Thursday, 5 August 2010
The Appointment After
It’s important to consult a doctor as soon as you can if you think you have vaginismus, which is the inability or difficulty to penetrate the vagina. There’s also another condition, which kind of goes hand in hand with most cases of vaginismus. This is called Dyspareunia, which is when sex is really painful for the girl. I’m pretty sure I have this too.
If you think you have either of these conditions, you should tell someone. I kept it to myself for a year and a half and I crumbled over the questions, the stress, the pressure. I haven’t told my parents, I’m really close to my mum; but telling her my vagina doesn’t work really isn’t the kind of conversation I want to be having over dinner. And I couldn’t talk to my boyfriend about it, I don’t know why, I know it sounds bad but at the time I thought that all he wanted was to be able to have sex, not fix the pain or the worry. You will need to tell someone. This is not something you should go through alone. No matter how embarrassed you feel. No matter how much of a burden you feel on that person you tell. It’s not worth feeling that alone.
Anyway: the return of Doctor Accent. Ben drove me up to the hospital and I met up for the my next appointment with her after the dreaded examination. Much like a Morning After; this appointment is A.W.K.W.A.R.D. So be warned. It's not fun talking a woman who the last time you saw was when she was poking around in between your legs whilst you were crying and swearing at the support nurse. The Appointment After is not to be enjoyed.
So yeah during my first appointment (after the poking, the crying and the screaming) the good ol' doc recommended... Well... she recommended KY jelly. I'm pretty sure she just meant general lube. Lubricant makes the vagina wetter and helps penetration and comes in all sorts and flavours. Super. If you’re up for trying lube, do it. It's an uncomfortable conversation: asking your significant other to try it, which is better done when drunk, but it helped me a lot.
I ended up using the blue durex play. The downside is that it's quite cold, but it's a lot less intimidating than KY jelly for the guy. Ben chose the durex one to feel manly I think, always let him choose the lube. It makes him feel like he's helping. Especially if it does actually help.
Overall the durex play lube worked pretty well, it didn’t fix the problem but it made penetration a lot easier and kind of made everything run a lot smoother, it was less 'drunk virgins rolling round in the dark' more 'wow he actually just came. During sex!’ If you are having trouble. Try it. ASAP.
xAx
If you think you have either of these conditions, you should tell someone. I kept it to myself for a year and a half and I crumbled over the questions, the stress, the pressure. I haven’t told my parents, I’m really close to my mum; but telling her my vagina doesn’t work really isn’t the kind of conversation I want to be having over dinner. And I couldn’t talk to my boyfriend about it, I don’t know why, I know it sounds bad but at the time I thought that all he wanted was to be able to have sex, not fix the pain or the worry. You will need to tell someone. This is not something you should go through alone. No matter how embarrassed you feel. No matter how much of a burden you feel on that person you tell. It’s not worth feeling that alone.
Anyway: the return of Doctor Accent. Ben drove me up to the hospital and I met up for the my next appointment with her after the dreaded examination. Much like a Morning After; this appointment is A.W.K.W.A.R.D. So be warned. It's not fun talking a woman who the last time you saw was when she was poking around in between your legs whilst you were crying and swearing at the support nurse. The Appointment After is not to be enjoyed.
So yeah during my first appointment (after the poking, the crying and the screaming) the good ol' doc recommended... Well... she recommended KY jelly. I'm pretty sure she just meant general lube. Lubricant makes the vagina wetter and helps penetration and comes in all sorts and flavours. Super. If you’re up for trying lube, do it. It's an uncomfortable conversation: asking your significant other to try it, which is better done when drunk, but it helped me a lot.
I ended up using the blue durex play. The downside is that it's quite cold, but it's a lot less intimidating than KY jelly for the guy. Ben chose the durex one to feel manly I think, always let him choose the lube. It makes him feel like he's helping. Especially if it does actually help.
Overall the durex play lube worked pretty well, it didn’t fix the problem but it made penetration a lot easier and kind of made everything run a lot smoother, it was less 'drunk virgins rolling round in the dark' more 'wow he actually just came. During sex!’ If you are having trouble. Try it. ASAP.
xAx
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
Exam Stress
So I finally plucked up the courage to go to the doctor’s. I cried very embarrassingly through the interview with a woman with a thick Indian accent; explained that I can’t have sex and think I had vaginismus. It is shockingly hard to talk about your hymen in person.
Anyway, yes. Hymens. Apparently I still have one. Which is unusual considering I’ve kind of half had sex and use those super big tampons on a regular basis. So yeah, hurray for hymens…
The doctor basically gave me some options and explained that my hymen is quite thick, and hopefully will eventually break, at some point. A Hymenectomy was also an option, which is where they cut it in half and essentially ‘tearing’ it as it should do during regular, run of the mill sex. This scared me like crazy, I’m not squeamish, but just the image of a scalpel in the nether regions makes me cringe in the same way I imagine guys do when they see someone getting kicked in the balls really hard.
Anyway the doctor told me those dreadful things after my examination. Jeez, the examination. They took me in this room and told me to take off everything on my bottom half, I recommend if you go for/are expecting there to be an examination you should wear a casual floaty dress, as you feel a right nonce standing there in just a shirt and bra…
They told me to lie on the bed in the usual position; ankles together, knees apart. Then started the weirdest 5 minutes of my life so far, and it began with the sentence ‘I’m just going to put this dilator…’ FML. Looking back on it, I could have been a lot more graceful about the whole experience, like remembering to shave and not yelling at the nurse ‘do you realise what she’s doing down there?!’ when she asked me what my A Level choices are.
I’m not going to sugar coat it; from when the dilator was about half way in until I couldn’t take any more and told them to take it out, it hurt like a mother. It hurt a lot more than the times I’ve tried to have sex and failed. With the position my legs were in it felt like I was giving birth. It. Was. Awful. But I only had to do it once. And in the long run, I owe it to that torturous dilator and that emotionally scared nurse big time.
xAx
Anyway, yes. Hymens. Apparently I still have one. Which is unusual considering I’ve kind of half had sex and use those super big tampons on a regular basis. So yeah, hurray for hymens…
The doctor basically gave me some options and explained that my hymen is quite thick, and hopefully will eventually break, at some point. A Hymenectomy was also an option, which is where they cut it in half and essentially ‘tearing’ it as it should do during regular, run of the mill sex. This scared me like crazy, I’m not squeamish, but just the image of a scalpel in the nether regions makes me cringe in the same way I imagine guys do when they see someone getting kicked in the balls really hard.
Anyway the doctor told me those dreadful things after my examination. Jeez, the examination. They took me in this room and told me to take off everything on my bottom half, I recommend if you go for/are expecting there to be an examination you should wear a casual floaty dress, as you feel a right nonce standing there in just a shirt and bra…
They told me to lie on the bed in the usual position; ankles together, knees apart. Then started the weirdest 5 minutes of my life so far, and it began with the sentence ‘I’m just going to put this dilator…’ FML. Looking back on it, I could have been a lot more graceful about the whole experience, like remembering to shave and not yelling at the nurse ‘do you realise what she’s doing down there?!’ when she asked me what my A Level choices are.
I’m not going to sugar coat it; from when the dilator was about half way in until I couldn’t take any more and told them to take it out, it hurt like a mother. It hurt a lot more than the times I’ve tried to have sex and failed. With the position my legs were in it felt like I was giving birth. It. Was. Awful. But I only had to do it once. And in the long run, I owe it to that torturous dilator and that emotionally scared nurse big time.
xAx
The Big V
I never actually intended to lose my virginity to Ben (my boyfriend), he actually started out as my friend’s older brother, who quite a lot of people fancied (which was clearly demonstrated by the wave of high fives I received after the rumours of my sibling shagging escapades) but I’d never actually met him as ‘Sarah’s Brother’, I met him as ‘Ben’.
The attempt it sex itself, vag’s grand debut, was pretty unspectacular. Its stage being my mate’s bed at an alcohol fuelled house party. I was sort of seeing him at the time, but I think it was the alcohol that kicked things off a bit; I didn’t go to the party intending to sleep with anyone. We snogged on a sofa for a bit, and it was only the next day that I realised most the party was in fact witness to said snogging, with me sitting on his lap for far to long to comprehend. Buuuut I was drunk so even he whispered the clichéd line ‘shall we go upstairs?’ in my ear didn’t put me off. Don’t get me wrong, I really fancied this guy and had for the month or so that we’d been snogging on sofas. But how can a 17 year old boy be so damn seductive? Alcohol and a dark room I suppose.
He went to check for a free room; I went to rearrange and touch up. I didn’t intend for the Big V to be lost in my mate’s room (nor was I slightly vengeful for the same mate loosing his virginity in my bed the month before… that was a mere lucky coincidence.)
The moments of our newly formed relationship were moments of dramatically passionate foreplay, which I blagged my way through having only ever heard stories more experienced friends at school. I was pretty sure he was a virgin too (he was) but I heard of a former girlfriend of 6 months in the usual ‘possible boyfriend background check’, who my have been the Big Taker (she wasn't). Thinking back, I’m not sure knowing he was a virgin too would have helped the situation. On the one hand it would have comforting to know that neither he nor I knew what we were doing. But on the other hand, it was much more settling to pretend that we did.
If you’re at all interested, I began snogging him in dark rooms on the 8th of November 2008, the Big V mustn’t have come long after that as I distinctly remember panicking about what to say afterwards and settling with ‘does this mean I have to buy you a Christmas present?’. Thankfully he found this question amusing rather than disturbing.
Our similar lack of previous sex lives was probably part of the reason we never really mentioned that the sex didn’t actually work from the get go. But from that night on I considered myself unvirginated. Nowadays I do kind of consider myself experienced, even if it just ‘I’ve experienced most things just with the one person’.
Except THAT. If ‘that’ is what you’re thinking… I suppose it would be a solution; but I’m not even gonna go there. You dirty minded people…
xAx
The attempt it sex itself, vag’s grand debut, was pretty unspectacular. Its stage being my mate’s bed at an alcohol fuelled house party. I was sort of seeing him at the time, but I think it was the alcohol that kicked things off a bit; I didn’t go to the party intending to sleep with anyone. We snogged on a sofa for a bit, and it was only the next day that I realised most the party was in fact witness to said snogging, with me sitting on his lap for far to long to comprehend. Buuuut I was drunk so even he whispered the clichéd line ‘shall we go upstairs?’ in my ear didn’t put me off. Don’t get me wrong, I really fancied this guy and had for the month or so that we’d been snogging on sofas. But how can a 17 year old boy be so damn seductive? Alcohol and a dark room I suppose.
He went to check for a free room; I went to rearrange and touch up. I didn’t intend for the Big V to be lost in my mate’s room (nor was I slightly vengeful for the same mate loosing his virginity in my bed the month before… that was a mere lucky coincidence.)
The moments of our newly formed relationship were moments of dramatically passionate foreplay, which I blagged my way through having only ever heard stories more experienced friends at school. I was pretty sure he was a virgin too (he was) but I heard of a former girlfriend of 6 months in the usual ‘possible boyfriend background check’, who my have been the Big Taker (she wasn't). Thinking back, I’m not sure knowing he was a virgin too would have helped the situation. On the one hand it would have comforting to know that neither he nor I knew what we were doing. But on the other hand, it was much more settling to pretend that we did.
If you’re at all interested, I began snogging him in dark rooms on the 8th of November 2008, the Big V mustn’t have come long after that as I distinctly remember panicking about what to say afterwards and settling with ‘does this mean I have to buy you a Christmas present?’. Thankfully he found this question amusing rather than disturbing.
Our similar lack of previous sex lives was probably part of the reason we never really mentioned that the sex didn’t actually work from the get go. But from that night on I considered myself unvirginated. Nowadays I do kind of consider myself experienced, even if it just ‘I’ve experienced most things just with the one person’.
Except THAT. If ‘that’ is what you’re thinking… I suppose it would be a solution; but I’m not even gonna go there. You dirty minded people…
xAx
Introduction to celibacy
Hi
I'm not going to tell you my name because (as I imagine you can sympathise with if you are reading this) I have vaginismus and only 2 people know besides from myself, it's not severe. But it's there. And it effects my love life spectacularly.
I have a boyfriend, who obviously knows. In fact he found out when I did, we were both virgins when we met. And neither of us had any idea that vaginismus can occur. However now, we're oh so fucking aware... We've been together for nearly 2 years, but I've only really gotten to grips with my issue in the last 6 months or so. He helps me get through it, and I am unbelievably grateful to have him.
The second person is my best friend joe. I chose to tell him because i can trust him with my life. He is brutally honest, compassionate, supportive and I love him. I recommend if you have a boyfriend; that you tell one person who isn't him. I've found that having an 'outside the relationship bubble' opinion helps tremendously. I'm thinking about telling a girl, my brilliant friend Kat. As Joe is off to uni soon, and I'd quite like a girl opinion too.
Oh i forgot to say, I'm 17 studying at 6th form, soon to be 18 in the next month or so. I want to be a writer, but I'm mainly writing this because when I discovered I had vaginismus there were tonnes of chat rooms and helpful websites explaining the options and the methods of overcoming it and stories of 'virgin marriages' and all this nonsense about how this affects people... But there was nothing truely personal, I needed a blog like this, like the one I'm going to write. A first hand account. There was also nothing for teenagers, it was all for 'women' looking to settle down or ones that go for couple's counselling to 'overcome this together'. That is worth nothing to a teenager. I needed an account of how to live and overcome having vaginismus from the start. And how to live in a 6th formers world were one of the biggest issues is having sex, let alone attempting to have sex.
I'll try and find some other blogs and accounts and write about things that have helped me deal with a rebellious vagina. And I'll keep you as updated as possible on my sex life too.
xAx
I'm not going to tell you my name because (as I imagine you can sympathise with if you are reading this) I have vaginismus and only 2 people know besides from myself, it's not severe. But it's there. And it effects my love life spectacularly.
I have a boyfriend, who obviously knows. In fact he found out when I did, we were both virgins when we met. And neither of us had any idea that vaginismus can occur. However now, we're oh so fucking aware... We've been together for nearly 2 years, but I've only really gotten to grips with my issue in the last 6 months or so. He helps me get through it, and I am unbelievably grateful to have him.
The second person is my best friend joe. I chose to tell him because i can trust him with my life. He is brutally honest, compassionate, supportive and I love him. I recommend if you have a boyfriend; that you tell one person who isn't him. I've found that having an 'outside the relationship bubble' opinion helps tremendously. I'm thinking about telling a girl, my brilliant friend Kat. As Joe is off to uni soon, and I'd quite like a girl opinion too.
Oh i forgot to say, I'm 17 studying at 6th form, soon to be 18 in the next month or so. I want to be a writer, but I'm mainly writing this because when I discovered I had vaginismus there were tonnes of chat rooms and helpful websites explaining the options and the methods of overcoming it and stories of 'virgin marriages' and all this nonsense about how this affects people... But there was nothing truely personal, I needed a blog like this, like the one I'm going to write. A first hand account. There was also nothing for teenagers, it was all for 'women' looking to settle down or ones that go for couple's counselling to 'overcome this together'. That is worth nothing to a teenager. I needed an account of how to live and overcome having vaginismus from the start. And how to live in a 6th formers world were one of the biggest issues is having sex, let alone attempting to have sex.
I'll try and find some other blogs and accounts and write about things that have helped me deal with a rebellious vagina. And I'll keep you as updated as possible on my sex life too.
xAx
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