Immediately below the urethra is the entrance to the vagina. Outside the vulgar ring, as we will call this place, may not look like a “ring”at all. The entrance to the vagina is framed by folds of mucosa. If the hymen has not yet been broken, you can see a small whitish “film”, blocking the entrance. The shape and size of the hymen are quite varied. Most often it is actually a small semilunar film or a round film with a hole in the center. In this case, the hole can be very small or so large that the edges of the hymen can be completely invisible. There are several types of hymen (denser, with many holes, solid), but this is rare.
Young ladies are most often concerned about two questions: how can you accidentally damage the hymen and what can happen during the process of defloration (first sexual intercourse). The answer is in order. In fact, accidentally damage the hymen is possible if you insert something into the vagina, while it can be a banal tampon, even the smallest size. Of course, it all depends on the shape and size of the hymen. If you have a thin ring hymen, a tampon will not hurt anything, but if the size of the hole in the hymen is small, then you can not use tampons.
Defloration does not always cause pain and bleeding.
Various sports, especially gymnastics and other sports related to stretching, can lead to stretching of the hymen in its ring shape. This, in particular, can lead to the fact that during the first sexual intercourse there may not be blood, as well as significant pain, which can cause misunderstandings, but you just need to know about it.
The process of defloration can also vary greatly, and this is determined not only by the abilities of the partner, but also by the type of hymen. The greatest pain and spotting causes dense hymen, which has a large area. Conversely, a thin ring elastic hymen may not even break, but simply stretch, which will not be accompanied by any unpleasant events. There are quite rare situations when the hymen is so dense that it can not be broken during sexual intercourse, in such cases, resort to surgical defloration. Also, but it happens even less often, surgical dissection of the hymen has to be performed with the arrival of the first menstrual period. The complete absence of holes in the hymen leads to the accumulation of menstrual secretions in the vagina, which causes quite severe pain, then the operation is aimed at creating a hole in the hymen to allow for normal menstruation.
So, if the hymen has already been broken, the entrance to the vagina is framed by scraps of this very hymen. Their size and shape can be quite different, in some cases they increase in size and can appear outside in the form of separate outgrowths, which may not seem aesthetic enough (if this happens and you do not like them, they can always be removed). It is important to remember that some doctors “confuse” such fragments of hymen with “warts” and actively try to remove them, while telling about the fact of infection with a terrible human papilloma virus (HPV). Warts and similar fragments of hymen – very different formations, and between them there is no connection. Read more about warts in a separate Chapter.
