Greetings from Finland! I got my vasectomy yesterday at the age of 30. Starting from that age a Finn can get sterilized with just the approval of the doctor that’s going to perform that surgery. That procedure was a huge relief in my life. It may sound weird to some but I rejected all kinds of intimate interest from women (even though I am a hetero male) until this point in life mostly because I always, since childhood, had that nagging fear of procreating which is something I really want to avoid as one could see 😃 Girls must have kind of thought I just don’t really like females or something 🤣 Temporary contraception to prevent pregnancy is too unreliable to me in my personal case; I don’t want a relationship where I would constantly worry about contraception failing. The contraceptive items could break, I couldn’t know for sure if a woman has used her contraceptives; and some female contraceptives would carry too big of a health risk to her (I just cannot tolerate those risks to my prospective lady but want to cherish her).
I’ll just have to wait a few months to hopefully get a negative lab test to show there are no cells to create offspring in that stuff. Then I can finally start looking for a spouse without fear of pulling a trolley around the balcony later on. I have realized lately that a relationship usually just doesn’t work (not all cases of all people are such, however) if one of the partners is a childfree-minded individual and the other is not. So I think the only way to find happiness and longevity with a spouse in my case is to find a partner who is sterilized, too. I just know of too many cases of a person telling to their not-willing-to-reproduce partner that they don’t want kids, either, and after basically building their life together, telling to that partner that maybe a kid would be a good thing after all and then divorcing.
This surgery was one of the best things to happen to me ever. I am really happy with my decision. However, some very conservative religious relatives and other such people around me might give me some nagging and whining if they somehow find out that I got sterilized. I still have my Christian faith like I used to, I just won’t make kids. Marriage is not meant to be a Victorian era “Shut your eyes tight and think of England” kind of thing, anyway 😃
Did it hurt?
I had mine just two weeks ago (after three kids) and the most painful part was getting the anesthetic shot. From leaving the waiting room to walking out it took 40 minutes and I had zero pain. It’s healing very nicely and everything still works. And you have to masturbate a lot on doctor’s orders to “clear the pipes” as my doctor put it.
If you get one through modern techniques (aka where they don’t just cut the tubes completely) it is not painful. Just some dull ache for a few days.
There’s no way to sugar coat getting a needle stuck in your balls but other than that it wasn’t bad
WARNING: CONTAINS TEXTUAL DEPICTION OF A VASECTOMY SURGERY
Shaving off testicular hair was mostly just inconvenient. The most painful thing was the alcohol they put on the skin of the testicles to kill the bacteria and other microbes before the surgery. They put alcohol to the penis too, though that did not hurt as much there, just moderately in the glans. I had a burning sensation in the testicular skin quite a lot for a minute or two, basically it was as painful as a heartburn. The spikes to numb the testicular area hurt somewhat also, especially the spikes used to numb the vasa, though that pain lasted for like a couple seconds per spike. They used about three spikes at that time. The actual surgery was mostly painless. A couple of times I started feeling a sharp pain in a small area during the surgery, the area being different both times. I asked for an extra spike both those times and got that basically almost instantly. And the pain did not last from the sensation to the administration of the numbing substance, the pain was there just for like a very tiny moment both times, probably the doctor paused doing his current action meanwhile. The resewing was also somewhat painful. They had taped my penis to my lower abdomen skin before the operation. The removal of the tape was less painful than a removal of a first aid plaster off a mildly hairy piece of skin would be even though I had a lot of hair down there. That was quite surprising. Well, the tape must not have had a very strong adhesive, basically, the tape was there mostly to keep the penis out of the way and out of danger. What did not, however, hurt at all, was grabbing and moving. I mostly did not feel any grabbing whatsoever during the actual surgery, I might have felt movement in the beginning maybe, was not bad. For a few seconds one time I felt some movement inside my lower stomach, that didn’t hurt at all. I had to wear no underwear and no trousers during the above procedure, I was laying on a operating table with a curtain between my torso and the surgery area, no big deal, perhaps related to European culture. I had a cell phone in my hand and took some selfies and read online discussions on the Zig programming language. If allowed, I recommend taking something to do while being operated. It makes the procedure a lot nicer. The doctor was talkative so I at some point joined the talk with him and the nurses about arbitrary interesting things which was explicitly allowed to do also.
I had no anxiety relieving stuff or anyting like that, only took an antibiotic before going to the operation. I playfully think my vasectomy was a sort of an initiation rite to the childfree movement so I wanted to be have clear and conscious mind while being done my best operation in my whole life. And by the way, the surgery was such a sacred moment that my penis relaxed the whole time.
They told me that there were three contraceptive measures involved. 1) Cutting a piece of both vasa off (about 0.5cm or so for each vas), 2) burning the ends of the cut vasa and 3) bending & binding the vasa ends so that as far as I know, every end of vas points to basically in the opposite direction to the end close to it.
The operation was at some specific moments somewhat painful but 100% worth it. And it didn’t take too long from a very experienced urologist. I am very happy that they did some actual “damage” to the vasa by that cutting-off-piece procedure and burning the ends so there is even less of a risk of that stuff ever failing (I am going to give a sample to a lab in a few months to make sure the surgery was successful).
It was a physically unpleasant operation but otherwise pretty euphoric. And now a little bit more than a day after the surgery, the bleeding is minimal as it was when I first got back home also. I took some basically over-the-counter pain med (under prescription to get it cheaper and the dosage is also bigger in those tablets (the latter point is useless for something one can buy from a pharmacy with no restrictions)) after the surgery but haven’t taken any in about 16 hours. Most of the time I don’t even notice any pain. However, I am going to take it easy for quite some days now as most painful incidents happen when people think they already healed and didn’t.
Pain is temporary, not getting more children is forever - Some random philosopher maybe
My body processes anesthetics very quickly so I had the shots and about halfway through the feeling came back. The doc said “well…the shots hurt about as bad as the procedure so it’s up to you”. So I can say even without much numbing it is something you can handle. Gives me the chills to think about though.
I have 3 kids already, and I knew it was time to be proactive in my approach to contraception, I agree with op on his reasons. When they pull the tubes out from the scrotum, that pulls on the tubes further up and there is a sharp shooting pain that rises up into the abdomen, apart from that, the week after is tender, and to avoid further pain, the area should be disinfected regularly until the scab heals.