what are menstrual cups and period underwear?
Period underwear!! Menstrual cups!! Yaaaas, I would shout these from the rooftops if I could just to get people talking more about them.
Just to be clear, I'm not an ambassador or anything for the products I'm gonna talk about today. I'm not sponsored by them, but I will have affiliate links in the Resources section in case you wanna get some nice discounts.
So first, let's talk about period underwear. My favorite brand of period underwear is by a company called Thinx. They make underwear that you wear during your period and they are machine-wash safe so you reuse them. So unlike pads and tampons which are a one-time use product, these period underwear can be used repeatedly, and for up to 2 years (according to Thinx) if you take care of them well, but I'm hoping they'll last longer than that.
I personally used pads over tampons in the past during my period, but I switched over to Thinx because it's basically like you're wearing a pad but you don't have to change it so often. The main reason I love Thinx so much is because it literally absorbs your blood - you don't have to wear a pad with it. The underwear is the pad.
Now you might think it's gross, but it's actually so convenient, and there's not really any odor. If it starts to smell kinda funky, you can just throw it in the washing machine and wear another one. Right now I have 9 pairs of Thinx. I have like 6 of the Super Hiphuggers which are the highest absorbency and then some lower absorbency ones.
So the highest absorbency is 5 tampons' worth. For some people, that means they can wear Thinx for the whole day or just have it as a backup. For me, usually on my heaviest flow day, I can wear that highest absorbency underwear all day and it won't leak. It's really awesome.
For me, changing my pad every so often is fine, but I'm trying to be more environmentally conscious and using Thinx saves so much one-time use waste from these period products. Getting period underwear is an investment in yourself because you're giving yourself one more level of comfort during your period and also helping reduce overall waste.
The other period product I wanna talk about is a menstrual cup!
I don't think any of my friends use menstrual cups on the regular, so it was kind of hard for me to ask other people about them or to post about it online so I just went ahead and bought ‘em in my early years of college because I wanted another way to reduce pad waste. And this was actually before I discovered Thinx.
So the two menstrual cup brands that I've used are Organicup and the Flex Cup. I was attracted to Organicup because they really advocate for being aware of consumerism in the period industry and are careful with their materials.
I also really liked how it came in a small paper box with the instructions written on it instead of multiple plastic bags or lots of wrapping paper.
But moving on to the actual cup itself. So when you use Organicup, you can have it in for up to 12 hours, which I think is pretty convenient, because you can put it in in the morning in your bathroom or in the shower and then take it out in the shower when you come back home later or at night.
According to Organicup’s website, a menstrual cup can easily hold one full ounce of menstrual flow which is about 30 ml and on average, for people who get periods, their flows are 30-40 ml per cycle, which is not even one day. 30ml is one entire cycle.
But the thing is, I am fortunate enough to have one menstrual cup be able to hold a day's worth of blood, but of course, everyone's bodies are different and thus the amount of blood that comes out of everyone with periods is different.
So if you find that the cup can't hold your heaviest day's flow, you would have to find like a nearby bathroom to empty the blood out into the toilet if you're not able to go back home, which can be kind of annoying cuz I wouldn't wanna be touching down there in a public bathroom. Maybe in a private public bathroom, but if you have to be wary of other people hearing the suction noise of the cup coming out, that might make you feel uneasy, maybe not.
So the other brand for menstrual cups that I used was the Flex Cup. This cup was kind of revolutionary because there's an extended rubber string at the bottom of the cup. For the Organicup, there's a long-ish rubber tip at the end that you can keep or cut off, but basically you would pull on that and then dig in with your fingers a little bit to squeeze the bottom edges of the cup to release the suction and pull out the cup.
But with Flex Cup, there's an extended string, so when you pull on it, it automatically releases the suction and comes out all together, just by pulling the string. I thought this idea was pretty cool so I tried it and was useful actually to have that string because it mostly reduced the time I spent digging around for a comfortable spot in my vagina to be able pull out the cup.
So same thing with the Organicup, you can have the flex cup in for up to 12 hours. They also have a flex disc and that's a little different from the menstrual cup, but there's more info about it on their website.
So those are all the glorious things about period underwear and menstrual cups.
Here are a few things I wanna mention that no one really seems to talk about online.
First thing, when you put in and take out the menstrual cups, it does really take some getting used to, especially if you haven't used tampons before or if you haven't really explored your vagina yourself in some other way...
I actually leaked sometimes the first couple times I tried both cups because I just couldn't figure out how to align it correctly and one time I did really mess it up and it hurt for like a couple seconds and I had to just really focus on how my vagina was structured.
Speaking of which, if you have never touched your own vagina, it's not like a big hole that you can just easily put something in - it's quite tight. It's like a closed part of your body, that if you wanna put something in it, you gotta stretch it a bit and actually put in some effort to push the cup into. It can be kinda awkward at first when you're putting in the cup for the first time, but that's how it is.
Another thing I wanna mention for putting in menstrual cups is that you might wanna cut your fingernails before you attempt putting in a menstrual cup. I remember having had my nails done and they were pretty long and they look like fake nails and I was trying to get my cup in, and my nails kept scratching the sides of my vagina and the really soft parts and it hurt!
No one’s mentioned how long nails can potentially cut you down there (idk how likely that is) but it was real tough having long nails and trying to get the cup in. So when I did cut my nails, that helped reduce the scratching.
So overall, there are pros and cons to both period underwear and menstrual cups, but I really root for period underwear, especially if you're already someone who uses pads during your period. It's nothing like wearing a diaper, it literally feels like regular underwear and it's not itchy or sticky like a pad. It's great.
Also the refund/return policy for the Organicup is 90 days for you to try it and get a refund if you really don't like it. For Thinx you have 60 days. I'm not sure about the Flex Cup, I couldn't find their refund policy on their website, but I assume it's something similar to either of those.
Overall, I think talking about periods is super super important. Periods are natural and we shouldn't be ashamed or scared to talk about them. There are uninformed people who just don't have any experience with periods, pads, tampons, etc. and if they think periods or blood is gross, that's on them.
I never really got invested in learning more about periods until these products came into my life and now I understand just how important it is to educate young girls and other women about their bodies and their periods.
Understanding how our bodies work is simply a way of life and a way to improve ourselves overall. I wish I had someone to tell me these things when I was younger, so I hope this helped you out!
With love,
Suzanne
Resources:
Thinx $10 off: https://thinx.club/suzanne224
Organicup 25% off + 1 cup donated: https://www.organicup.com/r/ref-oaklzo
