Is Vasectomy Reversal As Simple As Jordan On Love Is Blind Makes It Sound?

Love is Blind Season 9 has focused a lot more on children than previous seasons have. While there have been many years of people talking about kids in the pods and discussing with disembodied voices how exactly they want to raise their future offspring, Love is Blind Season 9 has a single dad — now fully engaged and pushing full steam ahead to the altar — who has made stepparenthood and blended families a major conversation.

Oh. And vasectomy reversals.

Love is Blind Season 9 spoilers ahead if you aren’t caught up.

Love is Blind Season 9’s Jordan, a funny, tatted-up guy with a 5-year-old son, mentioned his vasectomy early in the pods. While talking to Megan, his now fianceé, he brought up his son and shared that he had a vasectomy soon after his kid was born. Megan, naturally, was a little taken aback by this, as she is a woman who wants to have children with her future partner. But no worries! Jordan reassured her. He can get it reversed, and it’ll be no issue!

(Hand to heart, I think if I were a producer, I would’ve let Megan research this a bit in the pods.)

But that’s the very first — and definitely not the last — time we heard Jordan make vasectomy reversal sound as easy as simply returning a library book.

He is... pretty wrong.

“Vasectomy reversal is neither common nor easy,” says Dr. Jason B. Carter, urologist and medical advisor at Aeroflow Urology. “About 2 to 6% of men who have a vasectomy will eventually choose to have a reversal.”

Listen, vasectomy reversal is a thing we’ve all heard. But the way Jordan made it sound in the pods — as if he could do a “snip, snap, snip, snap, snip, snap” a la Michael Scott — and everything will be fine and dandy is not great. The procedure is complicated and requires a very specific skillset.

“Reversal is a technically demanding microsurgical procedure that should be performed by a urologist with formal fellowship training in microsurgery,” Carter says. “Ideally, the surgeon would be someone who not only routinely performs the procedure using a high-powered operating microscope and fine sutures, but also someone who has the ability to perform vasovasostomy (VV), direct reconnection of vas deferens to vas deferens, and epididymovasostomy (EV), a more complex bypass of vas deferens to epididymis, as needed.”

Yeah no problem, Jordan, that sounds like a breeze.

(Also, can we talk about how often it takes a dude to schedule anything, let alone finding a provider to do a procedure as complex as this? Sounds like a task for Megan.)

While introducing Megan to his parents, Jordan even brings up his vasectomy there, telling his parents that he’s going to get his vasectomy reversed, prompting his mom to ask if the success rate is “very high.” Jordan immediately says, “Super high. Like 95%.”

Jordan is... not telling the truth.

When I ask Dr. Carter if this statistic is true, he says simply, “No.” He explains that this kind of claim is conflating “patency rates with pregnancy rates.” Patency rate is simply determining if there is sperm found in the semen after the reversal surgery, but it has nothing to do with the actual rate of conceiving after a vasectomy reversal. “Plenty of couples conceive naturally after a good reversal, but the odds depend on a few important factors. Following vasectomy reversal, the patency rate, the proportion of men in whom sperm are detectable in the ejaculate, is 85-97% for VV and 50-80% for EV.”

But Carter says pregnancy rates are more modest than patency rates because conception depends on so much more, like sperm quality, the woman’s age, and more. “If the female partner is under 35, about 60 to 70% of couples conceive naturally. Because of natural declines in egg quality, between 35 and 39, success falls to around 40 to 50%, and, by the age of 40 or older, success rates are closer to 20 to 30%.”

And the vasectomy age also matters. “Realistic pregnancy rates are 30 to 70% overall, with the best chances in younger couples when the vasectomy is less than three to eight years old.”

Again... not as simple as Jordan is making it sound.

I don’t want to assume he is trying to trap Megan or lie and misinform a woman he wants to marry who might’ve said no to him if a vasectomy reversal wasn’t a thing, but it’s hard not to see how dangerous this feels and sounds. Of course, you can’t control your partner’s ability to conceive a child or what could happen with anyone’s seemingly “normal” and healthy fertility, but a partner who keeps telling you how easy it is to get a reversal and that there’s a 95% chance the reversal will lead to a successful pregnancy feels icky.

And this kind of misinformation being spread could make it easy for a lot of partners to think a simple vasectomy reversal is all that’s needed for the family of their dreams.

I asked Dr. Carter what he would say to a patient’s wife who came in with her partner to have his vasectomy reversed. Would he reassure her that her plans for motherhood are feasible? Would he tell her not to hold her breath? “I would say a reversal can absolutely restore the chance to conceive naturally, and in many couples it does. What determines your odds are the time since vasectomy, direct reconnection versus a more complex bypass, and your age. If your general fertility, including cycles and ovarian reserve, looks good, and the vasectomy is relatively recent, your odds are on the higher side.”

(All of that sounds good, but there’s another ick: If the reversal doesn’t work, it’s easy to imagine how a woman might think it’s her fault she’s not pregnant since her partner has been telling her since day one that he has a 95% chance of impregnating her after a reversal.)

“I won’t promise you a baby,” Carter says, “but I will give you reasonable expectations and a clear plan. If pregnancy hasn’t happened after a reasonable window, we’ll pivot quickly, adding timed intercourse, intrauterine insemination (IUI), in vitro fertilization (IVF), and/or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI)as needed. Be patient, together, we’ll make this work!”

Bottom line: Vasectomy reversal is not as simple as it sounds. You need a provider who really knows what they’re doing, and you need to consider all of the factors. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t, but that’s the kind of information every woman deserves to have in hand. A woman who wants to be a mother being told by her fiance with the vasectomy that reversal gives a 95% success rate? This is not the way.