Ear stretching; My experience

This is a piercing/modification that splits the nation. Some people love the look of ear stretching whereas others completely despise it. Personally, I like the way it looks, obviously, or else I wouldn’t have done it. I don’t mind stretched ears as long as they aren’t too big. When people start getting dangly earlobes I find that a step too far. My mum hates it, but then nearly everyone I’ve spoken too with stretched ears had a mother who found it repulsive!

Don’t get me wrong I’m not a professional piercest/ ear stretcher/ whatever, I’m just letting people know how I stretched my ear and my personal experience of it. I read up so much online before I did it and decided to order acrylic stretchers in all sizes up to 5mm from www.arka-shop.co.uk . I understand that stainless steel stretchers are better for your ear at keeping out infections but acrylic ones were so much cheaper, and I use a steel tunnel now to (hopefully) keep out infection

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I got my second lobe pierced earlier this year with the intention of stretching it. I told this to the lady in the piercing shop and I think she may have put an earring with a thicker stem in my ear. I left it to heal for over 2 months and although it had healed mainly healed, I still think I should have left it even longer, but I just got bored of waiting and wanted to stretch my ear over the summer.

1.6mm

I have no picture of this one as I’ve lent it to a friend but its basically teeny. I didn’t do anything to prepare it, I just basically put it halfway through my ear, left it there until it wasn’t throbbing anymore and kept pushing it in until it was fully in, it wasn’t as painful as I expected it to be, it was definitely a bearable pain.

                                              l - r: 2mm, 3mm, 4mm.

2mm

I left the 1.6 in for 2 days, which isn’t long I know, but the difference in sizes between the 1.6 and 2 is bearly noticeable, so I just went ahead and put the 2 in, now this one was quite painful and I again put it in as far as possible until it hurt, and just kept pushing it through more when it stopped hurting. All-in-all it took me about 40 mins to get it fully through.

3mm+4mm

These again hurt but not awfully, I left the 2 in for about a week until I went up to a 3, and left the 3 in for roughly a week before moving to a 4 but it wasn’t too hard to push in I just used the same technique.  For the 1.6mm, 2mm, 3mm and 4mm I used a tapered stretcher.

                                                   5mm in my ear

5mm

This was when it got confusing for me, for this I used a ‘horn’ stretcher, which didn’t have little elastic bands on to hold it in my ear. I again put the 5 in after about a week of having the 4 in, and it was easy to put in my ear, I preferred using the horn shape as it was a lot easier to push in my ear and I could even sleep on that ear when it was in. but after about 4 days of having it in, to cut a long story short it fell out on my way home from work and I lost it. So I had to go back down to a 3 (as my brother was using my 4) then go out and buy a new 5 so my brother could use that and I could go up to a 4 blah blah blah. It was basically a very annoying week for me as I’d got so far and had to go back down again, my ear was infected at this point so it was probably for the best anyway.

                                          My now stretched ear with a 5mm tunnel in

5mm Tunnel

The majority of the way through I did have an infection, most likely because I didn’t leave my ear piercing to heal long enough, but I just kept moving up saying to myself it would heal when I put a stainless steel tunnel through my ear, and so far its been ok and I’ve had it in for a few weeks now. If you are thinking about stretching but are too scared of it hurting I would definitely suggest it! It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as I was expecting it to and its worth it in the end. I wouldn’t suggest going over 8mm as they say your ear wont go back to normal if you do, however I know someone who got up to 15mm and it still went back to normal as they moved up extremely slow, so that just proves.. Slow and steady wins the race! Haha hope you enjoyed thanks for reading xxx