Thoughts on Vasectomy

When I hear women or couples discuss getting a vasectomy, I feel a sense of panic, my pulse blares in my ears and head like a siren, I feel light-headed and I want to scream DON'T DO IT!!!!  This is only an initial reaction of course and substantiated with my own fears, guilt, regret and frustration.  I know that some people feel that a vasectomy is the best thing they ever did and I think that if you have absolutely no question, it probably is right for you.  But if you even have the slightest uneasiness about it you should cool your jets and reassess the options further down the road.

If someone would have asked me when we made the decision to get the vasectomy, "are you sure you never want to be pregnant again?" I probably still would have said, "yeah, I think so."  It kills me to know that truth.  But, had we been forced to wait a mere 3 months (actually 6 weeks when the crazy-lady-prego hormones start to normalize) I would have said no.  Not a indecisive, I don't think so, but a loud and positive NO!

You see by 6 weeks, my 3rd degree tears, all four of them, had healed nicely.  I no longer had the intense back, leg, thigh and hip pains of pregnancy or the maddening heartburn.  I had bounced back faster than either of my other pregnancies and deliveries.  I was in complete bliss over my new little prince charming.  I was so happy, but the reality that he was my last ate at my heart.

After a vasectomy you are supposed to avoid unprotected sex until the doctor says no sperm is present.  At 6 weeks I told my husband, we don't have to--it has been long enough...what guy is going to say no to not wearing a condom?

I was trying to get pregnant, a last ditch effort to cling to what we had thrown away.  Unfortunately, it did not work and at the final semen analysis we did he had less that 1 million sperm.  They tell you it takes up to 35 ejaculations before all of the live sperm are gone.  At our last SA we were well into the upper 40's.  It gave me hope that it was a failure.

For the next year, I continued to get my period and my dream of having another baby started to fade and I just accepted what we had done.

So my thoughts are this, make sure your are certain.  Give you and your spouse a window of time where you diligently use birth control or a combination of birth control to see if you still feel like the children you have completes your family.  If you are still not sure, WAIT!  Condoms never killed anyone, aside from very severe latex allergies (okay I made that up) or used in a way unintended.

A short duration of inconvenience is so worth not having a lifetime of regret.

My Little Prince Charming: Every story as a beginning

Six years ago I gave birth to my third born, a son who was a difficult little traveler, burdensome bunker and an all around pain in the backside before his beautiful little face ever saw the light of day.  It was a difficult pregnancy.  I was miserable for reasons I can't really even pinpoint, but much of it was emotional and constant physical discomfort.

The delivery wasn't as easy as my previous two, and let me be clear compared to many brave women it was a piece of cake.  But come on!  Whatever happened to the saying, "third time's the charm" because this pregnancy wasn't.  Again, I know many have had it way worse than me and I will confess I am a bit of a baby.  Lots of things culminated into the worse mistake of our lives--though at the time we were oblivious.

My parents thought we should be done, "three healthy babies are plenty, why risk a problem?"  My doctor thought we should be done--although it turns out his opinion may have been based more on, umm shall we say, personal opinion rather than professional.  Heck, after being miserable for almost 9 months, we thought we were done.  And there was that darn high blood pressure.

So almost exactly on month after my little charmer was born, my husband had a vasectomy.  Snippity-snip--no more babies for us.

Or maybe not...and our story begins.