Ear Piercings & current BME "Projects"

As some of my friends already know, I do love my ear piercings.  In fact, I love them so much that I've got 3 piercings in each lobe, and 2 cartilage piercings on my right upper ear.

My first set of earring holes were done when I was in grade 2, and I had so many problems with infections until my parents bought me a tiny pair of gold hoop keepers.  Keep in mind, it was the mid/late 80s, so when my ears finally healed, I wanted to wear the HUGE gold hoops that all the cool older girls were wearing. When I got a pair for Christmas, I think I wore them every day, not realizing that the weight of the earrings were damaging (stretching) my earring holes.

Now, over 20 years later and several pairs of heavy, dangly earrings later, I had earring holes that were too big to wear standard earrings, so on most days, I'd end up only wearing my CBEs in the 2nd & 3rd holes on my lobes, leaving no earrings in my first set of holes. For the past few years, I've purchased fake plugs, which hid the damage quite well; however, these plugs would inevitably break or worse, I'd loose a front or back of the earring, and have to constantly shell out more money to replace these quite expensive earrings.  At a minimum of $5.99 per earring; and having purchased at least 3 pairs in the past 6 months alone, I was starting to get very frustrated.

I did a bunch of research and decided my only plan of action was to buy a pair of larger gauge pinchers and "stretch" my first set of holes.  This is an idea I toyed with as a teenager and also while I was in university, but never tried, since I lived at home back then and my parents would've freaked out.  I estimated that I was currently somewhere between an 18g and 16g, so I opted to buy a pair of 14g pinchers that came with plugs. Yes, I'm using acrylic jewelery; however, I'm an adult, and am well aware of the potential risks of using acrylic pinchers and tapers.

So, after reading several "stretching methods", I opted to stretch my holes with the aid of antibacterial soap and a really warm compress. Here's my process, which took about 30 minutes in total for each ear.  Slow and steady is definitely the way to go when stretching your lobes, since you can cause tears and blowouts if you're too forceful or you try to stretch to a larger gauge too quickly.

First, I cleaned my new acrylic pinchers using warm water and liquid antibacterial soap. (Side note, I can't use too many things other than this unscented soap, since I tend to have allergic reactions to beauty/health products) I don't care that the earrings were fresh from a package... you don't know who touched them or where they were before they were put in the package.  I also know that you shouldn't boil acrylic jewelery or use corrosive disinfectants such as rubbing alcohol or peroxide, since this can deteriorate the jewelery and cause adverse chemical reactions, which I know I definitely wouldn't want happening in a freshly stretched ear lobe.  I also cleaned my ear lobes with the same soap and water.

Using the soap, I "lubed" up one end of the pincher and inserted into my earring hole until I felt a little bit of resistance, and then I left that ear alone until I got to the same point with the other ear.  I then sat with a warm compress on each of my ear lobes to ease the slight burning sensation and to wash away the excess soap.  I then just used warm water from the compress to act as the lubricant once I was ready to continue the stretching process.

Once the pinchers were fully in, with the widest point centred in my ear, I put on the o rings, and left the pinchers in for 2 days.  I then took out each pincher (tonight) and inserted the plugs into my newly stretched earring holes.  Caring for this BME is pretty easy, since I clean them in the shower every morning and then at night, just with a bit of the liquid soap and water.

Here's what my right ear looks like as of tonight.  The plugs were extremely easy to insert into my holes, and I had absolutely no pain or irritation with this process, save for the extremely minor pain I felt when I was pushing the pinchers through my ears during the stretching process.  I'm very happy with how it looks, especially now that the slight damage I'd originally had to my earring holes is no longer visible.

My next stretch will be to a 12g, which I plan on doing some time in February, which will then put the time at being 3 weeks between the stretches.  I'm in no rush, since I want to make sure my ears stay healthy and that I'm completely comfortable with the eventual gauge of earring I decide to stretch to. I'm only looking to stretch to either an 8g or 6g, so they're not overly noticeable, and I can have various options for jewelery - namely some pretty glass plugs I saw when I was shopping recently.