Infant circumcision is a routine procedure at most US hospitals. A baby boy is born, and within days, a nurse is asking rather cavalierly if you want someone to remove a piece of his genitals. It’s a wild concept. But it’s one that’s so normalized and expected that opting out of the procedure might elicit more questions than going along with it.
More often than not, the minor surgery is successful, and the family takes their bouncing baby boy home. After the first couple of days of healing, most parents don’t think much about it again.
Sadly, one family’s decision to circumcise their son came with a steep cost. Tim and Gabrielle Groth welcomed their son Cole to the world on March 31, 2025, WCTV reported. After his birth, doctors learned that Cole had a heart defect so they kept him at the New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in Manhattan to place a stent. “Everything was going really well. He was doing so well he was cleared for discharge,” Tim Groth said. But all of Cole’s progress eventually regressed.
The hospital asked the couple if they wanted to have Cole circumcised, and they said they did. They say neither the doctors nor the nurses informed them of the increased risks of performing this type of procedure on babies with congenital heart disease. Now, the couple say the day after Cole’s circumcision was one of the worst of their lives.
“I walk in, and he is extremely pale. He is crying like I’ve never heard before,” Gabrielle recalled, per WCTV. “It was not my healthy boy I saw just the day before.” Throughout the night, over the course of 10 hours, Cole almost bled to death, they shared. “The vital organs of his body lost blood and oxygen, and he suffered liver damage, kidney damage, brain damage. How does this happen in a cardiac NICU [neonatal intensive care unit]?”
Cole is still not out of the woods. Nearly a month after his birth, he remains in the hospital in critical condition.
The hospital issued a statement to CBS News. “Due to patient privacy policies, we cannot comment,” the statement reads. As a result of the complications, Cole has had to endure even more operations. He receives daily blood transfusions and has had four surgeries in the last week.
The couple is still processing the entire ordeal. “Trying to understand how you could go from a circumcision, in what seemed like a stable baby, to crisis,” Tim said, per CBS News.
Thanks to what’s happened, the Groths have to wait even longer to take their son home. He has a 2-year-old brother, Bryce, waiting to meet him. In the meantime, “I want him to know how strong he is and the strength he showed, and how much he fought,” said Gabrielle, who is in awe of her newborn’s tenacity.
