One lobe at 8g, one lobe at regular gauge. . .

[LyricalDissonance]

Hello, this is my first post here. I began stretching in July of last year. Everything had been going smoothly until recently, when I decided to size up from 8g to 6g; I'd done dead stretches with sea salt soaks before and after and suffered no problems. I'd been at 8g for over two months and decided it was time to stretch again. This is where a little explanation is necessary.

I was over at my friend's house, who is at 0g and has been stretching gradually for years. I asked her if she had any other 8g jewelry around that I could compare the 8g plugs I was wearing to. She found an aluminum spiral that didn't have a mate. It looked a bit larger than the 8g plug I'd been wearing, which is what I had suspected - the plugs are stone, and although they were advertised as a "true" 8g, they were hardly larger than my previous 10g plugs (which is why I had experienced so much resistance when I'd tried to stretch to 6g the previous week and had to stop).

Out of curiosity, I decided to see if I could try the spiral on. Despite being larger than the plug I'd had in, they slipped in with little to no resistance, indicating that my ears were ready to stretch. . . Just not to the gauge I thought they were. (Please note that I know you're technically not supposed to stretch with spirals; had there been any resistance/discomfort I would've stopped.)

Here's where the problems arise.

As a result of taking out my previous "8g" plugs, I lost them, and didn't have a back-up pair. Also, as previously mentioned, the spiral didn't have a mate.

So. . . I did an extremely stupid thing that I knew I wasn't supposed to, and decided to wear a 6g taper as jewelry in lieu of the proper size plug. My logic was to prevent my lobes from shrinking, since when I've removed jewelry to relax my ears in the past, it's been a tight fit getting them back in after only a few hours. In my defense, I didn't have it in constantly, and I didn't have it inserted to the point of resistance/discomfort.

Nonetheless, my lobe became irritated, and when I removed the taper a day and a half later, there was blood and soreness and all the indicators from my body telling me I should've listened more carefully to every tutorial on ear-stretching I've ever read. Because it was so painful and because my next size plugs were 10g, I simply left all jewelry out and waited for the lobe to heal, doing regular sea salt soaks.

It's been two weeks since then, and just last night, deeming the wound recovered, I experimented with inserting a regular gauge earring. It went through painlessly. . . However, it seems to be perfectly snug, which means my lobes have shrunken all the way back to the size they were when I started stretching.

Obviously, I wouldn't think of trying to stretch again for another month, if not longer (I usually wait at least two months between stretches anyhow, the only exception being 12g to 10g because my ears had already stretched to 12g before I put the captives in, although I wore them for two weeks anyway.) Lesson learned the hard way. Is it normal to size down that fast, though? Did the trauma have something to do with it?

Lastly, I ordered an 8g spiral to match the one I have in. However, it's quite a bit smaller than the one I have in my other ear (which is perfectly happy and healthy). Yet, although it's bigger than the 8g I ordered, it's smaller than the pair of 6g plugs I bought. . . I want to stretch safely, but these size discrepancies are really confusing me.

Anyhow, if anyone made it through all of that, I appreciate you taking the time. The bottom line is that I'm likely going to be rocking an asymmetrical jewelry trend for a few months, since I don't want to size my other lobe down to match when I've already come this far. I may take the opportunity to buy a few "statement piece" gauges for my healthy ear, haha.

[ViolentJayne]

6 is so much bigger than 8 because its the first full mm jump , the other jumps are only fractions of a mm ....and I think you will be fine asymmetric for a bit I had one ear at 8 and one at 6 for at least a month or 2 cause one ear stretches slower .. and still when I take my jewelry out one hole is noticeably larger