The ever-evolving scent of my pu$$y and why it matters so much

Sexual health, transgender health, Neo-vagina

I just love the many expressions the trans community uses to describe the neo-vagina, that miracle that lives and thrives between my legs.  Gucci cucci is a personal favourite.  But there are many phrases for the “designer vagina”.  Armani poonani.

My travels into womanhood have included a crash course in vaginas and vulvas, an obligatory meeting to the wall of 10,000 vaginas at the London Vagina Museum, ahem, well two visits…And a lust for books and information on this mysterious set of folds that are a glimpse into my soul, my body, the great beyond.

Of course I have no uterus, so in that sense I am like a woman who has had a hysterectomy…and if I wasn’t born intersex, I sure am intersex now.  So many trans men and I share the same anatomy (as in, men who were assigned female at birth), even if we don’t share the same energy and blood tests…

I’m not joking when I say that my hormone levels are look those of a teenage girl.  Actually, now that I get my results with reference to the broader female population, I have discovered that I am like an ovulating woman, in this perennial state which is most propitious for pregnancy…in other words, itching to fuck.

In fact, it is a real craving.  And even if the desire to fuck is not rationally connected in natal or trans women to getting pregnant, the symbolism is very real.  Pity I don’t like boys.  At least not that way.

All my domme friends tell me that’s a good thing.  It makes the job easier.  Detachment you know.

My pussy seems to be the centre of my life right now.  Of course there is dilation.  While on the one hand I love that my doctor wanted to turn this act into one of sexual pleasure—the idea of masturbating for three hours a day is a wonderful theory but bloody difficult in practice.  I have taken to travelling with my hulking elephant of a vibrator, the fabulous Hitachi wand, as it not only feels incredible, but it helps immeasurably with dilation (the vibrations help those pelvic floor muscles open up to take the dildo).

And yes, thank goodness, I am now on the largest size of vaginal dilator.  At least, the official ones.  I was given my original set by the doctor…and she said, “well, there is one size larger if you feel you need to be able to take a larger size, and you can buy that online.”

“Oh my God sister, I am all in,” and quite literally, that’s me.  And I am best pleased that I have gotten here.

At times it hurts, and the resistance is intense, but other times I just feel the enormity of its girth splitting me open and it gives me this intense feeling of fullness, which in itself is quasi-orgasmic.  This is when it is most fun to play with myself.

My vaginal lips are healing, so they don’t hurt so much, and a lot of the swelling has gone down, so my “fat vagina” is starting to look more like everyone else’s, which is to say, not like anyone else’s at all, just mine.

I keep mine completely shaved.  After all, babies don’t have hair down there…and anyway, I kind of dig the look.  A vaginal waxing hurts something fierce, as I discovered to my alarm—never mind that I used to have full Hollywood on my boy bits as well, or that the tissue is the same, just repurposed.  What is going on?  Nerve growth.  And sometimes I feel it when the hookups happen.  Like suddenly, I get this contraction in my vaginal lips and a lightning strike of energy that tells me another nerve has come online.

The pleasure from them also gets better.  But the pain is not completely gone yet.

My clitoris is a bit harder to figure.  It is very much there.  It looks a bit different, but it is very sensitive.  I got this vibrator for it which is almost too much.  It mimics sucking with the lips and uses little sucks of air.  When I place it right on my button, ‘Oh, there you are’.

The Cycle of Odour

Any woman will tell you that how her vagina smells gives clues about how healthy it is.  I like to get a sniff of any vagina I come across.  Scientific research I assure you.  I just casually insert my finger and then ever-so-discreetly allow my nose and finger to dance in a way that leaves no one any the wiser, and give a good sniff.  Of course I do this to my own every time I dilate and every time I change my pad, and every time I pee.

I have found several broad phases of what I smell like, and this is really important.  The neo-vagina, for what little research there exists on the topic, has a pH which differs from the natal vagina.  At least at first.  There are no long-term studies.

But the acidity of the vagina is critical to a woman’s health.  Happy bacteria thrive and protect in a vagina with a pH in the range of 3.5 to 4.5.  The trans vagina is more typically in the range of 5.5 to 6.5.  This is why trans women and not natal women are encouraged to douche fairly regularly, with a douche that increases acidity/lowers pH.  Douching is not really ideal practice, as it can damage the epithelial tissue that lines the vagina, and also disrupt healthy biofilms.  So, if you can get your vagina into the right state of equilibrium, then power to you, and no more douching.

But I think us trans girls have very real reasons to be obsessed with vaginal hygiene, hence the sniffing and washing.  I have special soap I keep on the bidet—yes, I use a bidet, almost every time I pee.  I have a different special soap which I use in the shower, and wash into my lips with.  Both of these soaps and others I travel with, all have a pH of 3.5, so they do double duty.

A healthy vagina smells of the sea.  Not fishy, or like vulcanized rubber, or something else that is “off”, but like the sea.  Do you know what’s interesting?  Two women who live together end up with the same vaginal micro-biome over time.  Even more true of lesbian partners.  I got pranged the other day by a gorgeous woman.  I can’t help but hope that her vaginal juices mixed with mine and her little bacterial family now lives inside me.  She smelled fabulous, and I wanted to smell just like her.

And do you know what?  I did.  For about 5 days.  But now my vagina smells like something else.

I have already regaled you with stories of how my vagina smells like a piña colada, and I am not kidding.  I love pineapple.  I’ve taken to buying cans of it and drying the rings in the oven.  Much cheaper than buying dried, and I can leave them a bit chewier and moister, which is the way I like them.  My kids like to chew them in my face.  Insolent imps.  They know how much I love the stuff.

Well, a few days ago, I downed a litre of coconut water in one go…and about an hour later, when I peed and then did the ol’ sniff test, I found that my vaginal secretions, my snail trail, smelled of coconut.

And boy, it was yummy smelling.  My vaginal juices are so responsive they are like the ultimate sports car—the Lamborghini of coochie juice.

Well, I was also a little troubled, as I was thinking, what about the sea?  Shouldn’t the scent of the sea be a bit stronger than that.

I test my pH religiously and am doing all kinds of things to get my vaginal pH down to cis vagina levels.  What does that involve?  Changes to my diet.  No sugar, no alcohol, lot’s of probiotic and prebiotic foods, especially fermented stuff. And you know what?  I can smell the difference within an hour.

This is a process that we could merrily skip through life not knowing.  But women are more connected to everything, more sensitive, and this is a very animal and direct way to see that.  Because the vagina is a window into our whole internal workings.  And I can learn things by being so in touch with it.

This was all important to me in general as the proud new owner of a vagina.  But it became all the more so as I got my first UTI a few months ago.  At least that’s what I thought it was.  It sure didn’t feel good, but I never really had the symptoms completely, and tested negative for fungal infections, and for candida…but in the end concluded that it was bacterial vaginosis, and took a short course of antibiotics and then went onto some natural remedies.  I felt better pretty quick.

But antibiotics kill good bacteria as well as bad.  So, I’m thinking, all my hard work and dieting to foster the right colony down there is all coming to naught if I have to kill them off.  Between that and douching, I decided I wanted something better.

Plus, the idea of taking an oral supplement to seed the bacteria somehow into the vagina defied logic.  And since the supplement route has not been definitively linked, the jury is out.  I take them anyway.  As a general rule, anything to do with women’s health is under-researched, so that’s why there is no irrefutable causal link.

A little aside about the trans vagina, an even less-researched cul-de-sac.  Most such creations are made through a method called “penile inversion”.  This involves turning the penis inside out and making a canal out of it.  There are pluses and minuses to this approach, but it represents roughly 95% of all penis-to-vagina creations.  The significance of this to the topic at hand is that penile shaft skin is skin.  The natural pH of skin is between 5.5 and 6.5.  So it is not surprising that the “average” trans vagina has a pH of 5.5 to 6.5.

The remaining 5% of trans vaginas, however, are the type of operation that I had, peritoneal pull-through (which uses a piece of the abdominal lining) or colon-based (which uses a piece of the colon).  In theory, both the peritoneal lining and the colon have key differences with skin, but namely that their natural pH is lower than skin, and that they are also both mucosal, as in, they excrete mucous, just like a natal vagina, which serves two purposes.  First, it helps keep a constant flow which keeps the vagina clean, but second, it creates a happier home for the bacteria we need.

So, here I am trying to coax my body into getting into the pH zone of a natal vagina.  And I am following my nose to get there.

Some women in Africa put yoghurt into their vaginas.  My doctor said, not recommended, but I am thinking why not.  Lactobacillus (depending on the strain) is the most common desired bacteria to inhabit the vagina.  Anyway, tired of oral supplements and eating and douching and not finding a change in the direction from a near constant pH of 5.5, I have begun to explore other options.

I now have vaginal bacterial suppositories, and my gynaecologist has suggested I find a partner who I trust and stick a long q-tip swab inside her, twirl it around and then stick it in me.  I would prefer a finger or a fuck.  But you get the idea.

I did this recently, and the smell changed overnight.  Here is the lifecycle of my smells.

• Fresh meat: this lasted for about 6 weeks, from coming out of the hospital to when the blood stopped coming fresh, and was just a reflection of having a wound
• Pineapple and sweetness: a reflection of my diet.  This lasted another 2 months.
• UTI: not fresh, but a bit like vulcanized rubber.  Not bad, not strong, just not right.
• Sea: a kind of funky, slightly oceanic smell that was the sign of something beautiful
• Fresh meat again: not good, I think, because it doesn’t represent where it needs to be

What do I learn from all of this?  Well, the smell of my vagina seems to be directly correlated to my physical state and well-being.  At the beginning, this was directly related to a cycle of healing from a surgical wound.  This state is now passing and I find myself where I started, smelling a bit like an animal.  Since I have almost completely stopped douching, this scent has returned, and I am thinking that the douche was suppressing my natural odour so much that something as minor as drinking coconut water became perceptible in my vaginal secretions.

So, I have taken up the suppositories and am seeding my vagina with new bacterial cultures.  The science is leading us to this: the way to treat bacterial vaginosis is to seed the vagina with healthy bacteria.  But I think, just as I think that the gut microbiome regulates much of our unconscious lives, that for women, the vaginal microbiome does too.  I will be exploring this to the point of obsession, and I look forward to sharing my perambulations with you here.

So, as I experiment down there, I am trying to see how my body feels, and this is leading me to pay more attention to my diet and my exercise and my body than ever.  Just in time too, as I was able to run 10k for the first time since two days before surgery.  I’m not quite ready to do this 5 days a week, but I’ll get there.

And my vagina is coming with me.