Piercing my Daughter

This week Mike and I finally buckled under tremendous pressure. We allowed our daughter Charlotte to get her ears pierced on her 7th birthday. She has been talking about this for 2 years. We said when she was 5 that she could get her ears pierced when she was 7. Well it has pretty much been a count down to her birthday. She woke up in the morning so excited not about her birthday but about her ear piercing. Frankly Mike and I would have preferred to wait but we were too far along to stop it. I must admit I can remember being that excited about getting my ears pierced too.
So we loaded up the cam-corder, and headed to the mall. We made sure that there was two staff at the store so they could do two ears at once. Charlotte ran into the store and hopped up on the chair and said “okay I’m ready!!”. They cleaned her ears, made the pen dots and then it was done. I had warned her that it was going to hurt. I think she was a little shocked at how much it hurt (not that she will admit that to us). But she fought the tears and said thank-you.
When telling family and friends about it, we got very mixed reviews. One friend said I should have got it done when she was a baby. A family member thought she was way too young and that the ears were likely to get infected and we would have to take the earrings out. Someone even said to me that she was surprised that any professional would ethically pierce a child so young. Honestly, I had no idea that this was such a heated topic!
Well what’s done is done. Would love to hear your opinion or if you have any piercing stories.