Belly or Navel Piercing

This page was last updated on 08/08/2008 04:59:22 PM

Picture taken 8/4/08

Update: 8-08-08

 My double belly piercing is still doing well, totally healed and visible virtually everyday.

Update: 6-12-08

May care and up-keeping information seems to have gone away so I will bring it back for those of you that are looking for it. All piercings are the same, they are injuries and are traumatic to the body.  Your body does it's best to reject the intrusion and can actually force them out of the skin over time.  Your body tries to build a protective skin barrier to the metal and forms a tube of skin next to the metal jewelry.  this has to be kept clean and dry for it to heal.  A normal belly piercing can take a year to heal properly.  Care is simple, keep it as clean as possible, dry and not covered.  Let the air get to it as much as possible.  When you shower, rinse with fresh water and remove the crust that forms, but don't dig around and try to get everything out.  When not in the shower, clean the area with a saline solution or a salt and water solution.  Remember that a too strong solution will cause the skin to actually harden, as it dries out the tissues, so keep the salt to water combination at a normal saline or about 2 to 5%.  Taste it if in doubt, if it is really salty and sorta hurts to taste, it is too strong.   If you get an infection, red and sore to the touch, use antibiotic creams sparingly, overuse will cause more damage than underuse.  The skin can actually build a resistance to the cream and exacerbate the infection.  The infection becomes a resistant infection and even stronger antibiotics become necessary.  do not take the piercing out if there is an infection, it will only open up the area to the spread of the infection.  Care for it until the infection is cleared.  Try not to hang heavy weights on the piercing until fully healed.  Difficult I know.

A

12-06-07  Although it looks sorta funny, that is two separate piercings.  One standard belly piercing and the other at the bottom of the belly button. I didn't take the time to adjust the jewelry at the time of this picture but when the sweater is freed, the lower dangle shows very nicely.  The upper one is a reverse jewel set that has a small fan of colored stones hanging in front of the screw-on balls.

UPDATE!!!  10-30-07 and 11/19/07

My current double naval piercing is still in place and well healed. 

UPDATE!!!  1-14-07

My original belly piercing actually grew out! Over about a year it kept easing toward the skin surface and one morning I woke up and it was gone and there was a little valley of skin left where it used to reside. I had been doing a lot of exercising and just seemed to move outward as my body wanted to reject it.

Two months ago I had a double piercing done, one in the traditional location as before, and the other sitting at the bottom of the belly button.  That way I will be able to wear a jewel directly in the middle of the belly button and one hanging down from below it.  I know, somewhat extreme but I have seen a few and they look nice so what the heck!  I will take pictures shortly to show you what I am taking about.

In the meantime use that very active imagination.......

Some of my recent pictures show me in hip hugger jeans with what appears to be a belly button piercing jewel hanging down to my belt area.

This is actually a spring loaded earring attached to a piece of jewelry that I made from a pair of belts.  You will notice that my bracelet, earrings, belt and necklace are all from the same jewelry.  The belly jewelry is part of the left-overs and fits very nicely, if not too long, in the belly area.  I actually put a drop of nail glue on each end of the spring-loaded earring to hold it in place so that the weight of the jewelry doesn't pull it off.

Actual belly piercing!

Actual belly or navel piercing has some drawbacks other than the most obvious ones.  The biggest is the infection rate.  Wearers play with their belly bar and frequently do not wash their hands first. Wearers tend to develop infections around the piercing and use all manner of antiseptics to try to stop it or defeat it.  Many are successful but a high percentage are not. That requires the belly bar or ring to be removed and the holes allowed to heal and not being able to wear anything there for some time.

One instruction given to most new belly piercings is to not remove the belly bar even if an infection starts, the hope being that the previous healing that took place can be maintained and the infection can be stopped.

Another of the reasons for the high infection rate is the tendency for wearers to want to change their belly jewelry (well of course!) to go with their outfits or their mood.  That is because belly bars and belly rings come in a million different styles and looks.  There are dangling ones and flowers and even the imagination can't keep up. Changing a belly bar exposes the holes to air-borne infections and many times the new belly bar is not sterile and the new infections are introduced. 

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to simply pierce once, never change the bar and wear anything you wanted? And wouldn't if be great if that belly bar were Titanium, the most accepted metal to be introduced in the body?

Well, some German inventor developed an item called Screwbidoo that he is marketing out of Australia.  They have a small earring receptacle that fits in the navel and has the traditional belly bar that has the screw-on ball above the navel.  They come in different lengths (the distance between the top of the earring receptacle and the small screw-on ball at the other end.  Many piercing shops have a standard size that they pierce to, some 7/16 or around 10 or 11mm, others longer and some shorter.  Maybe a few visual aids will help.

Prior to 4-9-05 all of the pictures that depicted a belly piercing were using a spring loaded earring, sometimes glued into place. Friday, April 8, 2005 I had my belly pierced with a new 10mm Screwbidoo.  I used Lidocaine/Prilocaine paste on the area prior to the actual piercing and never felt a thing.  

The Screwbidoo is available by mail order from Australia only at this time for $14.90 each plus shipping.  Compared to Titanium belly bars available through the piercing shops ($50 to $200) it is a bargain.  If you have any interest in one email me, I imported a few to sell in the U.S. at an even lower price.  I also list a few now and then on eBay starting at $6.

I will take some pictures shortly to give you an idea what mine actually looks like.

1 day after the piercing

12 days after

14 days after the piercing

This belly chain is attached to the belly bar and has another Tiger Eye hanging from the chain to the right

21 days after the piercing