Congrats on your new piercing! Here’s some notes on aftercare that may help you. You should NOT use Epsom salt to soak. You SHOULD use non-iodized, sea salt to make natural saline. The proper concentration to match the salinity in your body’s cells is 1/8 of a teaspoon to one cup of warm water, preferably distilled water gently heated although tap water boiled and cooled then gently heated to body temp works too. When you soak in this manner you are promoting the exhange of fluids across the cell barrier in your body’s cells. This helps prevent infection. In addition, using warm water increases blood flow to the area which speeds healing time. You can do saline soaks throughout your piercing’s healing and it will only do it good. You can also do the soaks if a healed piercing becomes aggravated for any reason.

You should NEVER use triple antibiotic ointments like neosporin on a piercing because this can actually cause infection. The ointments say on the label they are not to be used for puncture wounds because in the deep, dark inside of a puncture wound-which is what a piercing is-the ointment creates a moist environment which actually promotes the growth of bacteria.

In addition, one of the biggest factors in properly healing a piercing is jewelr quality. Initial jewelry in a standard navel piercing should be an internally threaded, curved barbell, not a ring. You know if your jewelry is internally threaded if the post with the threads is actually coming out of the ball and screws into a hole in the end of the post. Externally threaded jewelry is threaded on the post and screws into the ball. These are inappropriate for a healing piercing because they require you to drag the threads through the healing fistula. For the same reason if you were pierced with a ring and told to turn it, you should never turn a ring in a healing piercing as it will tear the developing fistula. In addition, the big concern with jewelry is that the metal must be implant grade or many people will have reactions to the metal that can look similar to an infection but are not. This means surgical grade stainless steel or titanium. The two biggest known companies that manufacture such jewelry are anatometal and industrial strength. You can find jewelry from both of them on bodyartforms.com.

Based on what you’ve said, and if you find that these aftercare instructions differ from what you were told, you may be able to find a piercer who is more knowledgable in proper aftercare to look after you until its healed. Generally a good rule of thumb is to call up a piercer you are considering going to on the phone and ask whether they use internally threaded jewelry in new piercings. If they say yes, odds are good they keep up their studying of best aftercare practices! If they say no or don’t even know what internally threaded jewelry is, that piercer is sadly the sort who does not bother to keep up their study of the advances in the industry on piercing technique and aftercare. Another good question to ask is whether they use clamps for most piercings. A good modern piercer does not use clamps because the clamps cause trauma to the tissue that slows healing and because they have developed their free hand technique and don’t need them to get a good straight piercing.

Good luck! Feel free to message me with any questions. I have just a tiny bit of experience with this stuff lol. 🙂