Would you try micro-needling on your vagina? Here's one writer's experience with it

This reference is going to date me, but remember the Sex and the City episode where Carrie, Samatha and Miranda make fun of Charlotte for never having looked at her vagina? That was me until I watched the episode, then I dutifully got out a mirror and bent over in the bathroom to take a look.

It was fine, it wasn’t earth-shattering, but more of a "nice to meet you" moment. This happened in my early 20s and since then I’ve had a good almost-20 year relationship with my vagina. We understood each other.

This ALL CHANGED, after kids. A few weeks into being a new mum, I decided to take a look down there and this time nearly fell over. I barely recognised myself. I didn’t realise how much hormones would affect your vagina – inside, outside everywhere. Dr. Coni Liu, founder of Dermally and a dermatologist who specialises in women's health says this change is unsurprising as there are many things including age and childbirth that can change how your vagina looks and feels.

How to love your downstairs face

Dr. Liu previously ran the Vulva Clinic at KKH and continues to run the women’s clinic at the National Skin Centre, specialising in women’s genital dermatosis and menopausal skin issues in the genital area. In her private clinic, she see’s both medical and aesthetic patients and was approached by the makers of the Morpheus 8 machine to try its vaginal counterpart. “I know Morpheus 8 works for face and body, so having one for the vaginal area really combined two my interests," she says.

Dermally is the first clinic in Singapore to offer this treatment. She recommends combining the Morpheus 8V, which like the machine used for the face, uses microneedling to penetrate deeper skin layers, with two other devices – Forma V, a small probe that is inserted into the vaginal canal which delivers radiofrequency energy to the vaginal walls and V Tone, an applicator that uses electrical muscle stimulation to strengthen major pelvic floor muscles intravaginally. The whole treatment is designed to improve and “de-age” the quality of your vagina, and ease signs of ageing – like a facial.

“I have women in their sixties coming to me and wanting to look younger, who won’t accept any wrinkles on their face. But I have women in their thirties, who will take their kids to a trampoline park, for example, and accept that they might leak a little because they’ve given birth and consider this normal,” says Dr. Liu, who has three kids herself. “But why should they? If we have the technology to help the vagina look and function younger, why shouldn’t we use it?”  

Health benefits for women of all ages

Besides making your vagina look and feel better, there are functional benefits to the treatment. Dr. Liu lists urinary incontinence, laxity, pain during intercourse, dryness and pelvic floor weakness that can be assuaged with the treatment. 

As a woman in my forties who has experienced all of those issues thanks to childbirth, I was intrigued by the “miraculous” benefits of the treatment. But also as someone for whom childbirth and hormones did a real number on my moisture levels down there, I was not super keen on having a variety of devices inserted into me. Thankfully, there's always lube.

While treatments and sessions are very much dependent on an individual’s needs and conditions, Dr. Liu says they usually recommend three sessions of Morpheus 8V, and six sessions each of Forma V and V Tone as this covers you for three months, after which you can definitely see results. For myself, I tried Morpheus 8V one time, plus three sessions of Forma V and V Tone over two months.

The treatment

We started with the Forma V, which uses radiofrequency around the vaginal canal. It wasn’t unpleasant but I’m not going to pretend you don’t feel it. It’s like having a small small lightbulb inserted into the opening of your vagina. Obviously, since it’s been designed to push out a small watermelon, it can very much accommodate a small lightbulb, but that doesn’t mean it’s a great feeling. The warmth is nice though.

Following that is the V Tone, a slightly more jarring feeling as it pulses electric currents to stimulate the muscle around it. The therapist said that as they raised the levels, you wouldn’t feel it, until you do – and that’s exactly what happened. It was...very zappy.

I’m not going to lie, I found Morpheus 8V VERY painful. And to be fair, Dr. Liu said my reaction was unusually sensitive. I pride myself in having a high pain threshold but apparently that doesn't apply down there. Even with numbing cream that's applied to the vaginal canal, I felt like I was being stapled internally, in a circular motion, and I writhed like a shrimp on a stick. Thankfully I was only doing this one time. After the first session of three treatments, I was sceptical. Dr. Liu said I wouldn’t feel a difference until the second session about two weeks later. 

Results?

The subsequent session and the one after went a lot smoother. There was no Morpheus 8V and the Forma V and V Tone were pretty manageable. I think I found the third session the most surprising because of how painless it was, maybe I was getting used to having probes in my vagina. Not something I ever thought I’d write.

More impressive though were the pictures. I’ve never seen so many pictures of my vagina before and probably never want to again. But the change was definitely noticeable. The labia folds were plumper, there were less pronounced “crevices” and dare I say it, it looked overall more youthful.

The best part is probably that internally, I've also felt a difference. The dryness I felt postpartum seems to have subsided and everything just feels more, youthful. Dr. Liu has said that it can improve sex too (dryness and all that) and that she has had clients' husbands notice a difference. So overall, what I gather from this is that a younger vagina can benefit everyone. Most of all though, it served as a reminder to me that all parts of our body – not just our faces – deserve some TLC.

“You probably give a lot more attention to your face and body than down there!" says Dr. Liu. "We take such good care of face, and other areas, but our vaginas, we just ignore it for 40 years and then expect it to look the same. But we’ve not moisturised, we’ve not done any kind of treatment - nothing! But now that we have this technology, which can improve its appearance and function and make us feel good about ourselves. I hope women know they have this option and that it’s more accessible.”

I'll be remembering to moisturise down there going forward.