Avoid Lea’s Shield for dive-sex

Lea’s Shield Top view

Lea’s Shield showing the 10 mm vent opening in the bowl

Lea’s shield: Lea’s shield was supposed to be a one-size fits-all cervical barrier with a one-way valve that would allow vaginal discharge to flow out while preventing semen from entering the bowl to reach the wearer’s cervix. I haven’t written about it because while the idea was marvelous the design was flawed so it was taken off the market several years ago and very few women I know and no entertainers use an LS. However, because it was made of surgical grade silicone women and their partners who had the anatomy to use it as intended (for traditional sexual intercourse at one atmosphere of pressure) and liked it still use the Shield so there are still a few in use and it can still be purchased on-line.

Problems with the Shield: One of the problems with Lea’s Shield is that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all cervical barrier. At best Lea’s shield is a one-size fits-most device so women with small anatomies found because of the Shields large volume it was difficult or impossible to insert. Or, for those who could insert it and wear it comfortably the valve often hurt a well endowed partner. I take an 80 mm diaphragm so I’m on the upper end of a ‘normal’ size unaroused vagina, but I tent far more than the average woman because when fully aroused and penetrated from the rear I can take an 11 inch man with almost no discomfort. However, with the Shield inserted I can only take 8 inches and the valve, even though it’s very soft, hurt my well endowed partners. So, my Lea’s Shield in its lovely teal bag has ended up as a paperweight and conversation piece on my desk at work.

The Shield and dive-sex: Why I’m writing about Lea’s Shield now is because a 26 y/o woman was brought into the ER side of the clinic just as I was leaving after my usual CD1 menstrual extraction yesterday morning. She had gone into the 20 foot deep pool of a pool bungalow wearing a Lea’s shield as a gas guard. She is a friend of the guest who had reserved the bungalow for a week and she had always before used an arcing spring diaphragm as a gas guard but had forgotten it so wore her normal surface sex protection, the Lea’s Shield into the pool. She had used Semécide, the Dive-Gel with an N9 spermicide, in the bowl of her Shield and wore a bikini and her own single hose reg and a buoyancy vest with integrated weight pockets. The security cams show that after checking her equipment on the surface she released air from her vest and began a rapid descent and at about 5 feet she started to squirm and apparently panicked. She tried to inflate her vest and drop her weights but managed to do neither and she continued to sink to the bottom doubled over and writhing in pain with her fingers inserted in her vagina. The guest, her boyfriend, was ready to start his descent and emptied his BCD and sank to her side in less than a minute then hit the fill valves on both their buoyancy compensators and made an a emergency ascent and pulled her to the shallow end and out of the pool.

Fortunately she was using her own dive gear so the casino isn’t liable for damages and having pool access she had signed a waver one section of which spelled out the gas guards a woman should use (which does not include Lea’s Shield) if she intended to have pool-sex. So I think we are in the clear as far as legalities go. With other style cervical caps; FemCap, Prentif or Oves the silicone or latex of the dome is so soft and small that the dome can collapse around or on to the cervix and there will be no (in the case of Oves) or very little squeeze in the case of Prentif or FemCap. That is often not the case with a Lea’s Shield.

The bowl void: The problem is that the dome, which the manufacturer calls the bowl, is large, 30 mm wide, to accommodate women who have given birth. That means it is too large for most women who have never been pregnant so there is a large surface pressure void in the bowl. And the bowl is very stiff which means that if the wearer descends to much depth at all and she has a large void in the bowl the surrounding water pressure will squeeze her cervix and the neck of her uterus into the bowl to fill the void and then squeeze her cervix out through the 10 mm opening between the bowl and the one-way valve that is kept shut by being compressed between the rear vaginal wall and the outer surface of the bowl. We are talking about the diameter of a small cervix being 20 to 22 mm so having that squeezed through a 10 mm hole gives you some idea that the process is unbelievably painful even though the cervix itself has few nerves in it. Having ones cervix crushed by pressure squeeze while diving the first indication is severe cramps and then a sickening searing pain. The interior of the cervix is full of blood vessels and once they are ruptured the woman bleeds freely and the hemorrhaging is difficult to stop.

The ER Gyn sedated her gave her a unit of blood and opened her vagina with a speculum, then had to cut through the thick silicone dome of the bowl with a laser knife to break the vacuum so the shield could be removed. Then a tube was inserted through her cervix to allow drainage and the cervix was injected with a med to cause the wounds to clot and her vagina was packed with gauze and she was sent to the private hospital the casino uses which specializes in reproductive tract trauma. Rebuilding a cervix is tricky and I’m guessing if she is able to carry a pregnancy to term she will never be able to give birth vaginally or she will almost certainly tear.

Swiss choose FemCap as gas guard

FemCap as Gas Guard: The names of its parts

Gripper soles: A reader asked what ‘grippers’ are and why they are needed on the platforms of the prototypes of Gepetto’s latex toe boots. The grippers on the platforms of the toe boot prototypes are hard to see. They look like closed slits in the .5” thick latex covering the platforms. The thickness of the platforms doesn’t matter since unlike pointe shoes no wearer will be rolling through the foot from flat to pointe or even piquéing on to pointe in them. The wearer is either en pointe when wearing them or she has broken an ankle or has a boot top fracture and needs medical assistance. But to get back to the grippers; when the platform starts to slide the slits open forming a series of suction cups that hold the platform to the slippery surface. Escorts, especially when working with latex fetish clients, find themselves working on all sorts of slippery surfaces; glass topped stages, marble bathroom floors and pool surrounds or studio floors slippery with a mating couples natural lube, semen, fertile cervical fluid, sweat and occasionally other natural secretions that may be underfoot when a couple is having pointe sex. This sort of gripper is very effective even when used to work in situations where the floor or stage is wet with silicone lube.

Jacques reaction to Gigi’s rape: When I told Jacques about Gigi being taken w/o her permission in the common room of her suite in the St Lucy’s dorm he wasn’t as upset as I thought he might be. After he found the partner who had forced himself on her had been screened and was free of STIs he relaxed a bit and because he knows Gigi has a GyneFix inserted he wasn’t concerned about a possible pregnancy. As a Frenchman and expert swordsman he had been in her partner’s position and realized how much trouble the boy could be in if he was charged with rape. Jacques thinks Gigi handled the situation very well w/o involving the authorities. He also doubts that the intense contractions that caused her attacker to tear were entirely spontaneous, which is what I had thought all along. But an accidental tear puts a better spin on her circumstances and keeps hidden the fact that at 16 she has the strength in and control of her vaginal grip that any 25 y/o professional escort would be highly sought after for. She is not a girl a man should upset while trying to have sex with her, but I’m sure she will make that known in her own way and this tearing incident is the first building block in establishing her sexual reputation at St Lucy’s.

Gigi and FemCap: Chuck fitted Gigi for a FemCap so she could have dive-sex in the pit, below 10 meters. She took the smallest, a 22 mm, and he laser trimmed the removal strap off so that she could take large men more comfortably. Fortunately she has long fingers so that even with a deep vagina, when she squats and bears down she can slip a finger between the brim and the vaginal wall to break the seal. For women with short fingers who need the removal strap trimmed off a crochet needle with a 10 mm hook works well as a removal aid by slipping the hook carefully between the vaginal wall and the brim, then rotating the hook beneath the rim of the bowl and pulling to break the seal.

Elke arrives from Switzerland: Anya is back from her inspection of the Swiss finishing school on Lake Maggiore. [For more about that see my December 27, 2009 entry: ‘Jill pads and punitive pointe training’] She brought with her Elke a 31 y/o former ballerina with The Vienna State Opera Ballet and now the head ballet and swimming instructor at the school. Elke came to take an instructors course in dive-sex so it can be offered as an elective starting in the summer session. Elke has a GyneFix implanted and this morning I took her to be fitted for a FemCap. Like me, even though she has never been preggers she takes a 26 mm which she will wear w/o the removal strap so she can take larger men more comfortably - for them. She hadn’t been aware of the dangers to women from using no cervical protection during dive-sex and has quickly become a convert to the use of gas guards since her fiancé has been after her to have dive-sex. While he has penetrated her during their submerged encounter neither of them reached orgasm. But more to the point Elke wants to have children by him and so the need for clear fallopian tubes and good reproductive health is something she is keenly aware of now, not like her teen students many of whom don’t seem to give their reproductive health much thought because marriage and children are years in the future.

FemCap chosen as gas guard: While FemCaps are generally available in Switzerland, Germany and Italy the school plans to fit the caps itself through the Gyn’s in their student health organization. That way it won’t be solely by the student’s obstetrical history but also a thorough pelvic exam so that the Gyn can be certain that when the cap is inserted correctly it will seal and develop a strong vacuum in the dome to hold the cap in place even during the most intense thrusting into it by a partner. Elke says that all the girls who have reached menarche (That’s 450 out of about 600) will be given a classroom introduction to dive-sex and the ones signing up for the course will be fitted for FemCaps. Elke expects 100% of the medically qualified students will take the course because the class will be co-ed and the girls are eager to participate in any program where they can interact with boys and dive-sex is the ultimate male-female interaction. The school administrators are already working with an elite boy’s school in the area to screen boys for STIs as partners for girls taking the dive-sex class.