Infected or not?

I just turned 18 and got my first tattoo earlier this week. It started hurting a few days ago. It is on my inner hip (past the bone) and did not hurt much upon getting it done. There is only a small light ring of redness around the tattoo which looks more of a pink. It looks to be scabbing over and no pussing is present. But it hurts like whoa. Maybe I an being a pussy about the pain seeing as this is the first time pain has really affected me, it also itches (due to the scabbing?) but I have refrained from scratching it. It has made the area around it a bit sore too and right where my leg meets my body (where i think there is a lymph node) it is sore. So I guess my question is, is this a normal reaction?

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i doubt it's infected. the only time i've ever seen an infected tattoo is when a person gose swimming in a creek, river, pond, or lake with a fresh tattoo. other than that the person has to be a total slob and live in filth and just noth shower for days on end.

Soxoff, I've found over the last 6 weeks of sessions on a new piece that tattoos do very strange things at times during the healing process. Sometimes several days after a session when the scabs begin to form, some new areas of ink can be painful to the touch. It seems oftentimes that these are the areas with thicker scabs, and that the scab sort of tug's the skin together until it starts to peel, at which point it becomes itchy. I had one spot that I thought was infected, although it wasn't painful. It turns out that I requested that my artist touch up a small spot much too soon after the initial ink had been done. I sent TAz a picture of it, and he told me to lay off of the moisturizers and ointments, which I did, and it's doing much better. TCE