Valentine’s Day, such a sweet day to celebrate the love between a couple, maybe get some flowers and if you are lucky a possible date night. In our house this year, we did none of that. Instead, we celebrated in a small doctor’s office. My husband was getting a vasectomy.
Let me start by talking about how and why we chose this route. We have been blessed by two sons (ages 2 and 4). For the last few years, I have tried different types of birth control, and unfortunately, they have all wreaked havoc on my hormones and my health, and let’s not even talk about how condoms have zapped the romance right out of our sex life. Of course, my husband was not super excited about the idea of undergoing the procedure. He was not thrilled with the idea of someone cutting on his man bits, and he was concerned about the small risk associated with the procedure. Let me say; I totally get it, BUT… I pushed a 9 AND 10lb baby out of my lady parts, so I think I was fully justified asking him to get a little snip snip.
Luckily, we had a long time family friend, Dr. Don Snyder, who has been doing no needle, no-scalpel vasectomies for years. To my knowledge, he is the only doctor locally who uses this method for vasectomies, and it promises to be less invasive and a quicker recovery. Additionally, it has a higher success rate (yay!). My husband was able to watch a video on his website (www.nostork.com) and get some peace of mind about the procedure, the recovery, and its effectiveness. Ultimately that made it much easier for him to wrap his head around having it done and commit to making the appointment. Once he filled out his personal information on the website, his appointment was made just a couple of weeks out, which was scheduled for February 14th!
The day of the procedure rolled around, we had our in-laws watch our kids, and he ate a light breakfast per doctor’s orders. We arrived for the appointment, checked a few boxes on some paperwork, and then we were taken back to the procedure room. Before long, Dr. Don came in and got everything set to go. I sat next to hubby’s head the entire time, which from beginning to end, was about 15 minutes. I won’t go into all details of the procedure (those can also be found on the website). Once it was finished, we were escorted to a recovery room, given some discharge instructions, and that was it! My husband experienced slight lightheadedness, but he was taken care of with cool rags on his head, and he was giving as many dum-dum suckers as he wanted, which also sounds funny, but they were helpful! After a few more minutes, he was just fine, and I drove him home. I think we were in the office for about 45 minutes in total. Dr. Don was empathetic, reassuring, and as a bonus, he has a great sense of humor. (He had on magnification glasses and cracked a joke about….ahem….size. Ha!) Anyway, his bedside manner was wonderful. How could you not have a sense of humor in this line of work?!
When we arrived home, the recovery began; it was not unlike the dreaded “man flu.” He laid in bed and rested while I took care of the kiddos and brought him snacks and even brought him a bourbon (yes, I am an amazing wife). He was slow going the first few days, but then by the time Monday rolled around, he was back at the office. He still complained of soreness for about a week, but he was still able to function just fine. A few times, he took some ibuprofen to take the edge off, but he never requested any kind of ice pack or bag of frozen vegetables. I don’t know if I should attribute this to being an advantage of this minimally invasive procedure that Dr. Snyder performs or if my husband was trying to prove he wasn’t as big of a sissy as I thought. Either way, it was no big deal, and my boys went back to wrestling with their dad and kicking him in his nether regions just a couple weeks later.
We were sent home with instructions to “have fun” at least 20 times before we mailed in a sample that would be checked for little swimmers to ensure the effectiveness of the procedure. Admittedly we did a lousy job keeping track, but after about three months we sent in the sample (I could write a whole other blog about sample extraction, but I’ll leave that for another day), and within two days we received the “all clear.” It’s still a little challenging to get used to years and years of trying to prevent pregnancy, but we have peace of mind that we made the right decision, chose the right doctor, and will no longer be blessed with any more babies.
