It’s A Vasecto-ME!

You know that stage in motherhood when, even after the most exhausting of days running around after your own feral offspring, you still have a little thought in the back of your (slightly crazy) mind that maybe, just maybe, you weren’t finished popping them out just yet? That you (and your friends, and your Mum and, oh maybe your partner) would love to hear the little pitter patter of tiny feet once more? Yeah, I don’t have that anymore. The thought of another baby, as much as I love my existing ones, has the same effect on me as fingernails on a chalkboard. A panicky shiver of anxiety rips through my uterus as it shrivels back into itself, and my pregnancy-addled body (never the same after baring 4 children) breaks out in a cold sweat. So yep, I’m all through with baring the fruits of my loins; this baby factory is closed!

So what does one do when one has finished reproducing little humans? One seeks out permanent methods of the reproduction becoming impossible. A lot of women I know have taken matters into their own hands and orchestrate their own methods of birth control, but given that I fell pregnant whilst on the pill THREE TIMES (!?!), it took little convincing to get my hubby to undertake the male sterilisation measures. That and the fact that he has attended the birth of all 4 of our children and seen the carnage that is childbirth – oh, and that I keep leaving him home alone with all of them to go running, to the gym, to Coles, to the petrol station…….

The night before the big job was to be done, I asked him how he was feeling about it. “Nervous” he admitted, “I would imagine it’s like going in to be induced to have a baby (yeah, cause that is totally the same thing!). Making an appointment to put yourself through pain (It’s not going to be that bad). Maybe I should’ve done it under a general? (Oh suck it up princess!). I don’t want to see the needle they’re going to jab in me balls though (I do!). I hope they don’t have a hospital bed like that though. Jeez, can you imagine if they have those stirrup-thingys like in the old days for when women have babies? Holy crap, they better not!”(Oh dear lord, please let the bed have stirrups!)

The next morning, we finally headed to the specialists office, laden with a clean shave, signed permission forms and an exorbitant amount of money, to ensure the procurement of a couple of severed vas deferens’s (vas defereni?). And you know what, it didn’t hurt a bit. Well not me anyway. I was asked by the specialist if I would like to come in and watch the procedure (I think he thought, after 4 kids, I would want visual evidence that the job had been done!) and I tell you what ladies, it was an eye opener! The needle to numb was substantial, the digging around in the nether regions was pretty full on, but the snipping of the actual spaghetti-like transportation tubes was actually quite emotional. I actually felt a little tug of loss, a severing of possibility, when the surgeon held up the little pieces of removed vas deferens’s (what is the plural for that?!) for me to witness. That was it, no more babies for me. And I surprised myself by being a little sad (not surprisingly, hubby was generally impartial to the whole sentimental affair and just desperately wanted to get his pants back on and get home to a packet of frozen peas and lay horizontal on the couch for the weekend). We left behind a piece of ‘maybe’ as we walked out, and as much as a teeny part of me was feeling a little lost, the main part (the sleep deprived, child-overloaded part) had to stop myself from jumping up and down like a looney in the car park screaming “WHOO-HOO!!!”

A vasectomy is not a major procedure, but as people who live their lives around their kids, it was a major thing for us. Some men joke about it, call it castration, a loss of manhood, but I call it as I see it. My hubby took one for the team; our rather large, chaotic, expensive team, and we can move on with the next phase of our lives. Yeah, it’s a bit sad to know you’re done having cute little bubbies burst out of your va-jay-jay and take over your life with their constant nagging/whingeing/fighting/crying/shitting/eating/general existing, but I look at the ones we’ve made and I know we’ve got our fair share of what’s awesome about life already.