What was your first pelvic exam like?

My first GYN exam was one I scheduled during my college days. I was 18? 19? Not sure. I thought it would be a good idea to investigate birth control and knew I'd have to have the exam for that. Prior to this first exam, many years prior, the last physician I had seen for any sort of checkup had been the pediatrician, who served as my general practitioner till I was in my early teens. There had been nothing intimate at all in any of those checkups. I was always at least partially clothed.

So, I was in college and thinking maybe sex is something I might get into (This was before Aids or even Herpes, so you could make such an idle choice). To be responsible I thought I had better be prepared for it. I made an appointment with Student Health Services then read up a little on the exam at the University Library, so I'd have an idea what to expect. At (let's say) 19, I had heard things about the exam but nothing in any detail and there was always a negative connotation to these comments from dislike to dread.

You must understand that this occurred over 20 years ago so I am a little fuzzy on some details. I remember being embarrassed from the time I walked into SHS to fill out the paperwork and show my card. I'm sure I was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, standard college student garb.

When I think back on it, it's like flashes of the scene in short bursts with gaps. I don't recall getting undressed at all. I do remember it was the only exam I've had with a full body drape, one large cloth. The gynecologist was female on this occasion.

I am lying on my back, legs out straight on a full length exam table. I'm not watching the doctor's hands but looking into her white jacket up close and I see her sleeve shift as I feel her hands fold back the drape away from my breasts. I look away then, off to a wall or something, I'm not really focused on it, just looking away. She leans over me from the side, working around my bare breasts.

Honestly, selective amnesia or sheer panic on my part wiped out so much of the detail of this first part of the exposure and exploration at the hands of a complete stranger. I think the same panic makes me remember some things more vividly or dramatically than they actually were? I don't know.

I recall that she folded back the drape further, exposing my stomach and abdomen. Feeling, pressing, moving my body with the pressure. Her hands slip just beneath the drape across my hips to continue her pressing and pushing into my lower abdomen, toward my still covered pubic mound. I don't think I was even daring to breath. I know I was relieved when her fingers stopped at my pubic hair and pulled the drape back up over me again. I tucked it under my arms and rested my hands over my stomach, protectively.

She moved to stand down toward my feet. I suppose she explained about the table but I don't remember what she said. She asked me to raise my knees and kept pushing my feet up on the table so they were closer and closer to my buttocks. So far, the long drape was sort of covering, making a tent over my knees. But I started to feel air moving around beneath the drape, so I knew that surely she could see something of me.

There was a click and a few squeaks and the lower 3rd of the table disappeared. It was folded down away from me. Another louder click and metal on metal as one stirrup appeared to my right, then the sounds again as the left one was pulled up and locked into place. Being the University Student Health Services, I guess they had to use the all purpose exam tables.

You know, if she said a single word to me about getting situated in the stirrups, I don't remember it. I was looking up then down across the landscape of the drape then up again. All I could see of her was her head and shoulders looking down, the drape over my raised knees obscured the rest.

Chilled hands moved my ankle out and placed my heel on the cold loop of metal of one stirrup. Chilled hands grabbed the other ankle and moved it outward, again, heel in the stirrup. She spoke then... move down. Move down. Move down. Move down. Seems like I moved a mile before she was content. I had my knees together as much as I could still manage. I don't remember if she asked me to open them or pushed them open herself. Her hands folded the drape up and over my knees and it bunched up in my lap making a wrinkled curtain to about mid-thigh.

So now, I am lying on my back, my feet separated out a bit more than the width of the table. My knees are raised but pushed apart, the drape still covers me... from my point of view... but I can feel air between my legs so I know she can see. She can see. She can see me.

Her head and shoulders descend between my raised knees and I can only see the top half of her head now and it is lowered, looking at me up close. I hear rubber sliding against skin. She's putting on gloves. I hear a clatter of metal and then I feel something slip just inside me. I jerk at the touch. It's her fingertips just inside and now they are pushing down and now the cold metal wedges in over them. She pushes the hard metal inside me till I feel her knuckles against my lips. I feel the hard metal turn inside me. I hear a little ratchet sound and feel the metal open up in me, more, and then more. I feel air where there shouldn't be any. I feel like my pelvic bone is being pushed up too far and too hard and the lower side of my vagina is being pushed down too hard. It's uncomfortable. It's more than uncomfortable. It hurts to be spread open like this.

Finally though she seems content with how open I am and stops spreading the metal. I hear her rubber gloves and starched white jacket shift and try to take a deep breath around that metal thing that has me pried open. Then, I feel a sharp cramp deep inside when she apparently pushed the pap smear swab against my cervix. I actually sighed relief and started breathing again when the speculum snapped closed but it felt really strange to feel it being turned and slipped out of me.

I was a virgin, remember. I had no idea what it was like to have anything inside me. Except for tampons which at the time had that rough cardboard tube applicator and -that- was uncomfortable. Even when I masturbated I only stimulated my clit. I never used my fingers or anything else inside. But this woman stuck this metal thing in me and opened me up and now she slipped it out again.

She stood up and I heard her bump the metal on the instrument tray and I heard the KY jelly squishing out onto her fingers. I jumped again as her warm gloved fingertips touched me then they slid in... and in... and in. I felt the cramp return. She hit my cervix with her fingertips. I jerked when her other hand slid under the drape to my lower abdomen. I could see the movement under the drape. I could hear the rubber against the fabric. I could feel her fingers inside and hand outside and they shifted me on the table, pressing hard together to find whatever she was looking for inside. Just find it! I thought. Just find whatever it is and get out of there!

Finally she did. Her fingers slipped out of me quickly and there was a wet sucking sound as my inner cavity closed around their departure. I was relieved. I thought it was over then I felt the warm finger between my cheeks. Then I felt the urge to have a bowel movement but she had slipped her finger into my rectum. She moved it around and then slipped it out again. I was relieved. I thought it was over then I felt the finger slide back into my rectum and another into my vagina again. She shifted me on the table with her probing and then her hand left me. I was relieved.

There was more but it's sketchy. She talked to me over the drape, with my legs open. She suggested a diaphragm for birth control and stuffed two different ones into me, felt around them, inside me, before she picked the 'right size'.

I don't remember getting dressed. I remember stuff, lubricant, oozing out of me and feeling like I was all greased up between my legs till I could get home and take a long hot shower with lots of soap to get rid of the greasy feeling.

I hate it. I hated it then and I hate it now. I don't see why there can't be a better way to check things out. Why can't they use something like sonograms or whatever instead of violating my body? I hate it. I have great sex with my husband and we play with toys and many forms of sexual pleasure but that's my husband, not some stranger in a lab coat. I hate it.

Jo (No, of course it's not my real name)