Keeping Things Open

Maybe you’re divorced or widowed. Maybe you’ve been single and partnerless for a while. Maybe you found someone after a long dry spell. Or, maybe sex has just been darned painful lately.

Time was, you could count on your vagina to do its job. It just worked. You didn’t have to think about it. But with loss of estrogen you’ve been experiencing lately, that uncomplaining organ begins to act up. And if you haven’t used it lately, it actually begins to shrink and shorten.

Now, if you’ve been on the sidelines, sexually speaking, for a while, you won’t be able to jump back into the game without some preparation. At this point, sex can be surprising, and not in a good way.

After menopause, the name of the game is “use it or lose it.” Furthermore, it’s a lot easier to maintain vaginal health than to play catch-up after ignoring the situation downtown for a while.

As we explain in detail in our recipe for sexual health, when you lose estrogen, the vaginal walls become thin, dry, and fragile. They atrophy. Without regular stimulation, the vagina can become shorter and smaller. It can also begin to form adhesions and stick together. Some cancer treatments exacerbate this process.

We’ve talked about moisturizers, practicing your kegels, using a vibrator or other form of self-pleasuring as part of your sexual health maintenance program.

But another important tool, especially if you’re currently without a partner (or are trying to rehabilitate now that you’ve found someone) is the regular use of dilators.

Say what?

Dilators are sets of tubes, usually made of high-quality, cleanable plastic, that start small (half-inch) and gradually larger (up to an inch and a half). They’re inserted into the vagina in gradually increasing sizes to stretch the vaginal walls, making them open enough (which is called patency) and capacious enough to do their job.

It isn’t quick, but it is effective.

Occasionally, I run across suggestions for homemade dilators that make use of various round objects. Don’t try this. It’s important for all kinds of reasons to use only high-quality dilators that are smooth and easy to hold, that increase in size gradually and consistently, and that can be cleaned well.

You should only use the safest, highest quality product in this important place. If you don’t know where to look, we offer a selection of dilators on our website that we’ve carefully vetted. These will work much better for you than those candles you were eyeing.

Here’s how you use them:

Relax. Take a bath—it makes all those tissues soft and pliable. Lie comfortably on your back with your knees open.

Lubricate the smallest dilator well with a vaginal lubricant.

Gently insert it into the vagina. Keep all those pelvic floor muscles relaxed. Breathe. Push the dilator in as far as you comfortably can.

Hold it there for 20 to 30 minutes. Do this twice a day.

When you can comfortably insert the smallest dilator, graduate to the next largest size.

It can take three months or more to restore vaginal capacity.  Once you’re comfortable with the largest dilator, continue the regimen at least once a week if you aren’t having sex regularly. And don’t forget the moisturizers.

It takes patience and diligence to rehab your bottom, but you can do it. With a little TLC, everything will work as well as it ever did and sex can be every bit as luscious as it ever was.