I must say, first off, that I am a person who believes in doing things for yourself. If it makes you happy then you should do it, even if the people you love think you're insane. This is the reason for my first ever "below the belt" DIY piercing. I have pierced my ears myself before, the wrong, wrong way and had my tongue pierced professionally. I never really had the urge to pierce myself on a larger scale, until one day when I was finally fed up with how I felt about my genitals. I've heard that every woman goes through a phase of being uncertain of themselves "down there". I didn't really consider myself one of these people, until I realized that I just felt awkward in a situation where somebody was looking at them. Then I realized what I need to do is to make myself love them. I didn't want surgery, I didn't want to go chopping off bits and pieces and making myself into a new person. I just wanted a little decoration, something to feel safe and secure about.
At A Glance Author anonymous Contact anonymous@bme.anon When Six months ago That's when I decided I would go ahead with an inner labia piercing. Now, normally I wouldn't even consider piercing myself; however, I was more uncomfortable going to a stranger. I have deep anxiety issues and that is just something that I couldn't handle. In a way, it was how I had to come to terms with what I was doing to myself and learn to love myself, all of myself.
I ordered offline: sterile needles, CBRs, circular barbells, flesh tunnels. Anything I could find. The needle was 12 g and the circular barbells and the CBRs were 12 g. I thought I had everything settled, so I waited and waited until everything came in the mail. Finally, it all arrived and I began to get everything ready - washing and soaping, and cleaning, and more washing and soaping, and some alcohol and some washing and soaping. It probably could have been a lot cleaner, but I figured doing something was better than nothing. I feel silly now, but at the time it worked for me.
I sat down on the edge of the bathtub with a towel beneath me and Kleenex all around. I examined, I poked, I prodded until I finally figured I'd go for the "right" spot. I put the needle in, started pushing through and felt a very tight, pinching feeling. There really isn't any way to describe it, more than pinching. It was like taking your fingernails and using them to squeeze a bit of your inner labia. I just kept pushing until I could slowly see the end start to come out, then I had the needle halfway through and I thought to myself, "what next?" than I realized, okay, I have this CBR and I have this hollow needle... but how the heck do I make sure they go in one after the other? I pushed the needle with the CBR and I ended up with no CBR in the hole and a needle laying outside the hole. I tried and tried but I couldn't get the CBR in.
At this point, I'm sort of regretting the entire process and wishing that I would have gone to professional - it would have been sterile, clean, and probably over with in the time it would have taken me to get a needle in. So, my clever self, I decide I'll just make another hole, and poof no CBR in and a needle laying outside. I now have two, bleeding holes in my right inner labia and no actual piercing. I then decide I will pierce the other side once and use the circular barbell to guide the needle in because it has a threaded end that will fit inside the needle. I stab and I poke and I finally get the thing in. Good, great. Now I'm sweating, I'm hot, I can barely see what's going on without a mirror, and I have to get a tiny little bead onto it's end and try not to yank the piercing around too much. I finally manage to do that, and clean up. I thought I had wanted two, but after the trauma of the almost 1 hour sitting I decided against it.
The healing went okay for a couple of days, it burned when I urinated and I didn't really feel comfortable "wiping". I used sea salt and just tried to take baths more than showers. A couple of days afterwards, I got the "piercing bug" and decided the other side had healed enough to go ahead and try again and I finally got that in. This was about 5 months ago, so now I have two fully healed inner labia piercings, and they are currently stretched to 10 g (mostly by themselves) with plans to stretch higher.
Overall, I wish I had sucked up my courage and went to a studio to get it done. With the time and trouble it caused me to go through all this, I could have had it done. I didn't not go because of a money issue or anything like that, but just simply because I was too scared. I know all the rationalities, that these people have seen a lot of vaginas, they are perfectly professional and if they aren't, you can just leave. However, I just really have anxiety and I really am uncomfortable with somebody seeing my nether regions who I've never met before. But my advice to other people is - go out and have it done professionally, I consider myself lucky that nothing "bad" happened to me.
One question I've gotten asked is, is it worth it? I'd say it is worth it. You always know it's there, not in an obvious way, but in a my own little secret way. It has helped me come to terms with myself and realize that if you don't like something, don't change it completely - embellish it until you begin to love it.