In my home country, when a girl is delivered, they give them 2 shots (standard for the world) one is a vaccine for hepatitis b (to prevent infection of that virus that can lead to liver damage and death) and the other one is vitamin K (to prevent excess bleeding). Also, before going home, the new lady is given to the parents with 2 beautiful punctured earlobes with 2 amazing hypoallergenic earrings: that’s just part of the delivery package.
You need to understand our cultural “shock” when we asked them when are they going to do the piercings at the hospital, and the answered was “we don’t do that”.
And I was shocked:
1) In my mind “the entire world” knew that baby girls will have earrings at the moment that they leave the hospital
2) We needed to find out what would the process be in order to “normalize” in our cultural standards, her ears
As per AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) Guidelines, recommends that anybody that would like a piercing be ready to take care of it, meaning, that the age and maturity of “patient” will differ on that, and having my 1 month old baby, does not even qualify as “potty trained” let alone, be ready to wash her own earrings, and kind of goes against the my cultural expectations. But imagine that I did not read that statement, I can fine the logic to it…
It’s a fact that our daughter will get her piercings… We went online, we asked friends, doctors and parents regarding what to do… Well practically there is a couple of THINGS TO CONSIDER:
- Hygiene: Of course you want to have the safest, cleanest area to do any procedure to your own flesh and blood.
- Vaccines: Many people recommend waiting 15 days after the “Tetanus” shot (2 month regular shots for the US) before doing any piercings, that way it minimize risk of contracting a horrible PREVENTABLE disease.
- Method
- options and choices:
- By piercing gun: Usually done in most places, can be self thought to do it, easy, if is in a store, the “gun” per se, in most cases cannot be sterilized, and the blunt trauma (the actual pressure from the earring to the skin
- By Needle… Using the same protocol and technique of a piercing professional. Using sterile equipment to perforate the ear lobes, having less tissue damage, but the cost is more and needs to be in a safe place.
- options and choices:
Both of the choices don’t sound attractive…
What did you do for your baby? What technique did you use? Did you waited, for how long? What was your experience after the fact?
Dr Shap's 
Leave a Reply