Mew, reminds me of a little kitten.
Cute!
Anyway...I don't show mine off at all and I certainly don't get any type of erotic pleasure from it. I just personally liked the way it looks. It was really something that I wanted to do for myself rather than for a boyfriend or something.
As far as the pain compared to ear piercing...I really thought it hurt more to get my ears pierced. But my ears are really sensitive. And to answer your question about infections...I used to always get infected ears from earrings. It wasn't until I learned to keep them in and clean them and let my ears adjust to them for a while that the infections went away. I didn't have any occurence of infection with the belly button.
I say go for it, but give it a chance to heal properly before getting discouraged by the discomfort and clean it regularly!!! I used saline solution to clean mine...it did the trick.