The practical initial largest size for a piercing depends on the location for the piercing, your healing history, general health and comfort level. Smaller rings for initial piercings "tend" to heal faster, give a cleaner/smoother initial piercing/hole and are easier to keep clean during the healing process (though I am not a fan of too small). With a hood piercing, a 14 or even 12 gauge initial piercing would probably be do-able depending upon the hood and your healing history (e's initial piercing was a 14 gauge for her hood) - I strongly suggest you check with a professional piercer before doing anything - maybe check with two and compare what they tell you. 

When you stretch you have to be very careful to avoid migration.. The actual sizing up is best done with a taper so that the hole is stretched evenly all around and does not tend to migrate out. Great care needs to be taken when weighting and stretching to not have migration out occur. One of the reasons for considering flesh tunnels when sizing gets large.

e originally got both her outer pussy lips pierced at the same time in the summer of1990 at the Gauntlet in LA.  That same day she was riding on the back of her husband's motorcycle.  e’s outer pussy lips were re-pierced in mid 2000 because of location not because of migration. Fortunately she does not tend toward surface migration and we have been aware of the issue. We have tapers and use them. she is being stretched with weight only to make the taper event easier and the end result is a two gauge flesh tunnel which to a very large degree stops further enlargement/migration over time because of its relatively light weight versus its relatively large diameter.

About weighting and stretching:

The practical initial largest size for a piercing depends on A) the location for the piercing; B) your healing history; C) your general health and D) your comfort level. I am not a fan of too small. With a hood piercing, a 14 or even 12 gauge initial piercing would probably be do-able depending upon the hood and your healing history (e's initial piercing was a 14 gauge for her hood) - I strongly suggest you check with a professional piercer before doing anything - It is best to check with two and compare what they tell you.

When you stretch you have to be very careful to avoid migration.. The actual sizing up is sometimes best done with a taper so that the hole is stretched evenly all around and does not tend to migrate out. Great care needs to be taken when weighting and stretching to not have migration set in. One of the reasons for considering flesh tunnels for long term wearing of large gauge rings is the large gauge ring itself will become a significant weight and produce stretching and possible migration without additional weight.

Further remarks

1) when stretching with weight it is important to not have more weight on than can be comfortably worn without soreness for a period of between 4-6 hours - if it can be worn for 6-8 hours without soreness that is good too.

2) allow the piercing to fully heal before attempting any weighting - stretching.

3) do not wear the weight more than 8 - 12 hours a day even if there is no soreness - though at 12 hours the weight might want to be sufficient to make things just a hint of a bit sore.

4) once the piercing is completely healed and stretching is undertaken, the piercing being stretched will benefit greatly from gentle rubbing between the fingers, that is massages (a good excuse, by the way, for a bit of "finger" erotic sensuous goings on). The area will also benefit from hot compresses - which feel really good, and 3-5 minute soaks in sea salt dissolved in warm water - these feel good too ( either a sitz bath or a large cup or glass will do the job just fine for a clitoral piercing or pussy piercing.

5) when the stretching results in a situation where the next biggest gauge can be readily inserted without any sense of pain or discomfort, usually when a slight pull, without any discomfort, on the existing ring will allow you to see a bit of daylight through the piercing, make the transition and then wait a couple of weeks (14 days or so) before any new stretching/weighting to give the piercing time to settle in with the new ring.

6) stretching/weighting is an opportunity to practice patience and enjoy the process. Do not be impatient - take time and care so that the experience is enjoyable, pleasant and discomfort free. Anything else and you are likely to end up with a sore piercing, complications, rejection of various kinds. And please always consult at least one professional, even better several - Most of them gladly and freely give advise on these matters.

7) Always Do the Actual Stretching to the Next Gauge with a Surgical Stainless Drift or acrylic taper.

Remarks on piercing by e:

i'm very proud of my piercings.

i'm writing, as promised, with details of my piercings. i was originally pierced by someone with the Gauntlet, a chain of piercing establishments, but the piercings were placed too far back in my opinion, and one of them was giving me problems occasionally even ten years later.

After moving to San Francisco, i went to see Joey, a Master Piercer at Body Manipulations. Joey is by far the best piercer i have ever seen. The San Francisco Gauntlet store referred their difficult piercing jobs to her for quite a while before the Gauntlet changed hands. i don't know if they are still referring clients to her now or not.

Joey, my Master, and i decided to keep one of the original piercings and to relocate the other (the one that was giving me the most problems). So Joey repierced my left labia and also my clitoral hood. Neither piercing was as painful as i anticipated. i had particularly expected the clitoral hood piercing to be difficult to take, but it was surprisingly easy.

The initial piercings were 12-gauge, surgical steel rings with captive balls. After the initial healing period (about six weeks--genital piercings heal fairly quickly), Master began weighting the rings with small padlocks, which i would wear until my rings began to bother me and feel a little sore. Master would remove them then because the one thing you don't want to do with fairly new piercings is to irritate them too much. This is especially true when wearing the smaller gauge rings because they have more of a tendency to act like wire and cut the skin. With the large gauge rings, this is not a problem.

After wearing the padlocks a little while, the piercings began to stretch. When the piercing had enlarged to the point that W/we could see space between the ring and the piercing when the padlock was on the ring, W/we knew the piercing was ready for the next larger gauge. W/we went back to Joey, and she inserted a 10-gauge ring into each piercing. The labia rings were a fairly large diameter because we wanted the extra weight of a larger-diameter ring to help stretch the piercings further. The clitoral hood ring was replaced with the cutest, tiniest little ring you ever did see. You could barely even see the ring when my lips were closed. W/we weren't interested in stretching the labia ring further, so W/we didn't need a larger-diameter ring. Joey used a tapered pin, which began at the original 12-gauge size and ended at the new 10-gauge size to insert the new ring, and the new ring went through painlessly because of all the preparation Master had done beforehand (weighting the rings with the padlocks, etc.).

W/we continued the process of weighting the rings with padlocks until the piercings stretched to the point where W/we could see light through them and then going up a gauge. In this manner, we increased from 10-gauge to 8-gauge, 8-gauge to 6-gauge, 6-gauge to 4-gauge, and finally, 4-gauge to 2-gauge, where we have stopped for the moment. After the first two initial enlargements, Master purchased the tapered pins from Body Manipulations, and we enlarged the piercings O/ourselves. Labia piercings stretch fairly easily, so if you are careful with your initial piercings and stretch them sufficiently before going up to the next gauge, you can move up fairly quickly from gauge to gauge, four weeks to two months for each step.

W/we switched from captive ball rings, which tended to come apart with weight, to the curved barbells. W/we discovered that the balls on the ends of the curved barbells had a tendency to come unscrewed due to the friction of walking, so we added a third ball of an appropriate size in the opening to prevent this. (Your local piercer will know what i'm talking about.)

At the 2-gauge size, we ordered flesh tunnels from Joey at Body Manipulations. Flesh tunnels are not available smaller than 2-gauge and are two-piece, internally-threaded grommets similar to the grommets you see people wearing in their ears. Master looked almost a year until finding these flesh tunnels. The problem with the normal ear grommets is that they have a large flange on one side only; thus, they have a small side for insertion into the ear piercing and then place a rubber o-ring on the back to keep the grommet in. Obviously, this won't work in a labia piercing. The friction of your legs when walking, etc., would just push the o-ring off and the grommet would fall out, not to mention the irritation. The great thing about the flesh tunnels is that they have large flanges on both sides so they don't fall out, and they are flat and smooth so they don't irritate your legs when you walk or your partner when making love. The two parts screw together with the threads on the inside. We have secured the threading with Blue Loctite. The Blue Loctite is harder to find but do not use any other, as you will never get them apart if you use another type of Loctite such as, god forbid, 272 (red), which requires 10 minutes of heating at 240 degrees -- obviously nothing good there.

The flesh tunnels come in regular surgical stainless and in black surgical stainless. The black ones come smooth or with swirl or checkerboard patterns engraved. mine are black with a checkerboard pattern. The rings through the flesh tunnels and my clitoral hood are 3/4"-diameter, 12-gauge rings in 14-karat gold with black beads. This is the only size ring that would go through 2-gauge flesh tunnels because of the curvature of the ring and the flatness of the flesh tunnel interior.

You can order them through Body Manipulations (415) 621-0408 where Joey works; i believe they are open from noon till 700 pm. most days. The lead time from Tombstone, the manufacturer of the flesh tunnels, is somewhat lengthy at times. Our first order took several months. However, W/we are planning to go up two more gauges, and our recent order only took two weeks to come in. M/master and i also plan two more piercings on my labia, placed between my current ones and my clitoral hood, so W/we can lace my labia closed.

Good luck with your piercings. Be sure to check out the person doing them, get referrals from other people with piercings of the type in which you are interested, ask to see examples of their work, check out the cleanliness of the facilities, do they wear fresh gloves for each piercing, do they autoclave their tools, etc... Feel free to contact me at any time.

elizabeth

e's piercings have since been enlarged. her outer pussy lips are now 000 gauge(10mm) and her clithood piercing is  now 0000 gauge (12mm).

Our recent preferred sizing up method, once the initial piercing has fully healed, is the use of a smaller gauge ring several gauge sizes smaller (on the order of 16 or 18 gauge initially) being inserted into the existing piercing while it still has the existing initially 10 gauge jewelry in it, and allowing the air/motion/movement/stretching, between two pieces of jewelry in the same piercing.  Once that has worked for a while and the body is comfortable with having the two rings ( initially a 10 gauge and then once that heals - the 10 gauge plus a 16 gauge in the same hole)  yet another ring of the next  larger gauge, which would be 14 gauge, in the existing piercing with the original 10 gauge ring still in, allowing that to work before going to the next larger gauge size in the existing piercing.  Incrementally moving up, allowing the body to fully heal in between each increment until we reach  000 or 0000  gauge over the course of several months.