| Vasectomies
Rock!
Summary: It's liberating to know that no matter how hard, long or often you come there is no chance it will result in a pregnancy. This makes sex more spontaneous and enjoyable. -OR- Don’t want more kids but don’t want to wear a condom? Then get a vasectomy you wuss! After about fifteen years together my partner and I decided to start a family. It’s not that we couldn’t get around to it sooner; it’s just that my partner is a highly organized person and this is where she had put pregnancy in her 20 year planner. Never seen one? They’re about two feet thick with ring binders the size of bicycle rims. You can special order them from Staples. Now my partner had been on the pill since we started dating. Before that I'd only had a couple of partners, both whom were also on the pill. So basically I have gone most of my adult life without having to wear a condom. When my partner stopped taking the pill about a year and a half before she was planning to get pregnant we thought we would just switch to condoms as our birth control of choice. How bad could it be right? Honestly, it was much worse than I had expected. Besides being a mood breaker, it was just kind of a numb feeling. I’ve experienced greater sensations dry humping through clothes. Although my partner was a bit skeptical, I was convinced we could just use the pullout method instead. Since we were planning on getting pregnant in the near future anyway, an accident in this point would not be the end of the world. Other than having to be reminded a few times in the beginning it went really smooth and was very reliable. How reliable? Well, a year and a half later we got pregnant on our first try. After the baby my partner had no intention of going back on the pill. Fifteen years was enough. So we went back to the pullout method. I must say that pulling out and coming on your partner can be thrilling from time to time but after a while it starts to get old. You see, right before a man climaxes his mind kind of goes blank. And I mean totally blank. Like not being able to add two plus two type blank. So trying to remember to pull out requires Herculean effort and laser beam focus at the expense of “being in the moment”. And being in the moment is with great sex is all about. Come to think of it, “being in the moment” is what good parenting is all about as well. Our daughter was an exceptionally strong and healthy child and consistently off the charts for her size and weight. Must have been that crazy vegetarian diet we were all on. Barring a bizarre fatal accident or devastating disease, her prognosis for a long and healthy life looked good. So when she turned two we felt it was safe for me to get snipped. And when I mean snipped I mean cutting the vas deferens. They’re tiny tubes that look like pale linguine. I know because my doctor showed them to me before snipping them in half. These tubes just take the sperm from the testes to be mixed with seminal fluid right before ejaculation through the urethra. That’s all they do. I clarify this because the way some men react to the idea of a vasectomy you’d think it involves chopping off their cock and balls and throwing them in the garbage. Anyway, back to the vasectomy. I chose Planned Parenthood because they were cheap (free if you qualify for the California Family PACT plan) and experienced. Their vasectomy Guru performed two rounds of operations per month which were scheduled on a Friday so you would have the weekend to recover and hopefully get to work on Monday. Now since getting a vasectomy is considered a form of sterilization they really want to make sure that you will not have any regrets. They gave me brochures and flyers to take home and I had to sign a document stating that I fully understood that this is permanent and irreversible. The irreversible part is not entirely true but it is expensive and the success rate diminishes incrementally every year after the original vasectomy date. Even though I was originally ambivalent about having a child in the first place and I definitely didn’t want to have another, I still went through that cycle of doubt that every man seems to go through as they approach the date of their operation. It was a strange feeling to mourn the loss of something that I didn’t even care about in the first place. All sorts of wicked thoughts go through your head. What if my child was killed in a car accident a year after my surgery? What if my partner is also killed in that same car accident and a few years later I find a new partner that wants to have children? Your mind develops all sorts of bizarre and uncomfortable scenarios for you to work through. Expressing these thoughts to your partner really helps get a handle on them as some of them sound downright irrational when you actually talk about them out loud. Fortunately I got it out of my system pretty quickly and was rock solid by the big day. I can't stress enough that both you and your partner need to be in complete agreement with the decision to have a vasectomy. If either of you have any reservations whatsoever then don't do it. The day of the operation was pretty simple. My doctor used the now common non-surgical vasectomy method (NSV) which allows your doctor to make a tiny hole in the scrotum, pull the vas deferens out, snip it, burn the ends and slip it back in. The hole seals itself and there’s no need for stitches. I had a local anesthetic injected in the area to numb the skin. We just talked casually and he explained what he was doing during the operation. There was some minor discomfort and he even gave me a look at the vas deferens as he pulled it through the scrotum. As mentioned earlier it really does look like a pale piece of linguine. After the operation I was taken to the “recovery room”. Really just a spare room with a leather recliner and some magazines. Hey, this is Planned Parenthood after all, if you want a bunch of frills and all the extra cost associated with it then go to a hospital. The doctor recommended Tylenol, ice, and some nice tight underwear or a jockstrap for the next 3-5 days. What he should have said was “you have to get a jockstrap or every time you move it’s going to feel like somebody’s kicking you in the nuts.” However, the post vasectomy visuals may be far more disturbing than the actual pain. My scrotum was black, blue and purple and the bruise spread down the shaft of the penis. Not all the way. Just about a third. It looked like my genitals had been in a bar fight. By the fourth day I was still feeling pretty sore and tender but I really needed to get in the water. So I left my jockstrap under my wetsuit and paddled out. On my first of couple waves I kind of held back a little bit to see how it felt and by the end of the session the pain was completely gone. I guess I just needed some exercise to move things around. For those who surf you know that a good session can cure almost anything. On the fifth day it was time to try out the new plumbing. As I built to my climax I started to feel a bit tender and sore. Now a woman will pretty much just stop if she’s feeling uncomfortable. For men however, as long as we can still breathe, we generally keep going regardless of any discomfort. Part of this may be just the biological drive to procreate but I think most of it is due to the fact that men carry around a subtle level of anxiety around their access to sex. If there’s an opportunity, you take it. You could be married for twenty years and have the most satisfying sex life in the world and you still pursue your partner like a horny frat boy. It’s exhausting really. Any way back to the climax. Your first orgasm after a vasectomy can be strange or it can go rather smoothly. Mine went a bit strange. At the moment I expected to ejaculate nothing happened. Then after another contraction or two the semen came out but it was mixed with some old blood so it looked kind of brown. I guess I should’ve put a warning before that last sentence. Oh well, hopefully you're not eating lunch right now. After each subsequent orgasm the tenderness would lessen. Within a month it was as if I never had an operation. Now just because you had a vasectomy it doesn't mean you’re sterile. At least not yet. Sperm can live a long time in your body so it takes about 8 to 10 weeks and 15 to 20 ejaculations to clear the sperm out of your system. So you absolutely must continue to use birth control during this period. After the required number of the ejaculations and/or time has past you’ll need to give a sperm sample to your doctor to make sure you’re totally clear. When I had originally left Planned Parenthood after the operation they gave me a plastic specimen cup just for this purpose. It had a little sticker on the side to put your name and date on it. Now semen is a funny thing. It comes out thick and sticky but after an hour of sitting around it turns into a thin, slippery liquid. This was painfully obvious after I decided to run a few errands on my way to the clinic. The liquefied semen made its way through the threads on the specimen container's plastic cap and emptied itself into the zip lock bag that I had put it in. Good thing I didn’t just throw the specimen cup in the glove box. Sorry, that sentence should have had a warning also. Anyway, back at Planned Parenthood I hold up the bag and mention something to the effect of “Uhhh, I guess I need to give another sample” So it’s been two years since my operation and I have absolutely no regrets. In fact, sex has never been better. Why? Because no matter what method of birth control you use there is a chance, no matter how slim, that this time you will accidentally make a baby. And if you’re a decent, conscientious guy this will always be in the back your mind and it will generate anxiety. Not a lot, but just enough to keep you from being in the moment 100%. A vasectomy liberates you from these thoughts. And that's a very good thing. So if you don’t want any more kids, but you don’t want to wear a condom, then get a vasectomy you wuss! Wait, I want to learn more about getting a vasectomy! Oh, and where can I read some other vasectomy stories? That's it for now. Send Comments to: The Straight Dope Dad Originally Posted: 10-26-07 |
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