Two days previous to my vertical hood piercing, I had received a horizontal clitoral hood piercing which had begun to migrate and rip at the entrance holes. This was due to the fact that I have large outer labia which caused the circular barbell to be flipped up and then wrenched around when I moved. After showing it to my piercer, Luke, he recommended an immediate removal of the jewellery to prevent any scarring occurring and offered to do a vertical re-pierce on the same day, or in a few weeks if I wasn't feeling up to it. I chose to get it re-pierced on the same day as removing the HCH simply for convenience sake, as it would be easier to get it over with then, than to have to steel myself for a piercing again in a few weeks time. Since I originally chose the HCH to avoid having a barbell continually in direct contact with my clitoris, due to it being quite sensitive, Luke suggested a different placement from the standard VCH. The placement would be higher up on my hood and would pass under the meeting point of my labia minora, exiting just above them. In other words, it would be a piercing lying halfway between a vertical hood and a Christina, with two entrance holes as opposed to the normal one in a VCH and it would use curved barbell jewellery like a VCH.
At A Glance Author Ebowlotus1960 Contact Ebowlotus1960@bme.anon IAM Ebowlotus1960 When Three months ago Artist Luke Studio MetalWorks Location Galway, Ireland After Luke removed the circular barbell from the HCH, which was a reasonably uncomfortable process due to the small balls of the barbell being screwed on quite tightly, he gave me a few minutes to rest while he prepared everything for the vertical piercing. After everything was ready, Luke asked me what jewellery I would like, so I picked out a nice, 1.6mm metallic purple, titanium curved barbell, the type normally used in navel piercings with a larger bottom ball than top.
Now it was time for the usual procedure, knees bent and feet sole-to-sole, thoughts of "wasn't I doing this two days ago...". Luke cleaned off the area to be pierced with some wipes and was ready to begin. Since all he needed to do with this piercing was to place the receiving tube and mark the entry and exit points, Peter's help wasn't needed with keeping my outer labia clear of the piercing area, as it was with the HCH. The receiving tube was pretty cold but actually felt quite soothing against my irritated skin. As Luke lined up the needle he asked did I want the piercing without any prior warning as before, to which I responded yes as I find it far more preferable to the big build up from the "count to three" method.
As the needle entered I felt the same sensation of deep pressure with a slight pinching which ended almost immediately. Even though this piercing was going through far more tissue, I found it to be a lot less painful than the original horizontal piercing. I think this was probably due to the lack of clamps which can pinch quite badly, and also the fact that the tissue is a little thicker so it's less likely to produce the slicing sensation that I felt with the more membranous tissue of the actual hood proper. Luke then trimmed off the excess ends of the cannula and threaded through the barbell and screwed on the top ball, making sure it was good and tight. While all of this had been going on we had been talking about the topic of genital piercings in general, discussing which piercings give more pleasure to which partner and which ones looked the most attractive etc. The continual chatting helped to keep me relaxed so I wasn't really taking to much notice of the whole procedure. Once the piercing was over, Luke informed me that it looked like "the dogs bollocks", to which I replied "physically or metaphorically?" and was told metaphorically of course, since it was really good looking. I then changed into fresh underwear and applied a sanitary pad since there was a small amount of bleeding and was ready to go.
Luke recommended the same aftercare as with the horizontal piercing but to salt soak once a day for the next week and avoid any sexual contact for a month just to make sure not to cause any possible irritation to the area until everything was fully healed up. After receiving a few more sucking up pain compliments and thanking Luke for doing the repierce, I went home to do my first salt soak which was very soothing and made everything feel instantly better. The entire area was a little tender for the first few days but after that it was only painful when I sat in certain positions for a week or so. Everything healed up quite quickly considering the fact that it was pierced twice and within a month or so everything was fine with regard to using the piercing for its *ahem* designated purpose.
Once it was healed though, I noticed that the tissue, especially around the top entrance hole of the piercing was stretching out a lot while the bottom entrance hole wasn't. I didn't particularly want to stretch the piercing up, in case it would cause any migration or tissue thinning, so I put a 3mm ball on the top of the barbell. That was fine for about two weeks until I spotted that it had stretched out some more and I then replaced it with a 4mm ball. Once again, after a few weeks, this stretched up again to the point where a 5mm ball would actually pop through the hole quite comfortably. Though this wasn't in anyway painful or uncomfortable, it was annoying to have to keep popping the ball out every so often so I decided to find a solution to the problem.
After discussing this with quite a few people and getting some opinions, I decided to experiment with wearing a straight barbell. When I went home to Kerry for a week over Easter, I purchased a 1.6 by 16mm barbell and replaced the curved barbell with it. I was a little wary about it at first in case it would be uncomfortable or cause more stretching but, in fact, the opposite was true. I found this to be the perfect solution to the problem as the stretching had downsized back to the original 1.6mm piercing size within a few days. I found that overall the straight barbell suited my anatomy better. Recently I went back to Luke to get a barbell 12mm in length as I wanted it to fit more snugly and he was pretty intrigued when I explained that I much prefer wearing a straight barbell in the piercing. Currently I am wearing a 1.6mm by 12mm barbell with 5mm balls and I find it to be very satisfactory with regard to the functions of a hood piercing and it looks very pretty. Overall I am really happy with the outcome of the piercing, it was definitely worth having to go through repiercing it, though I think I'll be taking more heed of suggestions about placement in future!