So, I got my packing out earlier today, and what a huge relief that was.
After a week of having the surgical padding on, things were starting to get really uncomfortable. Having several inches of padding constantly pushing down on your pubis at all hours of the day for a week straight gets really old after a while. And the worst part is the surgical tape. Every single part of my torso and legs and butt that the surgical tape was on (to hold the padding in place) was red with irritation by this morning, was itchy as heck, and I was so glad to finally get it off.
First of all, getting all of that padding off is the biggest difference in the world when it comes to transitioning from the feeling that you're still a newly-out-of-surgery "girl in progress" to feeling like you really are done. There's something about still feeling the surgical packing in your vagina, and still feeling all of that padding covering everything which makes it impossible to see or really feel anything, and something about being forced to walk like a penguin and stand up like someone whose legs are locked together that really makes you feel like someone who's still in recovery, still in need of physical coddling and nurse assistance and still fragile and breakable. Once that padding comes off, you can MOVE again! You can lay on the bed with your legs together, you can sit, you can stand up without teetering on the edge of your bed like a rigid puppet with a wooden pelvis, and you can actually walk like a normal person instead of waddling around like a penguin. It is such a big relief. And you finally start feeling normal again.
The packing removal "ceremony" seriously feels like your first gynecologist visit. You strip naked, spread your legs as far apart as you can in a crab-walk position, and after 5 minutes of having layers of skin ripped off as they remove the surgical tape that holds the padding in place, someone pokes and prods your ladybits with a bunch of medical tools including a depth-measuring rod, spreading it apart with a speculum, and the entire time you're just laying there staring down at what basically amounts to spread legs and (for the first time in your life) your completely-empty flat hair-stubble-covered female pubis in all its glory.
I did my best not to cry tears of happiness, but oh my God, there it was. There was that thing that I've wished for 17 years straight that I could have, that I cried myself to sleep so many nights because I couldn't have, and there it was! And I was like "eeeee!!! There really is no penis or testes there!" Seeing it, having it right there in front of your eyes, is a completely different level of amazing than feeling it is. You know it's there on a head level, but yeah, now it's REAL.
I don't really have much to say about what the packing removal felt like. It felt like something was being pulled out of my vagina, and that's about it. I've had a phantom vagina feeling since I can remember, and well, this felt like something coming out of my vagina. (Well, okay, if you really want to know what having a vagina feels like, it basically just feels like another orifice down there. It doesn't really feel much different from something being pulled out of your butt, but just a little bit more forward and without the sphincter at the end making the opening tight. It's just really soft and wet. Or maybe if you were a weird teenager like me who was desperate to experience what ANYTHING going into your body felt like, maybe you stuck something into your urethra before? It feels like that, except without the burning sensation, because seriously, the urethra burns whenever anything is stuck into it.) Okay, that was probably TMI. But whatever. I'm just trying to be as honest as possible, and I feel like the physical sensations aren't really discussed in much detail most of the time, people just say "it feels interesting" or something.
It didn't hurt. It was just more like a persistent low-level tickle in that area. The only part that hurt was the very end, when the last segment came out.
And then out came the mirror, and I got to see myself for the first time.
Me personally, I'm super-happy. It's very compact. Because of the swelling pushing the outer labia to puff up around everything, the clitoral hood, urethra, and vagina are all really close to each-other, and everything is sort of pulled in toward the vagina by the pressure so it's almost like a "gaping hole" effect minus the clitoris, which was pretty obvious. One of my big fears with Chett, which many people have mentioned before, is that he tends to leave the clitoris a bit bigger than most surgeons, and I've always been very small downstairs, so I was worried that my clitoris was going to be left too big for me, I didn't want to look down there and see what blatantly looked like a chunk of penis sticking out. Thankfully, it didn't. It looked normal. It was bigger than the average cis woman's clit that I've seen, but not by much. On a scale of 0-10 in terms of the clit sizes that I've seen on cis women, it was probably about a 6 or a 7. So it was a big relief having that fear eased.
When you first see it, again, it's not very pretty, everything is still rather swollen, especially if you're overweight like me, so it almost looks like there's no inner labia at all because the pressure has everything pushed out really far, but don't fret, I've seen how Chett's results settle, as things heal the scar site around the vagina slowly retracts and that's where the inner labia is. So I can't tell for sure whether it will end up being everything I hoped for or not, but based on what I saw today, I'm optimistic. It will at least be a result in the "good" range. In terms of the best result I was expecting versus the worst result I was expecting, I'd give what I saw about a 6-7 on a scale of 1-10 with 5 being average.
What I am definitely really happy with with Chett is the placement of the scars. Some surgeons leave very obvious scars above the clitoris which are visible from the front, with Chett that's definitely not the case, he has almost all of the scars right along the seam of the inner labia, in a place where once the swelling goes down it will be wrinkled up and barely visible. So yeah, happy about that.
Honestly, though, I really don't care about the current appearance too much. First of all, it's too early to tell, so as long as everything is in relatively the right place and the doctor says you got a good result, that's enough for me. Also, to me, the appearance matters somewhat, but I'm not the type of person to freak out about everything looking EXACTLY textbook perfect, I'll be completely happy as long as it's within the reasonable range of what a woman could reasonably have, and this definitely was. So I'm happy. And finally seeing it was amazing. Like, come on, I have a vagina! How amazing is that! And I actually got to feel what having a labia feels like, and what having a clitoris feels like! Seriously, that was amazing! How cool is that? And that's what really matters to me, is how it feels. And it feels WONDERFUL.
Having all of that cumbersome padding removed, and finally feeling what it's going to be like to walk around, and sit, and lounge, and do all of the normal daily things that I'll be doing for the rest of my life, and basically feeling for the first time what those things are going to feel like with a vagina and no penis/testes in the way, seriously, SO amazing. Now that the padding is removed, it basically feels completely normal now. All that's there absorbing fluid is a maxi pad. So things look normal now. And by normal I mean flat. So just sitting down and seeing the crotch of my sweatpants resting down perfectly flat on my front, looking the same way that I've always been so envious of girls for looking, GYAH!!! So amazing! And it's ME!!! (I'm never going to get tired of this, I swear. I'm so glad that I get to look this way and feel this comfortable every time I lounge around now. I got a taste of it a few days ago when I got back to the hotel for the first time with the padding still in, but now this is like everything that I've always wanted coming to full fruitition, finally experiencing it in the way that I'll be experiencing it for the rest of my life.)
The padding is a huge burden that's been removed. I can basically walk around normally now. Getting up isn't a hassle anymore, I can sit and lay down in any position I want without discomfort, and I can bend down and turn and stretch, and my discomfort level when sitting has dropped from about a 4-5/10 to a 3/10. I was able to sit down at the dining room table to eat breakfast this morning, probably 20+ minutes straight, and it was only mildly uncomfortable.
Also, I finally got to take a shower, so yay, having clean hair again is really nice.
Basically, packing-removal day feels like graduation day. I feel FREE, and I feel so wonderful and unencumbered and just plain happy that I can barely put it in words. Seriously, this is amazing.
Oh yeah, and not that I really care much, depth isn't my main concern, but I got 6" of depth. And when the nurse put the depth-measure in, it didn't really hurt much, so I was relieved, dilation shouldn't be too problematic for me.
I'm amazed at how pain-free every single day since that 3rd day in the recovery center has been, just how elated I've felt, and honestly just how great life feels right now. I'm so happy that I'm going to get to experience life in this new body.
(Also, I'm already at the point where I don't really need pain pills any more. There's still some definite swelling in the pubis/groin area, so there's a little residual pressure pain on some of the more sensitive parts, but it's barely noticeable. It's a persistent 1/10 to 2/10 at the most. And frankly most of my energy already feels back, walking basically feels normal, I can sit with only moderate discomfort, and while I am still definitely taking it easy and staying in bed most of the day because I know I do still have a newly-healing surgical site to take care of, and I can feel that swelling picks up after I've been moving around, and I'm probably still a bit weaker than my brain is leading me to believe, I'd seriously rate my current level of recovery energy and feeling outside-world-capabale at about a 65% to 70% already. Once those first couple of difficult days were past, this recovery has been so much easier than I was expecting that it's not even funny.)
