's libido….I have had personal experience with the psychopathology that underlies
the wish to circumcise. The pitiful wails of the suffering infant are all too often the background for lewd and obscene commentary
by the obstetrician to his audience of nurses. Several years ago I saw an infant born with multiple deformities. He could not live
more than a few months at most, but to add to his miseries, this unfortunate bit of humanity had to undergo a thorough circumcision…I
have seen two medical students fight over the privilege of doing circumcisions on the newborn, although these same students showed
neither interest nor aptitude for opening boils or doing other surgical tasks… And I say that one of the reasons why circumcision
is so common in this country stems from the sadism of the crypto-pervert.”
This is a huge concern in the pro-breastfeeding community”. Breastfeeding newborns required supplementation due to the mother's perception
that the baby could not breastfeed or had true difficulties with feeding. Early supplementation before the onset of lactogenesis is
known to be associated with breastfeeding failure. Given the strong arguments for protecting calm, safe, pain-free environment for
the newborn to transition to life outside the warmth and cushion of the uterus, successful breastfeeding should be given absolute
priority over neonatal circumcision. Circumcision is sometimes extreme enough to impede the maternal-infant bonding.
Botched Circumcision