A family from Shikoti village in Kakamega County has been stunned after a woman got pregnant despite her husband having undergone a vasectomy.
Medgclay and Beryl, aged 36 and 33 respectively, had three children when they agreed that Medgclay would undergo vasectomy mid-last year.
On July 12, 2022, he underwent the procedure at a hospital in Navakholo, an exercise carried out by local doctors with the funding of a non-governmental organization.
“I felt like we have always left family planning to women and so after we got three children I wanted to take the responsibility and go through the procedure myself,” Medgclay told Citizen Digital.
His wife says he was however sceptical of the decision; “I was afraid it would affect our sexual life negatively but I realised it even got better!”
Twelve months later, the two are now expecting their fourth child in June this year without knowing what happened to the exercise they believed would help them plan their family, especially during a difficult economic time.
“I had been told that we would be safe twenty ejaculations after the procedure, which is three months or thereabouts, so until October we knew we were safe.”
But in November, Beryl missed her periods, which the couple says they dismissed as just an incident of irregular menses.
In December, they were informed that they were expecting their fourth born.
“It was such a stressful time for us because my wife had undergone two caesarean sections prior to that,” he says.
“We were informed that this happens when there are some sperms left in the ducts or just a failure of the whole procedure,” adds Medgclay, who is also a health practitioner himself.
According to Dora Amakobe, a doctor who has conducted successful male sterilization procedures, there is a possibility that the method will fail if the patient does not follow the full instructions of the doctor, including not having unprotected sex for more than three months.
“Due to the length of the vas deferens, you could cut a part of it but semen has lined up to the urethra, so if you engage in sex almost immediately after the procedure, there is a likelihood of causing a pregnancy so we advise our clients to use protection for about 21 ejaculations,” Amakobe says.
Beryl says throughout all this, there have never been trust issues between her and her husband.
“We trust each other and we are believers so there have never had issues of fearing the other party might be up to something bad,” she says.
