I don't like big stretched ears. I do NOT like them. I really don't. But after having pierced my vertical hood, rook, and double forward helix earlier this year and hanging out on bmezine a lot, stretched lobes started to grow on me. I started to like the way they looked on many other people. I started wondering how they would look on me. In the beginning of August, I had decided that my five gunned lobe-rings at about 18 ga – 20 ga were actually kind of lame. They did not count as piercings to me. I wanted them to be real piercings though. So I decided I would stretch them, to a 14 ga to begin with.
At A Glance Author psychonautje Contact psychonautje@bme.anon IAM psychonautje When Three months ago Artist me Studio my bathroom Location Kerkrade When I had decided that, I walked to this jewelry store close to my house. They sell regular jewelry, but I knew that they also did piercing next to that (which is a reason I would never get pierced there, it's not their main job and I doubt that she's a professional piercer or that they have an autoclave). But since I planned on doing the stretching myself, I hoped they would sell CBRs, and they did. I bought 5 stainless surgical steel CBRs that I estimated to be 14 ga – they had no labels and the salesperson had no clue about piercings at all. I asked if she could help me close them, assuming that I could just shove them in, but she said she didn't know how and that the woman who pierced was on vacation for three weeks. So I said I would try to do it myself, and went home.
I have 3 holes in my left lobe, and 2 in my right, but I was wearing jewelry only in the bottom 2 of my left ear, and in the bottom one of my right ear. As I used to play with my earrings a lot and turn the rings inside them, these holes were somewhat bigger than the upper two. I put out my earrings, and cleaned up my ears and the CBRs with some hot water and antibacterial soap. That is definitely not clean enough but I figured that my lobes would be fine as I had the holes for so long: they were fully healed and I wasn't planning to pierce, just to stretch. So I thought the risk of infection would be non-existent. I had no lube or taper or anything else to help put the CBRs in, so I just decided to shove them through. I did the holes in which I had been wearing jewelry first. To my surprise, all three of them gave me no problems whatsoever, the CBRs just slid in. They felt a little tight but that was it, my ears were not even a bit irritated.
Encouraged by this success and thinking that the other two holes couldn't be that much smaller I directly continued with these holes. However, the CBRs would not go in just like that. I tried with a little saliva (which is excellent lube as well but is of course horribly unhygienic), but it wouldn't work. The CBRs just didn't go in. I hadn't been wearing jewelry in these holes for almost a year or so, so they had shrunken down a lot. They were still holes though, but from all the fiddling and trying my ears started to go red and angry on me. My right ear even started to swell a bit around the second hole. I decided to put in regular earrings for a while and try again later. I managed to put in two 18 ga earrings in each hole, which was really tight and really not a smart way to stretch but I was still pretty confident that my lobes could handle it, even though my ears were feeling hot and red. I didn't bother putting the balls on the CBR, I tried for a second but I couldn't get it fast enough to my liking and my ears had enough of pulling and tugging.
So I did something else for a couple of hours and my ears calmed down. The upper holes got used to their new size pretty quickly. I decided to give it another go, which was way too fast and I knew it, but I wanted to do it anyway, still having a lot of confidence in my ears. So back to the bathroom. I tried the left hole first as that one seemed the biggest of the two. With some fiddling, I managed to get the CBR in. My ear didn't like it and got all red and angry again, but I expected it to calm down soon. On to the right hole. After trying for a while, the CBR was still not in and I decided to leave it for tonight. I put the two 18 ga earrings back in the hole and decided to try again the next day.
My ears hurt a bit the entire night but I could sleep on my left without any problems. When I woke up my lobes felt fine, just a little tender. However, my 8-month-old rook (right ear) of which I thought that it had fully healed acted up: it was all swollen and red. Also my still healing lowest forward helix piercing had developed more crusties than it had been doing the last couple of weeks. Still not really worried, I decided to do a hot sea salt soak to calm my ears down, and then I tried to put in the final CBR. This time, I just jammed it in, and started bleeding a bit. I cleaned up and unsuccessfully tried my luck on getting the balls in for a while. I even tried to get a ball on while one CBR was not in my ear, but I couldn't do that either. I shoved back in that CBR and decided to leave the balls for when I got to a piercer who could do it for me, and that was that. My lobes were stretched to 14 ga, and for the rest of the day, I opted for the LITHO method.
However, my ears didn't calm down. They only got angrier during the day. My rook was extremely swollen, as if it just had been pierced that day, and it was oozing lymph too. My lowest forward helix kept developing crusties throughout the day. The problem-hole in my right lobe was swollen and was very red, and got infected. My left lobe was a little tender too. I constantly felt my ears that entire day, and I gave them a soak before I went to bed, hoping to calm them down.
But they didn't. The rook was still swollen and oozing, the forward helix was crusty, and the infected hole was oozing puss. I babied my ears that day with several soaks, and they seemed to calm down. The next day my rook and forward helix were pretty much back to normal, my left lobe was still a little tender, and my right lobe was still infected but seemed to calm down too. I babied them some more, and by day five or six after the initial stretch my ears were fine again.
Because the CBRs were not closed, I kept loosing them. After a week I was going to a music festival for three days, and afterwards I was visiting a friend and her kids (4 and 2 years old), so I figured it was smarter to take out the open CBRs. I never put them back in, annoyed that I couldn't close them myself and sick of loosing them all the time. I decided to wait and see my piercer for help. Especially the upper two holes will need a new stretch, the lower ones will be fine. My boyfriend threw away two of the rings by accident. So now I plan to wear 14 ga CBRs in my left lobe, and make a 12 ga orbital out of the two holes in my right lobe, as they are pretty far apart anyway. And I expect to size up to 10 or 8 ga after that. I don't know were I will stop, though at this moment I think it's very unlikely that I'll go anywhere bigger than 6 ga. One never knows, though: a lot of people want to stay small but end up having 00 ga and beyond.
As a final note: I did everything wrong by stretching my ears this way. Five holes at the same time are definitely more than your ears can take, and just forcing in CBRs with no lube or taper did cause way more trauma than necessary to my ears. So don't do what I did. It's perfectly feasible to stretch yourself but be sure to work hygienically and to have lube and tapers and the like ready. Or get it done professionally. I am very lucky that my ears didn't develop any scar tissue after forcing those CBRs in and that I didn't loose any of my other ear piercings.