(no subject)
This blog's getting to be like a number 10 bus - nothing new here for a long time, then loads of posts all coming along together. Not like my regular blog, where the crap just sort of dribbles out constantly - what a savoury metaphor.
We're pregnant - no, let me rephrase that. Kerry is pregnant. We are having a baby but Kerry is having the baby. So let's start over:
We are due to be parents again next year. Clear March 4th for partying and wetting the baby's head. I've been keeping an eye on various pregnancy journals on Livejournal - some are quite quiet, and others can be like a bear pit. Most of them are American, I mean this is Livejournal after all, and the difference between there and here is quite absurd at times.
There's one thing that stikes me as being mental and certainly can rile up the cross-pond colonials*. And it's circumcision. We're having a boy - that was quite clear from the ultrasound - and the question of circumcision just hasn't arisen, and I'm pretty sure that it won't be something the doctor will even mention. Our son will not have the end of his cock lopped off to please anyone. If it's medically needed we'll have it done; the idea of whipping off his foreskin as a matter of routine is just absurd. From what I've seen there are two main "reasons" for routine circumcision of baby boys:
- "It's healthier / cleaner". My thoughts on that are that if you need surgery to aid your personal hygiene, you aren't familiar enough with soap and water. Bottoms and ladies' bits are potentially just as "dirty" as the long-suffering foreskin, but you don't see anyone having a circumcision of the bottom, do you? And not just because I've only just made it up.
- "The other boys will laugh at him at school when getting changed for gym, if he looks different". Well, how things have changed at schools since I was a lad. Then, if you were even suspected of looking at another boy's meat and two veg in the changing areas, you were immediately accused of gaying. Shame far and above that of having a foreskin.
I have seen such utter rubbish spouted about the foreskin from people who've clearly never seen one in their life in a couple of the Livejournal groups about babies and children and whatnot. Some of it would make an imbiciele weep. I tell you this, I'm very attached to my foreskin - in more ways than one - and my boy's going to lose his - well, not exactly over my dead body, but you know what I mean.
An old man once said to me, "don't worry about your genitals, lad, they'll stand up for themselves"** but on this occasion I'm standing up for Oliver's nascent trouser snake until he's old enough to make any decisions about it himself.
And for all the baying and howling and beating-of-the-breast in the American groups, circumcision just isn't an issue on this side of the pond. I don't know what the rate is, but it's very low for white babies (jewish and muslim babies are different - but that's a whole other kettle of fish). I remember one boy who had been circumcised when I was at school. No one laughed at him for his absurd-looking love truncheon (see (2) above; we all pretended not to notice). In his case, we had a whole load of other reasons to laugh at him, but there you go.
*there are lots of things that rile up the yanks - much of the rest of the world being the obvious one - but I'm on a pregnancy hobby horse here.
** this is not true.