I’ve gone from 22 to 8 in 3 weeks. I’ve had my piercer evaluate me every time and I always slowly insert the taper over the course of an hour or so by myself to make sure I’m not hurting when it goes in. The only size I skipped was the 22-18. I left the 8 in for a week before moving to a 6 and that’s gonna stay in for at least 2 weeks. I’m not sure if that could be considering too fast at the start but I also inherited incredibly stretchy skin from my father who had his at an inch and keeps giving me advice and information of what’s going on with my ears if I get worried.

Is it too fast when I wait one month in-between stretches?

I am actually watching stretching vids today cos I’m a little in this position a little bit I still have quite a thick lobe on the left side but too thin to really continue stretching. One thing I have considered doing is getting a piercing of a slight large gauge like I’m talking one that rips out a nice hole, has a big hole piercing needle and pierce the part of the ear that you wish you had started more in that direction. Once that’s done a drop shape would likely fit easy in many of those though I personally would like it to mold more to just a circular one. It is a wound so it would heal according to what you place around it. It’s an interesting thought I’ve had about taking measures for your issue and besides that I wasn’t very educated on needing to keep my ears warm in Winter weather which I love to be out in. Yeah, for now until I can afford to go to a piercer to try this I’m stuck at the size I’m at I think is a 00 g or maybe the next one after that is the highest I’ve gone which is lovely so many options for danglies to swap around and wear lightly. I honestly didn’t like the original shape of my ears and now I love the shape of my ears. They were boxy lobe type and I’ve stretched them to round ear lobe type which I seem to prefer the look on myself. Yup, getting a piercing that is a chunk right off the corner of the stretched one. Lookin like a 2 ball snowman kind of, if you catch my drift. So there may be a solution that would cost whatever the piercer would quote you for it more than likely they will charge you for whatever they would charge to do a piercing of the gauge you discuss, and maybe they would recommend, and maybe they won’t for whatever reason. I still really haven’t consulted this with a pro. I’m ngl my lobe piercings were done at a Claire’s when I got out of a youth treatment center in the early 2010s which kinda now hurts my feelings in the context of things people say about using those pre loaded plastic clipper devices like some people wouldn’t an animal but it was still so meaningful to me to later get to have piercings at 17 in boarding school in California and I actually took one of the clippers with me and later added on my own 2nd piercing to one of my lobes. Then for a while I had a friend who was a legit piercer in the PNW and went to a couple good ones. One really great piercer working at Metro chain stores which are up there in Olympia finally fixed this twice botched middle lobe piercing that everyone would just do wrong and then she just beautifully turned that nodule I had developed and all the terrible feelings it gave me into the most beautiful anti-tragus I’ve had for years so anyway moral of my stories is that there’s probably a way to fix it and people who do body modifications are probably at it because they were beautiful to begin with and we should all be nice to each other about what decisions we were led into, which decisions we ultimately took, and how we could turn them out like this idea I’m having now about getting that extension done to a stretched lobe on the opposite side of the thinning lobe.

Well made teardrops are totally safe! Now when they are poorly made sometimes they have too steep of a shape that can cause thinning but from good makers they have a gentle wearable that’s totally fine.

@@Lynn_Loheide hi there ! i have another question about these : would wearing tearshaped plugs actually help with thin spots if you wear them with the "spike" of the tear up ? My ears are fine for now but I am at 12mm and my goal size is 20mm and i worry about thin spots and wondering if you could kind of orient your stretch more to the upper part of your lobe than your lower part. ps: thanks for the video it was very helpful

Then it sounds like you need to downsize asap and get an in person consultation with a piercer

A sunshine cloth! I have a whole video here on KZfaq about polishing up your brass weights. :)

I have a whole video here about binding and nipple piercings! But honestly if these migrated once and you plan on top surgery you won’t be able to bind with these. You would risk migration again and scarring that could impact top surgery. If it were me i would remove these and focus on treating the scarring to get it healthy for surgery and just consider repiercing after surgery if you can.

@@Lynn_Loheide Thank you! I must have missed that one.

Hangers and weights you can still wear! Plugs, keep in case you have to downsize.

large gauge septum piercings are VERY anatomy dependent, i am pretty sure almost no one can get pierced at over 6g (id go for 8g n stretch) . make sure you go to someone who knows what they are doing !

I've heard people say they have had success with downsizing for a bit, then restretching after a while, but idk if that will work for others

People often get floating industrials, there's lots of different ways of doing them depending on your ear and what you want.

2 normal helixes connected with a chain?

Floating (orbital) or the anti-industrial maybe.

Wearing silicone to sleep is perfectly fine, but keep in mind to clean them more often since they can be more bacteria friendly. I wouldn’t recommend wearing them all the time though if you aren’t as frequent with cleanings

Did you ever wear hanging earrings? If they close or not depends on genetics, but wearing heavier / hanging earrings may have made the holes bigger so it could shrink but not close completely

Same here! I stopped wearing earings in my baby piercings for a couple of years now and they have become less and less visible. Hopefully there's space for a new piercing and we can ignore the first ones.

@@puddypudding9609 i never got a notification that anyone replied so sorry for being late! i do wear hanging earrings made of acrylic daily. they're not extremely heavy but they do hang. i wasn't intent on repiercing my first lobes so i'm comfortable with the fact they may not close

No mines never got smaller still huge I just started stretching today and was able to start out with 12g almost a 10g that’s big for a normal hole size starting out it’s been like that for 2 decades never got smaller

You stretched way too soon and with tapers which can cause damage. Please slow down, consider switching to safer stretching methods, and listen to your body. Also consider using single flare plugs and not tunnels- tunnels are often not ideal for stretching.

@Lynn_Loheide thank you for the tips. I’ll keep that in mind. I need to also invest in something other than this stretching kit from Amazon. Unfortunately I fell victim to jumping the gun and buying this kit that has these awful harsh grades instead of going to my piercer. Then again, the piercer that I went to did my lip crooked and said I could change jewelry after 2 weeks so there’s that. Anyway thanks for being totally awesome and responding to comments.

Nope! Honestly it’s a bit of a misnomer that we even call it dead stretching. It would be far more accurate to call it dead filling. When we allow the ear to naturally loosen over time it looses evenly around the jewlery, and we simply fill the space with the next size up. With this method also called natural stretching our bodies do all the work at their own pace. We don’t use tool to force the stretch. If anything tapers are more likely to cause thin spots as they force stretches, usually creating repeated tears in the same place.

@@Lynn_LoheideOK thanks!

Impossible to say without seeing what’s going on! You can use the email form on my site to send me some photos

@@Lynn_Loheide ok I am filling that out immediately!! Thank you so much!!

You can use segments and captives at smaller sizes but I suggest using glass plus from basically 8g onward to keep your ears healthy and happy! Especially because high quality segments at those sizes are pretty expensive and low quality segments can definitely hurt your ears and cause thinning

Have an experienced piercer chexk

@Lynn_Loheide thank you. You're the best. Wasn't expecting a reply!! I'll be sad if they suggest I stop stretching. :/