Sarah Riley

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    Advice
    • Sarah Riley

    Vaginal dryness can have lots of different causes. Especially if you’re having dryness all the time (even when you’re not aroused or sexually active as well), you’ll want to first check out the other things going on in your life and see if there’s a cause there. Some medications and certain…

    Advice
    • Sarah Riley

    Oh sweetie! Let’s break this down and deal with one issue at a time here to see if we can’t work this all out, shall we? First off, let’s talk about this labia issue. How many real life labia (other than your own) have you seen up close and personal? I’m going to guess you probably haven’t seen very…

    Advice
    • Sarah Riley

    The term “prude” is such a heavily loaded, judgmental term that I’d really encourage you not to apply it to yourself or anybody else. The implications that come along with that are just not very helpful, so I’d suggest removing that from the way you’re thinking about your situation. There are lots…

    Advice
    • Sarah Riley

    Vaginal dryness can be one of the more common side effects of hormonal birth control methods (like the pill). Vaginal discharge and the lubrication that’s produced during arousal are influenced by what’s going on with our hormones (to at least some extent). When you’re using a hormonal method of…

    Advice
    • Sarah Riley

    From what you’ve said here, I’m not sure the pill necessarily sounds like the best option for you at this point in your life. The pill is a good method of contraception, but it isn’t for everybody. As far as the side effects go, do understand that they’re not guaranteed to happen for everybody…

    Advice
    • Sarah Riley

    When I was very little, I developed really severe atopic eczema. My parents and doctors had the worst time getting it under control, but eventually they managed to find the right set of lifestyle changes and medications to take care of the problem. I didn’t really have a lot of issues (as long as I…

    Advice
    • Sarah Riley

    The answer to that question depends entirely on the parents in question. Parents are people and many have sexual desires just as do folks who don’t have children. Just like anybody else, folks who are parents may have more or less sex of any given type throughout their lives. In general, we do know…

    Advice
    • Sarah Riley

    Unless you’ve been charting your fertility (see our article Get with the Flow: All about FAM for more information), it’s not really a good idea to think that there’s any “safe” period in your cycle where you have less need to worry about pregnancy. Not everybody ovulates on Day 14. Especially in…

    Advice
    • Sarah Riley

    I’d like to suggest that you try a little experiment… Next time you get out of the shower, skip the deodorant/antiperspirant. Go about your daily life for several hours and then take a quick sniff of one of your underarms. I can almost guarantee the results of this experiment. You’ll likely find…

    Advice
    • Sarah Riley

    You’ll probably be surprised to know that this is a pretty common question with an answer that may be unexpected based on what we’ve been taught about how things “should” go. The first thing you really need to understand when you’re thinking about this is that the vaginal canal itself is not…