My inner labial piercings came about over my gap year, when I was working too hard and had moved 100 miles away to a new city. Unfortunately for me, my local piercer obviously did not move with me, and so I had to find a new place to get poked. I am lucky in that I now live a ten minute walk away from one of the best piercers in Sheffield (at Feline Tattoo). The only problem, was that all piercings 'below the belt' were £50. One look at the price list, and I shot out of the door and went home. If this seems a bit shallow, it's mainly because my previous piercer charged only £30 for my hood, but £50 for two genital piercings. I just wasn't rich enough to cough up an extra £50 for my labia!
At A Glance Author Bugmouth Contact Bugmouth@bme.anon IAM Moses the Fish When Six months ago Artist Myself Location Sheffield, UK Feeling a bit disappointed, I was browsing around on line at home and came across the Wildcat (Brighton) website (actually, that is a lie, I can barely drag myself away from that website, it wasn't incidental!) I came across a page selling piercing paraphernalia such as clamps, lidocaine spray, and canula needles. Hooray, says me, I know what! I'll do them myself.
This wasn't too much to ask of me since I have some piercings already. Most of my ear piercings are self done (I have 14, including my stretched holes at 20mm). I wasn't sure if this would translate to being able to pierce my genitals, but I was sure as hell up for the challenge. I also didn't want to go all the way back to Milton Keynes just for a couple of piercings! And then sit on them for three hours on the coach and the bus home. Go figure.
Once I had made up my mind (this process took about ten minutes) I asked my boyfriend if he would mind if I did them myself. He just looked at me and rolled his eyes. I wanted his approval, mainly because I would be using our bathroom, but also because he would be the one to see them most often! The last thing I wanted was to put him off of my naughty bits. Just to clarify, he likes all of my piercings, but he does like to draw the line somewhere! He came with me to get my hood pierced and was very supportive, but he has said no to a septum piercing in the past (there is a reason for this, I have a large, lumpy nose that would just look crap with a CBR hanging off of it. God knows I've spent long enough walking around with a ball-less CBR hooked onto my septum to see how it looks!)
After establishing that he didn't really care either way, I was set to go. I ordered two 2.4mm cannula needle, a lidocaine spray (I think it's actually to prevent premature ejaculation, that made my boyfriend laugh), two 6mm 12g barbells and a small packet of disposable gloves. I chose to pierce with barbells because I found the constant rotation of my CBR seriously annoying while I was trying to heal my hood. Retrospectively, they probably would have been fine, but I was slightly worried about my piercings interlocking while I was at work!
After what felt like a year but was actually only a week, my package came in the post on a Saturday morning. This gave me the weekend to get used to them before I had to go back to work on the Monday. Setting my supplies up in the bathroom (I had cleaned it in the morning, fortunately), I wiped down all my surfaces with Dettol spray and made sure all of my things were laid out on the plate I had cleaned for this purpose. After taking my pants off and washing my hands, I put on my gloves and got out the spray (at this point, I was sitting on the floor in front of the mirror on a clean towel). I wasn't entirely sure how much to use, but I just sprayed my labia liberally with the stuff and tried to rub it in as best I could. I decided to just sit and wait for it to kick in, because I didn't much fancy cleaning everything again if I decided to get up and wander about! It only took about seven minutes for my entire labia to go numb. This was the strangest feeling ever, I could tweak them and poke them and feel absolutely nothing! Damn good stuff, that lidocaine.
By this point I was feeling very nervous. I hadn't had any piercings for nearly a year, and I was wondering if I was actually up to it. Not wanting to back out with nerves, I unwrapped one of my needles and took off the cap. The needle confused me slightly because I'm not a piercer, but I eventually decided to push the needle (with cannula) through my labia, pull the needle out, leaving the cannula behind, then feed the jewellery into the cannula for me to pull back through. This technique worked just fine, although I found it very fiddly because I was so nervous. Once I had pierced one side of my labia I sat back for a bit to catch my breath. I felt glad that I had chosen barbells because I don't think I would have been able to use my ring opening pliers with shaking hands! After I calmed down a bit, I lined up my second needle and went for the opposite side. I did find the whole thing tricky because I had forgotten to order any clamps, but with my gloves (changed after applying the lidocaine) I had a pretty good grip on my labia and didn't really find that I needed them.
Once both labia were pierced I was shaking like a leaf from the adrenaline, and my labia were pissing blood everywhere. I was slightly annoyed at this because I then had to sponge it all off of my nice clean towel! I just patted them dry with a clean tissue and wore a panty liner than day. Although they had clotted blood on them for the next two days or so, I put salt water on cotton wool balls and soaked them after my shower. I also made up a mug of salt water before going to the toilet and poured that over my labia. I only did this until they had definitely stopped bleeding though, because if I wanted a pee I had to wait until my water was cool enough! I was surprised to find out how easy they were to heal, especially since I was doing a physical factory job at the time, which involved plenty of walking around and lugging heavy things about. My new piercings didn't make themselves heard at all, which I was glad about.
After about two months of wearing the barbells, I decided that they were probably healed up by now and bought some 8mm 12g CBRs for them. I figured that now they were healed, it wouldn't matter to me if they got caught or twisted! I had previously bought some pliers so they were no problem to put in, although I did get backache from trying to reach that area with both arms at once, my boyfriend watched me put them in and thought the entire thing absolutely hilarious.
Retrospectively, I don't think I would have changed anything about this experience, despite the fact that I pierced in an area of questionable hygiene, and I don't think that Wildcat's jewellery is autoclaved. However I did not have any problems healing (only mild discomfort when urinating for about four days) and feel that this was the best method for me to use. Obviously, if I had £100 I would have gone to Feline, but I didn't, so I definitely got value for money, if nothing else! I now have much more confidence in myself from piercing myself, and it is another rude little secret between me and my boyfriend. Thanks also to the wonderful article written by IAM: Wolfbane (http://www.bmezine.com/news/edit/A60311/artdirty.html), which helped me to understand that choices are there to be made, and your piercings are your responsibilities, whether shop or home pierced.