Sarah Riley

Some people can take longer than others to adjust to hormonal birth control. In fact, that’s why you’ll usually hear that you should be ready to deal with some weirdness for the first 1-3 months when you start hormonal birth control. Remember that with the pill you’re essentially adding lots of new…

Virginity, in and of itself, is a societal concept not a medical one. Certainly there used to be the thought that as long as a woman had a hymen, she was a virgin (and unfortunately some people still subscribe to this belief). However, a hymen is just thin, flexible folds of mucous tissue that…

A couple of years ago, I learned to knit and I got really really interested in knitting. Anytime I was sitting still (and sometimes when I was moving) I was knitting. But then, after a while, I sorta stopped getting that urge to knit everytime I sat still. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy knitting. It…

Unprotected sex of any sort (even without ejaculation) has both a pregnancy risk and an STI risk. So yes, you do have a risk from this contact. Pre-ejaculate (which happens throughout the course of an erection) isn’t something that anybody is really going to feel happening and it can contain sperm…

Oh sweetie, please please please don’t try cutting anything off your body. You could very easily end up doing serious nerve damage, causing scarring, getting an infection, bleeding out, or all sorts of other bad (and very serious) consequences. So let’s forget entirely the idea of cutting off bits…

You’re right, unprotected sex (even without ejaculation) has both pregnancy and STI risks. Pre-ejaculate can contain sperm and it’s not really something that one is going to “feel” when it happens (especially inside the vagina). Also, it’s not always possible for men to pull out before any…

Sperm can be pretty hardy when they’re in hospitable environments, like the reproductive track of someone with a vagina. They can survive for days in there. However, in an inhospitable environment (on towels, clothing, sheets, the wall, bathtub, etc.), they don’t last very long at all. In those…

Well, it’s important to remember that bodies are not machines and they’re not exactly the same all the time. Just like many other things in our lives, our desire for sexual activity can wax and wane over time. In other words, everybody goes through periods where they may be interested in sex (of any…

First off, allow me to salute you for deciding exactly what it is going to take for you to feel comfortable about being sexually active and then taking steps to meet those conditions before continuing. Many people don’t do that and continue to have sex that they really aren’t comfortable having…

To paraphrase a certain bumper sticker, ” Discharge happens.” Seriously, it does. Every person with a vagina in the world has discharge. It’s just one of those things that you get when you’ve got a vagina. Discharge plays a very important role in both your vaginal health and in fertility. It serves…