being the type of person who plans everything to death right down to the smallest detail, often years before actually doing it, i have a number of things on my transition "to do" list... one of them being Yeson.

I am curious to know by those ladies who have been, those who plan or want to go, and also by those ladies who have no intention of going...how early is too early to go get this vocal feminisation surgery?

clearly having it booked for your second day on hrt is a tad too OTT (over the top), but should there be a "recommended" waiting period for us new girls just starting our journey....say 5 months or so... to allow us to develop the other tried and tested voice skills that are required (so to avoid the view that 'yeson will solve all my voice probs'

disclosure: i am a loong way off even starting hrt or anything so am by no means rushing into anything, just like to plan in advance.

your opinions are like rays of sunshine on a cloudy day, and i would love to get a good tan... so i would love some feedback

I'm interested in this as well, Yeson girls, please fill us in!

The ideal scenario is you have it done around when you want to go full-time. That was what I did - I had been doing months of voice training but wasn't really getting anywhere and realized that if I wanted to go full-time and be able to pass that I would have to make sure my voice was right. So I literally went full-time just before I left for Korea, and it has worked out wonderfully so far.

I guess you could get it done before that point, but depending on your starting voice and depending on the outcome from surgery it might be difficult to pass as male with your voice if that's something that you would ever have to do.

And I don't know how early "too early" would be, but I would definitely make sure that you are 100% positive that you want to transition. The surgery is permanent so there is no way to get your old male voice back if you ever wanted to de-transition.

I did it 5 months after HRT, 3 months after going full time.

I think it's definitely worth giving voice training a shot, and it's never too soon to start practicing even if you haven't started hormones yet. A lot of people do really well with voice training- there is no reason to completely write it off that you will never succeed with that alone!

For me I was becoming VERY happy with my voice in private, but stage fright always got ahold of me and I felt completely fake using it anywhere in front of friends or in public. Usually my feminine voice could last a few seconds, and then I would feel like a fraud and it always slowly sank back down. Thinking back to those times makes me shudder and smile all at the same time.

I know I could have tried harder to assimilate my female voice into everyday speaking in public, but I sensed a HUGE amount of anguish I'd have to go through to really break through- and I didn't want to deal with that. I randomly had the money and the perfect companion to accompany me on a very interesting journey to Korea (where I would have to be a mute).

It all happened in kind of a flash, but deep down in my gut I had absolutely no doubt it was the right decision for me- and I'm glad I did not falter with that life altering choice to book the surgery.

Now, halfway through the full recovery period, I can't imagine my life any other way. The inner confidence I have been able to grasp I would not trade for anything.

Moving forward, I hope that my high upper range continues to extend and become more accessible. So far, it is. I am still constantly learning new inflection techniques and ways to access those higher pitches. It's still largely a mental game in that regard- but because the voice sounds feminine no matter what, I find new vocal techniques to be much more easily integrated.

I'm interested to see what it's like for someone like me who has been full time for quite a while before having VFS, compared to those like Jenny and Abby who did it pretty much right after going full time. The reason is that I had about 7 years in total of voice "practice", not professional or even consistent, but living so long as female in so many different situations likely has contributed to my apparent improvement in resonance, inflection, etc. I'm wondering how that'll play into the recovery and overall sound and range of my voice.

Either way I don't think there's really a "too early" for it so long as you don't think that it solves everything. Either way you'll still need to work on all the other aspects to voice to get it to sound completely natural, and doing it earlier means you will likely have a much easier time integrating and passing fully. The only thing that could be too early is if you're not 100% sure you're going to transition. Then obviously you'd want to wait.

If I had known about Yeson back in '08 I would have done it before FFS or SRS for sure. That's how important the voice is to me in my self-perception and self-confidence.

I regret posting here

So interesting! Thank you so much for sharing, voodle! We are almost dead even on the lip trill max frequency, I am topping out at just below 800hz and was stuck at 600 a few months ago, too

But yes you are right, the 800hz doesn't translate to other areas yet. I have a feeling it will keep coming with time as my usable frequency is slowly climbing as well (as long as I don't do much yelling the night before).

It's so nice to have someone at the same stage of recovery to talk about this with.

I guess one thing that I REALLY took to heart was when Dr. Kim said to me "you will still have to train the brain to use higher frequencies". This whole time, I've been thinking about that and pushing myself accordingly. In certain scenarios (like talking to my mother on the phone), it is hard. While in most all of the other scenarios (like talking to strangers), it is absolutely no problem at all.

In the end, my voice passes no matter what and that's all that really matters in my opinion. Having that confidence seems to allow the "brain training" part to come a bit easier for me.