How can I convince my husband to have a vasectomy? Our family is complete, and the stress of a possible unintended pregnancy is wearing on me, but my husband is nervous to have a vasectomy. Any data on how I can get him on board with this?
—Anonymous
As you can probably guess, there is no data on this. But I asked my husband, Holt, if I could share about his experience and he said to go for it.
After we had our fourth kid, we knew we were done. We were lucky to get pregnant easily, but we definitely didn’t want to deal with an unexpected pregnancy. For a number of reasons, we decided permanent contraception, and specifically vasectomy, was right for us.
Holt was worried about how painful it would be. The urologist offered an anti-anxiety medication in addition to local anesthesia during the procedure. But Holt says it was actually less painful than a blow to the groin — by a lot! Downtime after the procedure was minimal. We went to dinner with friends the same night, and he was on the sidelines coaching our son’s soccer team the next day.
When I ask my husband what helped him agree to vasectomy, he says he thinks he is fairly evolved and recognized that I had been handling contraception for us for some 15 years, and I gave birth to his four large-headed children (seriously, 95th percentile head circumference). He also really did not want a fifth child.
A last word of advice: After vasectomy, be sure your husband completes the post-procedure semen analysis. It is the only way to be completely sure the procedure was successful.
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