when dilating, often I have a lot of pain around what I suspect are certain scar rings in my neovagina, basically areas where it’s much harder to push past, almost like a sphincter but without control to tighten
I have discovered that after pushing painfully past certain points I can experience painful burning sensation, but if I pull the dilator out, put a horizontal ring of lube on the dilator around the threshold of how deep it goes in, and then put the dilator in, I often manage to get the same depth as was painful before but experience less pain and burning. I think this is twofold, maybe relaxing and re-inserting helps reduce tension, and maybe the lube at the edge helps prevent pain from pushing deeper.
As someone who used to have sex with women with my penis when i had one, lube would get rubbed off at the beginning if the vagina was not naturally lubricated and you didn’t use enough. It’s always a good idea to either apply an excess of lube to the tip so it pushes in further, or pull out a bit as soon as there is resistance so the tip is relubricated by the stuff that was rubbed off on the walls earlier and reinsert (often a few gentle pushes would do the trick), or totally remove, apply more, and reinsert if there wasn’t enough applied in the first place.
This is especially true with lubes that are less liquid and so tend to rub off of the shaft/dilator/toy before it gets to depth. Same concept applies in plumbing and other jobs that use certain types of lubricants. Things like certain silicone and oil lubrication (and Teflon and graphite lubricants for plastics and metals, not body parts) don’t have this problem as much as they adhere better to the object being inserted and/or use a slightly different mechanism for reducing friction.
The two main things my surgeon recommended was insert and rotate the dilator to help ease past pain points and there’s no such thing as too much lube. I definitely use more lube than strictly necessary but I’ve never had a major issue dilating.
