Hello ladies (and gents?). Today i want to share something a lil personal, a little #TMI maybe. It’s a long story so gather around and leave your prude behind!
Disclaimer: it’s about menstrual cups. It involves some gory and some arguably “gross” details.
After months of procrastinating, and letting a menstrual cup that I’d ordered with great enthusiasm sit pretty on my shelf, for months, I tried it for the first time sometime during the peak of Covid ’19. Honestly it was more due to the necessity than the motivation, since I’d run out of pads and didn’t want to go to a pharmacy given the curfew-like situation around.
Being an eco-conscious person and still using pads didn’t sit well with me
Also, being a strong champion of all things eco-friendly and sustainable, this was a long time coming. Yeah, I’m the kinds who composts all the organic waste, runs to groceries stores with plastic bags to get groceries and then emptying those bags out and reuse them for getting veggies and fruits and repeating it like an infinite loop, you get the idea!) So no way I was comfortable with the idea of stuffing my body with wads of what’s essentially single-use plastic and foam!
Every time I threw a big pile of blood soaked 8-10 pads into my garbage and then saw the garbage collector manually handle it, my heart sank a bit. All that plastic, fiber and potentially bacteria filled stuff going into the landfills! The last straw was when I spotted a bunch of street dogs manage to get their paws and eventually their teeth on the pads! Apparently dogs have a thing for human blood!
And yet I couldn’t get myself to use the Cup. I used the sanitary pads with some guilt, but I did them anyway.
But Covid changed everything. I had a brand new period cup lying around, and decided this was the moment to inaugurate it.
But let’s just say the first time wasn’t exactly the dream debut I was hoping for.
The not very assuring period cup debut
After unboxing the beautiful looking pink silicone cup from its velvet bag, i soaked it into hot water with a spoon of Dettol to make sure it was completely sanitised before it entered my insides. Then I washed my own hands well, and tried to place the cup where it’s supposed to go. (Hint: sex)
The trick is to fold the silicone and shove it up and it’s automatically supposed to ‘open up’ like a balloon inside. After a few initial seconds of discomfort, I forgot that it was even there! Yes there was a bit of a usual period sensation, but no additional pain or discomfort from the cup itself.
I let it be there for about 8 hours before removing it lest my cuppeth runneth over!
Now the removal wasn’t the pretty part. Since the cup had got completely lodged inside my lady parts, I had to stick a finger up to feel for it and get it out. (Imagine poking your fingers in the blood soaked cavern that is your period pussy!)
It wasn’t the easiest to locate the stem and even after that, i struggled to yank it out. WTF?
Had my menstrual cup got stuck inside me?
I was just fresh off watching an episode of the Netflix sitcom “The Bold Type” where one of the lead characters gets a “Yoni Egg” dislodged insider her VV, and asks a female BFF to get it out.
NO fucking way! Noone is touching my lady parts. Definitely not anyone who’s not a gynaecologist or a sexual partner. That’s it. I was going to rush to a gynaec, and that was the first and the last time i used a cup!
But then something told me “millions of women are doing it. Why can’t I? Heck, women get a whole ass 5kilo baby out of their vaginas and I’m struggling with a 2-inch silicone spout?!
So spurred on by a new sense of “never say never”, in went I again! This time with the enthusiasm of that sperm that contests and wins in the very same area.
And hurrah! This time I sat down on the floor, Indian potty style, and managed to pull it out with a little help from the other fingers and with some hurt to my delicate parts. A friend suggested that I tie a string to the tip of the stem to make it easier to pull, just like a tampon. This makes me wonder, why ain’t there menstrual cups with strings already on them?!
Anyway back to the silicone cup that was now in my gooey hands. Lo and behold, there it was, about 80% full of shiny deep red liquid.
(I’m not putting up a picture for obvious reasons.)
The bathroom floor managed to get a few blood spots due to my misadventures, but nothing a toilet paper wipe couldn’t fix.
I tossed the period liquid into the loo, ran a flush, and washed the cup inside out with the health faucet and then soaked it in microwaved hot water (I’ve assigned a whole cup for this activity) for a min or so before inserting it back.
The next couple of days went progressively smoother than the previous and I was a convert!
No more pads ever. I’m a period cup convert
The one desperate day during Covid was the the paradigm shift in my menstrual journey and a giant step towards a more ecofriendly lifestyle that aligned with my values.
Periods came and went, but I never went back to the nasty sanitary pad. IN fact, now 5 years since the first time, I’ve never used a pad. I’ve only had to buy a couple of period cups and not because they ‘expired’ but because I accidentally ended up flushing down a couple!
Here’s what switching to period cups over a woman’s lifestyle achieves
- Around 3600-4000 disposable pads that won’t be dumped into the landills.
- It also means a saving of around ₹36,000 in cash.
- But above all, no other poor sanitation work will need to manually handle a piece of MY menstrual waste again.
- No street dog will innocently ingest all that hazardous material for play or hunger.
Just all these thoughts alone make me want to deal with those slightly unpleasant few seconds of cup extraction tomorrow and for many more periods to come.
Also, I’m never having a baby for sure!
If you’re a woman with periods, please, I implore you. Switch to the period cup, pronto. You’ll thank me later. But more importantly the environment will thank you forever.
Which menstrual cup you should buy?
The menstrual cup market in area has come of age in India and there’s various options to choose from ranging from as low as Rs. 250 to upto Rs. 2000 for a cup!
Size: You can buy a size S, M, L and XL depending on bloodflow, age and whether you’ve had a normal delivery.
Brands: If I had to put down some links, my last purchase was this one by Sirona that comes with its own silicone cup. (not sponsored.) I haven’t tried the Asana cup, but seen their branding and stalls at various fleamarkets and heard good things about it.
Ease of use: Go for a high-quality silicone cup, with a ring or step spout for ease of removal.
Protip: Get a period cup with a sanitizing cup that can be used to wash it between cycles and store it when not in use.
Protip 2: Have 2 period cups to make it seamless to switch and the let the used one be washed and dried in time for the next switch.
And finally, don’t fall for the hyper marketing by sanitary pad companies. Pads don’t really make happy or healthy periods. Period cups do.
