| In most religions that circumcise the procedure happened on the 7th or 8th day of life. If you do it at a week it has much less effect on breastfeeding than if you do it on the second day of life.
Often the breastfeeding is only just getting started and there are still a few problems to sort out on the second day. Also your milk will not have increased yet. So having a baby that is in pain and doesn’t feed easily can be a big problem. Also the baby is likely to be given medication to help with the pain which makes him sleepy and again causes problems for the breastfeeding.
Of course the baby is still in pain at a week but if doesn’t affect your breastfeeding so much because your milk has already increased and you are better able to cope with a baby like that.
My husband and I come from Britain and Hong Kong. We never thought of circumcising our boys. It seems a very cruel and heartless thing to do to a small baby.
I had a boyfriend who had to have it done, for medical reasons, as a 13 year old. He said it was the most painful thing that had ever happened to him. I don’t believe that just because the baby is only a couple of days it doesn’t hurt them that much. After all other things like injections hurt them as much as it does us.
There is also research telling us that babies that undergo lots of medical procedures as a baby are less able to copy with pain as they grow older. I can see this in my last child. She was quite sick after she was born and had lots of injections and blood tests for the first three weeks of her life. Every time something hurt her she was much more upset and for longer than my other babies. Fortunately after about 9 months she settled down and doesn’t get upset any more than necessary about injections now.  |