Then tears slipped down my face as my best friend and a nurse held my legs apart, while another nurse inserted gauze into my vagina to try and stop the bleeding.

Everyone always says you’ll remember the first time you have sex, but I’d thought it would be because of how awkward it would be. My first time featured a blood-stained bed, carpet, bathtub and three different hospital rooms.

So after my disastrous first time, I want to make sure others don’t have to go through the same thing – and that starts with this cautionary tale and a call for better sex education for all.

I was in my late teens when I first had sex with a boy I was dating at the time.

On that fateful day, he’d booked a hotel room but it never even crossed my mind that I’d lose my virginity. Needless to say, I was completely unprepared for it.

Even before we got to the room, I was nervous to the point of feeling nauseous. He made me feel too anxious and jittery. I didn’t know how to behave or what to even say around him – I felt awkward.

As we got down to it, there was no foreplay for me and he didn’t touch me anywhere other than my chest. Looking back, I should’ve seen this could cause issues.

It felt like a piercing pain when he put it in and I remember thinking that something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. He asked if I was on my period and I said no.

At the sight of the blood, panic flooded my system – I felt scared and anxious. It looked completely different to period blood, in the sense that it was more fresh and looked like it was never-ending.

He asked: ‘Why are you bleeding so much?’

I didn’t know the answer. I felt shaken.

There was pain and there was blood, but the blood made the room look like a crime scene. It spilled everywhere in a gushing waterfall, staining through the bedspread and into the mattress, down the sides of the bed frame and onto the carpet.