Hello,
About 10 days ago I had both nipples pierced at a professional tattoo piercing parlour. For the first week, I would clean the piercings while in the shower with Spectro Gel in the morning, and do a 5-minute sea salt soak in the evening. The last few days, I limit the cleaning to while I'm showering.
With that aftercare, my left nipple appears to be healing well, but my right seems to have developed a mild infection. I went to see a doctor, and too my surprise he did not suggest taking it out, but did prescribe an antibiotic (7 days, I took the 3rd dose tonight).
I feel the infection is being handled, but I've also started to notice that my left nipple appears to be growing OVER the end of the barbell. My nipple covers half of the ball if left alone.
I have a call into the parlour where I had it done to see if I should come in for a bar with larger ends, but until I hear back from them, I was hoping to see if there was any other advice that could be offered.
Any guidance would be appreciated.
The problem you are experincing is probably caused by the barbell.
As with any piercing, the first response by the body is to swell. With barbells, the swelling can be greater than the length of the barbells and this looks like its growing over the balls. We do not know how you cleaned your piercings but we know that the salt water soaks were not good for them. So please do not use salt water anymore.
We would suggest that you get rings into both your piercings. If you have an infection, then the ring would give a better exit for the bacteria puss. The ring would take the pressure off the over swollen nipple and eventually you could put the barbells back in once the swelling had dissipated.
You also have the possibility that you could have crusties forming. This is caused because of lactation. When you pierce the nipple, the milk ducts are opened and can for some women and men cause lactation to happen every so often. Each person is different so watch your cycle and see how your nipples respond.
Hope we have helped.
