Monday, September 13, 2010

A Benign Post Becomes a Tangent

I've been visiting Williamsburg and Jamestown last week, thus the lack of posting, but I'm home now and enjoying the thought of being in my own home and in my own bed! Having so much time with my MIL is great and hard at the same time. She is the most wonderful lady and I love her dearly, but having the routine that Smug-Baby and I worked so hard to establish disrupted for so long is really hard on both of us. Not to mention, I am a creature of habit, I like routine and schedule and my husband and his family are not routine or schedule people, so I am feeling stressed a bit. I know that I will be sad to see her leave at the end of this week, but it will be good for my family to get back to our lives.

Visiting the first permanent colony in America was pretty cool and to visit it on the anniversary of 9/11 brought everything together in some way and we were touched. We felt like we stepped back into another place and time and really felt the impact that the day these colonists landed and the very shores we stood upon, had on the whole world and how 9/11 had done the same thing. We were forever changed that day and we will never be able to see that date on a calendar without remembering where we were and what we were doing. I know now how my grandfather feels about the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, it changed him forever and that date is burned into his consciousness in way that just isn't for me. Smug-Baby will know about 9/11, but it will never be a major event in her life, because she wasn't there, didn't live through it.

We drove home today and Smug-Baby slept the whole way! Poor girl is so off of her routine that she has not been sleeping well at night, not getting her diaper changed on her normal schedule and not nursing as well as she does normally. She get so distracted by everything these days that she forgets she is hungry and then is up all night nursing to play catch up. I am getting concerned about my milk supply and now that we are home, I am going to put my foot down on doing anymore drives or day trips. I want to stay home and nurse every 2-3 hours! Even if she is not hungry, I want to at least make the effort to try to get her nursing. She is fine, its not like she is losing weight or anything, but I want to keep my natural birth control (read: no period) in tact as well as make sure I keep producing enough milk to fulfill her needs!

Lastly, I have been talking more and more with Smug-Hub about having another baby and bottom line, I don't think that we are going to have any more. We are unable to come to an agreement on one issue. There is a 50% chance that we would have a boy child and I am unwilling to mutilate his penis and my husband is unwilling to leave him intact. Since we cannot come to a compromise on this issue (I suggested waiting and having it done if and when it became an issue for our boy) and Smug-Hub does not care that there is no medical reason to have it done, I can't take the chance on having another baby.

I am having a really hard time thinking that I have had the only pregnancy I will ever have, the only birth, the only, the only, the only... I keep thinking that he will come around and he may, but there is so much opposition to leaving a boy child intact, especially in our little town that I have a hard time believing he will suddenly have a change of heart. I really felt that he would see that causing unnecessary pain and suffering to our child was unacceptable once we had Smug-Baby, but he remains unmoved. He cites not wanting the baby to look different than daddy, which is the oddest argument I have ever heard! What if his hair is a different color than daddy's? He cites not wanting our son to be made fun of by other kids. So if he has big ears we'll cut them off? If he has a odd shaped nose, we will get him a nose job?

My daughter looks nothing like me. She is the mirror image of my husband. He has dark hair and eyes, while I am blond and have blue eyes. So, I really don't want her to have a hard time because she doesn't look like her mommy, so I think that we should start coloring her hair and get her some colored contacts...

I would consider having it done if there was  ONE medical reason out there to have it done. Just ONE!! There isn't ANY good medical reason out there today. NOT ONE!!!!! Parents used to be told that it was a hygienic thing, that the penis could not be properly cleaned unless it was done and parents were told that if it was left intact they needed to do all this major cleaning stuff, which was totally wrong and ended up causing infections that led to having to have it done later in childhood or adulthood. People use this as a reason now that it should be done.

Here are the facts! God made us perfect! God doesn't screw up! Leave the penis alone, and it will be just fine!! An uncircumcised penis does not need to be cleaned on the inside, leave it alone!!   

OK, so yeah, I'm having a hard time with this "decision" and maybe we will someday come to a resolution on this issue, but for now I am very sad to think that I have had my first and last child and dealing with that on top of having someone in my home a bit too long is having the effect of a perpetual bad mood... I'm sure that once my home is my own and cleaned and we are all back on our routines, I will feel better and I don't need to tackle the new baby topic for a while, so I choose to try to enjoy the last several days of MIL's visit and not think about it!!
 

4 comments:

  1. Ryan, I feel 1000% (and yes I mean a thousand) that no one should comment on your decision about circumcision. Though if you both want to enlarge your family and this is the only point of contest, I would only offer the gentle suggestion that maybe you talk to a urologist. In person. No internet research. When I found out I was expecting Richard I did have a friend's husband (a urologist here in Rke) give me some facts that helped me decide (I too had a hard time with the decision). He didn't try to sway me at all, but did share some experiences from his years in practice. I wish for you and Chris to both be at peace with the decision.
    Beth

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  2. Sounds like a rough week my love! It'll get better...pray about the decision...God will show you whether you should have another baby, and will help you both make decisions. It's so weird to me that circumcision is such common thing among white Americans...and not common with any other group (aside from Jewish folk). You'll get through this!

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  3. Hey Ryan, I hope you don't think I'm snooping on your blog, but reading this post reminded me of quite a bit of another Michalski brother. We have had the exact same conversation multiple times and he has given me the EXACT same pro circumcision reasoning: everyone does it, his parents did it to him, the kid will be made fun of, he doesn't want him to look 'different.' He is a smart guy, but when it comes to this, he is a stubborn neanderthal.

    Obviously we aren't having kids in the near future, but it definitely stings my brain to think that when we do, we may have to REALLY confront the argument and if D doesn't change his mind...then what? I'd like to think I get my way and can convince him of anything...but what if we can't see eye to eye on this subject? All bc he has this outdated superficial idea?

    We were all raised differently and think that what our parents taught us must be the right way, but hopefully in adulthood we learn new things and distance ourselves from home and develop our own opinions based on new research or updated ideals. I'm hoping D can put aside his boyish wiener pride and make decisions that are best for our kids' health.

    Besides, I read that the national infant circumcision rate is projected to drop to 10% in the next 50 years and the large population that was circumcised during the 1950-60s will be on their way out, so who is to say that circumcised kids won't be the minority and shamed for having parents who elected for an unnecessary surgery?!

    Anyways, I don't mean to rant, but hang in there. You are C's wife and know how to get into his brain like no one else. There is no big rush, so just start planting little seeds here and there and avoid the drawn out pro/con conversations. If he is anything like D, you can give him a bunch of little ideas to think about over time, and eventually he warms up to it and thinks it was his great grand idea all along :D. I will be over here slowly working on D so baby girl won't have circumcised cousins. For now, enjoy baby girl and don't think too much about 'the last time you will: a, b, c...' bc I'm sure you are knee deep in a ton of 'first times' too. Hope all is well!
    Rebecca

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  4. I'm with you Ryan. We didn't have Toren circumcised and I would have felt horrible and still regret it if we had. Once you see them and their beautiful body, I couldn't possibly imagine slicing his penis up, just so it looks "normal"? What is normal? and who was the first quack to propose this? There's only one reason that the act of circumcision isn't completely laughed at in this country, and that's just because of peoples fears about what other people think about them. Plain and simple and it's sad. Who cares! Isn't your child's body more important? Like you said, God didn't make a mistake. I'm circumcised, my Dad is, and as far as I would presume, everybody else in my family is, but that sure as heck isn't going to be a reason for me to mutilate his body. I've seen plenty of guys through the years who were uncircumcised, and yeah you notice and look, but I sure never would have thought about making fun of them, and if you making fun of the way their natural body looks, would affect them emotionally and cause them to doubt themselves, then they weren't raised to know about what really matters in life anyway. If somebody made fun of the way my body looked, I would just laugh at them and say "ok, who cares". Crazy country out there, but like Rebecca says, thankfully the statistics are moving in the right direction and soon it will be the circumcised ones who are the minority. In fact, it almost is now.

    BTW I commend you for going so far as to say you would not have another child, just so you wouldn't have to circumcise them. That is awesome. Best of luck figuring this all out.

    -Erik

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