My aunt is a nurse, and she said she’s seen many panicked parents whose babies have swallowed their earrings. No idea on the choking though.
And I agree with you on the baby “head garter”.
I’m against it. My ears were pierced when I was seven months old, by the method of having one person do the left ear with a piercing gun and someone else do the right ear, also with a piercing gun, at the same time. To minimize the crying, I guess. As a result, those first holes (I now have several others) are noticeably misaligned, and it looks a bit odd. I am with the people who don’t think inflicting unnecessary pain on a child is a good idea. Who cares if they’ll remember it? I didn’t remember–I had to be told to know about the circumstances of my first ear piercings. But the kid not remembering it is not a good reason to do it, either. Neither is being able to tell if the child is a girl or boy. Whose business is it? If I have children, I’m not going to get their ears pierced (whether they’re girls or boys–I’ve seen little boys with ear studs sometimes too) until they’re old enough to ask for it. This has only cemented my family’s feeling that I’m a freak.
Get this, though–my parents didn’t have my little sister’s ears pierced when she was a baby. That was the only thing she ever envied me–that I’d always had pierced ears, and she had to wait till she was seven years old to get hers. OK, whatever.
My first piercing holes are in the middle of my ear lobes, but not quite the same place in each ear due to the way they were pierced. They’re also high enough up that if I wear small hoops, they look rather odd, since the hoops don’t have enough room at the bottom.
It’s a cultural thing. I got my ears pierced as part of the whole “cut cord, wash baby” procedure. In other places, it’s not done. No big deal for me either way.
As a matter of personal preference, I’m not in favor of poking holes in small children.
Plus there is the issue of nickel allergy, and I wouldn’t want to contemplate risking a severe reaction from that in an infant. Nickel can be found in even decent seeming earrings, it would cost a lot of money to ensure that only surgical steel was used for them, and I don’t know if the reputable companies make infant sized earrings.
In mediterranean and latino cultures it is customary to pierce the ears of baby girls, usually within a few weeks of birth. Some folks pin it to various ages and rituals – baptism, naming, what have you. The origin of this practice, if you go back far enough, was this: witches – people born under the evil eye, really, but witches is a close enough translation --are believed to have no earlobes. The fact of piercing the ears establishes that the child has earlobes and is therfore not a witch.
This is not to say that anyone is thinking of it in this way now, you understand, any more than people connect the tooth fairy with protection from evil magic or any other cutural artifact you might care to name. But anyway, that’s why.
At this point it serves as a sort of marker of community and so on, as well as a way for parents to demonstrate that this child is loved and cared for. It seems to have caught on outside the latino community and I expect that there it serves the same purpose as all the other ways to decorate a child – somebody thinks it looks cute.
Every girl in my family has had her ears pierced sometime close to birth and no one has suffered any important physical or spiritual trauma as a result, and I expect that had I had girls I would have had their ears pierced.
Drat! I meant to also say, that the studs that were used to pierce my ears were gold plated, over…nickel. The gold plating wore away, leaving the nickel core on the posts. I am lucky I didn’t develop an allergy to it. It is my understanding that it’s a kind of hell, to avoid the ubiquitous metal.
Ditto on it not always being reversible - I didn’t get my ears pierced until I was around 16; I’d never intended to, but my clueless then-boyfriend bought me pierced earrings. I stopped wearing earrings in my mid-20s, but put earrings in about 3 years later for a special occasion - they were a tight fit and were irritated afterwards. I haven’t worn earrings since At this point (nearly a decade later), I think the left one is closed, but the right one has an ongoing issue where every month or every other month it’ll get infected (not to mention hot-feeling, swollen, and painful), and I’ll have to squeeze a mess of nasty pus out and try to disinfect it. I can also still feel the scar tissue in both ears.
I’m sure that it breaks a law in some communities also, and may be illegal on a state wide basis, because legislatures can’t leave people alone.
I’m against it. When I was growing up, getting your ears pierced was a rite of passage for preteen girls. It requires being brave and facing something scary, and afterward, you feel a bit more grown-up. Piercing as babies takes away that little rite of passage.
As an adult who paid quite a tidy sum to get their teeth fixed because her parents couldn’t/wouldn’t, let me please ask you to re-think your position on this issue. It’s not just a matter of a pretty smile. There are health issues involved, too. Poor dental hygeine is a major factor in heart disease, and if your teeth are crooked they are a hell of a lot more difficult to keep clean. Also, the self confidence gained in being proud of your smile is well worth the frustration of wearing braces. When you are younger the process is not nearly as difficult, as you are still growing and your teeth and jaw are a lot more malleable. As an adult the process is incredibly difficult and painful, and more often than not requires surgery of some sort. It took me twice as long, and I spent twice as much money as I would have if I’d had them as a teenager. I have come to resent my parents for being too cheap or not thinking it was an important enough thing to do for me.
I am appalled. You’re basically causing a baby great pain for your own vanity and hurting your child to please your pride. The baby doesn’t know or care, just that it hurts.
Ivygirl had her ears pierced for her 13th birthday. She was old enough to know what was going on, old enough to do the aftercare, and we made a big deal out of it, followed by a ladies’ lunch out with Grandma and the aunts and picking out a nice pair of earrings for her to wear once her lobes had healed.
ivylass, what can I say, it saves a lot of guessing…
And frankly, when it’s done within minutes of birth, it looks to me like it would kind of get hidden in the general trauma.
I’d really like to cross-reference this thread with any of the numerous heated debates on circumcision… you know, just to see…
Surgical…
steel?
Gold. You use gold. And instead of being a straight rod that you just push a sort of “stopper” on, it’s screwed on, so much harder for a kid to take out.
I still remember buying my second pair of earrings when I was 12, the first pair was the one I got at birth! And, since Dad’s Dad was my Godfather and Mom’s Mom my Godmother, the earrings were paid by their respective spouses.
Steel?
Zabali, I don’t know for other families, but at least in mine, the only times I wore good high quality earrings (none of that Claire’s stuff) was when I was a baby/little kid (and the same thing with the other females in my family). Precisely because of the possiblity of allergies, the small kids all had the high quality jewelry studs. And it’s not as if they have a lot of them… usually just one or two pairs of good jewelry.
And infant size earrings? We’re talking small studs, which any reputable jewelry carries (or at least they do back home).
I also got mine done at the pediatrician, and others had theirs done at the hospital before leaving it. My doctor is/was actually against piercing, but did it at his practice because that way he could control the situation (when to pierce, offer a clean procedure, do follow ups, etc.).
Read my second post. It’s come out that surgical steel is the way to go for various piercings, because if it’s pure surgical steel than there is less risk of developing a nickel allergy. 
Count me in the “Heck, NO!” camp. I had my ears pierced at 5, but it was because I asked. And it was still a nightmare, because I had allergies to certain earrings, and wasn’t really old enough to take care of my piercings myself. Not that I have any regrets, but jeez, it was a bad enough experience with (a) the choice, and (b) halfway decent motor skills!
I’ve never really understood some parents’ rabid insistence that people be able to readily identify the gender of their INFANT. Who cares, unless you think people might want to mack on your baby (ewwwwww)? So I also disapprove of other signifiers that look less painful than a piercing, but still uncomfortable, like attaching a bow or other pink fluffy thing to the THREE hairs on the baby’s head or dressing the baby in a poufy dress with so much tulle and lace that it alone is larger than the actual baby.
I hate those things with a passion!
I live in a country where, like Nava said, piercing is part of the ‘cut cord, wash baby’ procedure. It is usually done before the baby leaves the hospital by one of the nurses. They have a lot of practice, work under sterile conditions, and since babies earlobes are mostly skin by then they hurt a lot less.
I got my ears pierced as a baby, and I have always hated it. I have a sever allergy to any type of earrings. I am guaranteed to get a bad reaction and an infection if I put on earrings of any kind. Furthermore, since my holes are a little too big as I probably wore too heavy earrings when I was a kid and the wholes never closed. My mom herself had to have surgery to repair her earlobe after one of her earrings was ripped by another kid in school. As an adult she reopened them :rolleyes:
I have a baby girl, and even if under a lot of criticism from some people, I refuse to pierce her ears. I find it a mild form of mutilation, but mutilation nevertheless, probably because of my own experience. I believe that any non-medical intervention should be avoided.
All I’m saying is, I have 40M people here who wouldn’t be caught dead buying steel earrings for their baby daughters.
Steel, indeed!