Last laugh

What do a Christmas tree and a man who’s had the snip have in common? They both have ornamental balls. But it’s either that or taking a chance on a fourth child, worries father of three Craig Bishop

In the last issue of Your Pregnancy, I wrote about the four-year struggle I’ve had trying to get the gynae to smile at any of my jokes, my observations, my bon mots and my general passing of the time of day. I mean, fair enough, when another man, albeit in a white coat, is rummaging around inside your wife, you want him to be concentrating at the task in hand, rather than jotting down all your amusing anecdotes. Also, a visit to the gynae should be a humbling experience for a man, confronted as he is with not just the fact that his wife’s bits are on display on a computer screen, but also the realisation that all the mansplaining in the world is but chaff compared to the sheer miracle currently happening inside those aforementioned bits. It was only right before the birth of our third child that I elicited a smile from Dr D. And that was only because he had just handed me a card for his mate, the snip doctor. Now, though, it seems there has been a sea change. Even the mention of my name brings out his inner comedian. Only the other day, so my wife told me, she walked into Dr D’s rooms for her post-labour, six-week check-up to make sure all her bits were back to their A-game, to find him rubbing his hands and chortling merrily. “Has Craig visited my friend yet?” he asked. When Liz replied that, no, I hadn’t, and that even the mention of getting a vasectomy brought me out in a frothy rant about refusing to dick around with my masculine feng shui, Dr D simply laughed again. “Great,” he said. “Because when that fourth child arrives, he’ll be paying for my new bike.” Dr D does Ironman, so when he says bike, he’s not talking about a BMX. He’s talking about some serious carbon composite technology costing hundreds of thousands of rands. It was a sobering thought. I appreciated the thinly veiled warning. You see, for Liz to fall pregnant the first time was a torturous struggle through months of fertility treatment and clock-watching. But that first pregnancy seemed to sweep all the cobwebs out the window, and I only had to slap her bum as she bent over to pick up a dummy for her to fall pregnant a second and third time. She’s uber-fertile now. Fecund is the right word, or perhaps fructiferous. Ah, you say, but she is breastfeeding, and you can’t fall pregnant while breastfeeding. Wrong! Eating high-energy foods when breastfeeding can, apparently, reset the female body’s reproductive clock back to open for business. In other words, if I spy cake crumbs on the kitchen table, it’s probably best I go for a hike up Table Mountain. Immediately. It’s either that or a fourth child. A man can only hike so much, though. A visit to the dreaded snip doctor is on the cards, so it seems. I just need to find a good one, who won’t rearrange the furniture too much in the lounge of my male feng shui. Because you know what they say about vasectomy doctors? There is a vas deferens between the good ones and the bad ones.

YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT VASECTOMY DOCTORS? THERE IS A VAS DEFERENS BETWEEN THE GOOD ONES AND THE BAD ONES