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deird1Non-menstruating people, you should feel free to skip this entry. Menstruating people, read on...
I'm hoping that if I get this out of my system in one fell swoop by blogging about it here, I'll stop randomly ambushing every woman I know to prosthelytise to them. Possibly - but possibly not, because really, these products are very cool and I remain excited, even after five months.
So...
The Mooncup, and Lunapads
These are basically re-usable substitutes for tampons and pads, respectively.
The Mooncup is a "menstrual cup", which is basically a silicon cup that you insert into your vagina to collect menstrual blood - and then empty it out and re-insert it, twice a day for the duration of your period.
It's awesome.
Reasons why menstrual cups are better than tampons:
1) They're re-usable. And hence, cheaper than continually buying tampons, and also environmentally friendly.
2) They're much more comfortable. And easy to forget about.
3) You can insert them before your period starts, without having that gross harsh-cotton-grating-against-skin feeling when you pull out a non-blood-soaked tampon. Hence no need to keep track of exactly the moment when you start menstruating - you can just go "eh, it might be today", and put it in pre-emptively.
4) You can use them overnight! No leaking all over the bed! No needing to wear really thick undies stuffed with pads and extra toilet paper! No wearing undies at all! It's like a miracle!
Problems:
1) They take practice. It'll probably take you about a week to get used to how they are supposed to be inserted and removed.
2) While you're still unused to insertion/removal, there's every chance that you'll remove it improperly, splatter blood all over your bathroom, and end up with your house looking like the set from Psycho.
Lunapads are "cloth pads", which are basically absorbent cloth that you wear like a disposable pad, and then rewash.
They are EVEN MORE AWESOME than menstrual cups.
Reasons why cloth pads are better than disposable ones:
1) Once again: re-usable. Cheap. Environmentally friendly.
2) Comfy. Comfy beyond belief. Seriously - you know how one of your friends will discover a really comfy brand of pad and tell you to switch because it's better than your normal ones and you can almost forget they're there? THESE ARE SO MUCH BETTER THAN THAT.
3) They don't scrunch up in the centre of your undies so that all the blood runs over the wing bits and then starts rubbing crusty blood against your legs and when you take the pad off you find out that the centre bit's still untouched because of all the scrunching. Instead, they actually stay spread out properly. And the wing bits are just as absorbent as the rest of the pad, so even if you do have blood reaching that bit, it's still not as annoying as with disposable pads.
4) It doesn't smell gross and stale! It really doesn't smell! I think this might be something to do with extra air-flow? Maybe? At any rate, it's all non-smelly and wonderful.
5) Funky variety! You know how people make pad packets with the colourful wrappers so you feel all Hip And With It? Well, my pads don't have colourful wrappers; they have colourful pads. I currently have purple liners, purple-with-patterns winged pads, pink undie-insert liners...
Also, the different kinds of pads are quite fun. I'm currently trying out my new undies-with-liner-inserts, which are really fun.
Problems:
1) Yes, they are re-usable. Yes, you do have to wash them. This is not as gross as it sounds.
I have a bucket in my bathroom (with a lid) that I put used pads in, with soapy water. And the next time I do a load of laundry, I fish them out of the bucket, and put them in with the rest of my washing.
2) Portability. Also not as bad as it sounds. I can carry a spare liner in my handbag, and it's in a two-sided bag that's designed to have clean pads in one side and dirty in the other side, so that if I need to swap I have somewhere to put my used liner until I get it home.
And did I mention? THESE THINGS ARE AWESOME. AND WONDERFUL. YOU SHOULD BUY THEM.
I'm going to stop being a walking advertisement now...
I'm hoping that if I get this out of my system in one fell swoop by blogging about it here, I'll stop randomly ambushing every woman I know to prosthelytise to them. Possibly - but possibly not, because really, these products are very cool and I remain excited, even after five months.
So...
The Mooncup, and Lunapads
These are basically re-usable substitutes for tampons and pads, respectively.
The Mooncup is a "menstrual cup", which is basically a silicon cup that you insert into your vagina to collect menstrual blood - and then empty it out and re-insert it, twice a day for the duration of your period.
It's awesome.
Reasons why menstrual cups are better than tampons:
1) They're re-usable. And hence, cheaper than continually buying tampons, and also environmentally friendly.
2) They're much more comfortable. And easy to forget about.
3) You can insert them before your period starts, without having that gross harsh-cotton-grating-against-skin feeling when you pull out a non-blood-soaked tampon. Hence no need to keep track of exactly the moment when you start menstruating - you can just go "eh, it might be today", and put it in pre-emptively.
4) You can use them overnight! No leaking all over the bed! No needing to wear really thick undies stuffed with pads and extra toilet paper! No wearing undies at all! It's like a miracle!
Problems:
1) They take practice. It'll probably take you about a week to get used to how they are supposed to be inserted and removed.
2) While you're still unused to insertion/removal, there's every chance that you'll remove it improperly, splatter blood all over your bathroom, and end up with your house looking like the set from Psycho.
Lunapads are "cloth pads", which are basically absorbent cloth that you wear like a disposable pad, and then rewash.
They are EVEN MORE AWESOME than menstrual cups.
Reasons why cloth pads are better than disposable ones:
1) Once again: re-usable. Cheap. Environmentally friendly.
2) Comfy. Comfy beyond belief. Seriously - you know how one of your friends will discover a really comfy brand of pad and tell you to switch because it's better than your normal ones and you can almost forget they're there? THESE ARE SO MUCH BETTER THAN THAT.
3) They don't scrunch up in the centre of your undies so that all the blood runs over the wing bits and then starts rubbing crusty blood against your legs and when you take the pad off you find out that the centre bit's still untouched because of all the scrunching. Instead, they actually stay spread out properly. And the wing bits are just as absorbent as the rest of the pad, so even if you do have blood reaching that bit, it's still not as annoying as with disposable pads.
4) It doesn't smell gross and stale! It really doesn't smell! I think this might be something to do with extra air-flow? Maybe? At any rate, it's all non-smelly and wonderful.
5) Funky variety! You know how people make pad packets with the colourful wrappers so you feel all Hip And With It? Well, my pads don't have colourful wrappers; they have colourful pads. I currently have purple liners, purple-with-patterns winged pads, pink undie-insert liners...
Also, the different kinds of pads are quite fun. I'm currently trying out my new undies-with-liner-inserts, which are really fun.
Problems:
1) Yes, they are re-usable. Yes, you do have to wash them. This is not as gross as it sounds.
I have a bucket in my bathroom (with a lid) that I put used pads in, with soapy water. And the next time I do a load of laundry, I fish them out of the bucket, and put them in with the rest of my washing.
2) Portability. Also not as bad as it sounds. I can carry a spare liner in my handbag, and it's in a two-sided bag that's designed to have clean pads in one side and dirty in the other side, so that if I need to swap I have somewhere to put my used liner until I get it home.
And did I mention? THESE THINGS ARE AWESOME. AND WONDERFUL. YOU SHOULD BUY THEM.
I'm going to stop being a walking advertisement now...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 11:15 pm (UTC)Gabrielle
no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 11:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 11:22 pm (UTC)Gabrielle
no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 11:45 pm (UTC)The other point I love is that I'm not contributing to landfill.
And that you can empty the cup while you're having a shower. Awesome.
Oh yeah, and many cups now come in funky colours too. Not Mooncup brand but check out the LJ menstrual cups group. There are links.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 12:13 am (UTC)norwie2010 from LJ
no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 05:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 09:46 am (UTC)It's wider and shorter. It just happens to suit my body and flow better than the Diva. Liked them both, though. :) The Mooncup also has a ridiculously long stem, which lasted about 4.8 seconds before I chopped it off...
no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 12:26 am (UTC)TMI Squared.
Date: 2011-01-27 12:32 am (UTC)See, the thing is, I had a mooncup (or something of that ilk, in the smaller size anyway) and tried it. Then I had one of the most hellish nights of my life. I don't know whether it's all in my head, psychosomatic or actually true, but tampons always seem to make my cramps worse - and this was the same, only combined with me trying and weeping to get the thing out of me at three in the morning, not being used to it and failing to relax and... And then, the next day, I thought I should try again, but I wanted to move around, so I tried to follow the instructions about where to cut of the sticky thing, only to cut it too short. So it got stuck again. Worse. I was alone in the house, in a lot of pain and almost certain I was going to have to go to A&E to get it out. (This is not well describing the panic and fear.) Eventually I managed to practically give birth to it in a hot bath - but, seriously, never again.
Lunapads just seem really impractical to me, mostly because I live where there's a big industrial washing machine most of the time, so I don't do laundry that often. I also live in one room (and share a bathroom), so don't really fancy living with a bucket o' menses...
But I'm really glad they work for you!! More people should try and save the planet; I've sold my soul to Always (but, in their defence, their pads are pretty fantastic compared to others I've tried when I've been caught short abroad).
Re: TMI Squared.
Date: 2011-01-28 01:56 am (UTC)I remember calling my bestie repeatedly and angerly castigating my trials and tribulations emptying the cup, which boiled down to "repeatedly giving birth to my tiny, pissed-off silicone baby." I remember it was quite painful at first until I figured out how to insert it properly and remove it without torturing my vagina & urethra. But I was determined! And it did get better. It got perfect once I had practiced a bit.
This is not to say you should give it another go, but if you ever consider it do know that it gets easier. Sometimes I still get blood on every surface of my bathroom (usually in the early morning when I'm bleary-eyed), but physically it's completely benign.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 02:08 am (UTC)Something you forgot to mention is that with a silicone cup, you can keep it in for much longer without less risk of toxic shock syndrome, because unless you're doing headstands, the blood is not actually touching your body and the bacteria don't have a lovely cotton substrate to grow on. I only change mine twice a day.
-GingerWall
no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 03:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 05:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 06:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 12:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-28 01:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 01:00 am (UTC)They are indeed rather awesome. I went for the 'anti-landfill and $60 once and that's it for yeeeears' reason, and it's proven to be great.
Started out with a 'Keeper', but it went a bit funny after about 3 years, so now have a Ladycup- chosen after reading a very informative blog I found about someone who investigated them all. Can't find it at the mo, but she was very detailed, getting free samples from many companies in order to trial them all.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-22 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-22 10:07 pm (UTC)