Besides, your son is normal- the rest of us are the recessive-gene freaks. 6 fingered hands are actually made by dominant genes. They are the evolutionary factory-installed standard for human hands.
And think of the uses!
a fabulous coke finger, not just a nail!
Great for using on hot dates with the ladies- makes the shocker extra shocking!
If he’s into yarn crafts, it’s a thread-holding dream.
If he chooses a career in the mob, he gets an EXTRA pinkie ring! Like a wiseguy ++.
Thanks for all of the opinions, jokes, snide remarks, experience, and the like Ignorance Fighters. This was much better than I had expected.
I am not overly concerned. My first instinct was to have it removed right away. No anesthesia. I know that seems particularly cruel and the doctors may not even allow it. I just though that the pain would be mixed in with the trauma(?) of birth, and all would be well. And that was only if it looked useless, defective or injury prone. I have to say many replies where along my same line of thinking. I do plan on waiting to have a look at it before making any decisions. I am also much more open to letting it be for a while to see how it develops if the digit is borderline and I am more likly to let my boy grow to an age to weigh in on it himself.
I am also pleased with the post by cerberus. I now have interesting questions to ask the doctors about potential markers. I am not anymore worried about these potential problems than any other rare disease. I just like to ask doctors interesting questions with hopes that I will get a House like response.
If there’s one thing I’d like to help you understand, it is this: birth experiences matter. You can’t injure an infant and expect it to have no effect whatsoever, no affect on the developing brain, no long term consequences. Doctors USED to say that babies feel no pain, and so did all kinds of cruel things to them without benefit of anaesthesia. Now they know that babies do have a highly developed sense of pain, and that painful experiences do have long-term effects - they permanently alter the development of the brain.
I’ll bring up circumcision again , not to harp on it, but because it has been studied extensively, and supernumary digit removal has not. Doctors know that a baby boy cut without anaesthesia will have a much more severe reaction to other kinds of pain (like vaccination pain) for months afterward: something in the brain has been altered. Extrapolate from there: you can’t hurt a baby and then say “It doesn’t matter, he doesn’t remember.” Babies do remember, just not like you and me. Their bodies remember: boys who have been cut cannot do certain yoga postures that intact boys can do (I know a woman who is doing her doctoral thesis on this oddity). They’ve been altered in ways nobody ever thought would happen. And the fact that they cannot access those memories consciously later doesn’t mean those memories are not present and having an effect. In other words, you don’t know what you might mess up (phantom limb pain? Nerve damage?) so you have to have a really good reason to mess at all. If the finger is a risk to itself, like a dog’s dewclaw, then removing it under controlled circumstances before it gets ripped off is understandable. But I’m glad to hear you’re going to wait and see.
Also, no doctor would remove an extra digit without proper anaesthesia and you might find yourself reported to Child Protective Services for suggesting it. It’s not like cutting the tails off puppies (which is also cruel, and many dog breeders are refusing to do cosmetic alterations to dogs like Great Danes and Dobermans now for that reason).
I learned this much when my daughter was undergoing her ordeals: you can’t ask questions you don’t know exist. I’m glad we’ve been able to give you questions to ask, so you and your doctor can cover all possible bases.
[hijack]Actually, everyone can, and with an added benefit as well.
Make your hands into fists and hold them out in front of and away from you. In other words, you should be looking at the backs of your hands, with your knuckles on top. Now count along the hills and valleys, so to speak, of your knuckles, starting at the far left. The knuckles are the months with 31 days, and the gaps between are those with 30 or less.[/hijack]
Just because a gene is dominant does not mean it is “normal” or even beneficial. Polydactyly is dominant, but so is bowleggedness, myopia, and some forms of deafness. And if it is dominant, then wouldn’t one of the two parents have been polydactyl?
My older brother was born with two thumbs, well, three actually, two on one hand, one on the other. Aside from that, he was and is perfectly normal, and had none of the laundry list from above. It was removed when he was a toddler. We’ve got some cool pictures. There’s a scar on his thumb, and it has a little bit of a curve to it. He says he remembers having it removed and it was traumatic, so don’t wait too long.
My sister’s niece has a double big toe (two bones side by side in one wide toe) and they just left it alone. I think they should have fixed it at birth but they couldn’t bear the thought. The kid is now entering school and will have to take her shoes of for various activities. I think they should do it now rather than after the others make fun of her.
Everything I know about polydactylism is from reading Silence of the Lambs. Apparently, having an extra pinky or thumb is dime-a-dozen (relatively); the really special have extra digits in the middle. And that’s what Hannibal Lecter had.
I’m a massage therapist in a dental practice, giving foot massage during cleanings and other procedures. I’ve been quite surprised at how many people have extra toes (and fused toes, missing toes, etc.). I’ve come to realize that the range of “normal variation” is much broader than our idealizing culture admits.
I was surprised to see this question since just a few months back, during my genetics class (I’m in medical school), I pondered what I’d do if I hypothetically had a baby with extra fingers. Polydactyly is indeed not that unusual. Even without a family history, sometimes new dominant traits can crop up suddenly from mutations in the egg, sperm, or early stages of the baby’s development.
My vote is that I would leave them alone if the fingers are functional. I don’t believe in removing something just because it’s a little “different” than the norm, and the kid could decide to have it removed later on if it bothered him. If it is just a rudimentary stump I’d probably remove it.
I’m glad that it sounds like this baby is healthy and the extra fingers are not a manifestation of a more serious genetic problem. Best of luck to you and your family.
