They’re between $10 and $25 (on current conversion rates) in the UK, depending on the brand. So it depends on your usage, really, how it compares to the cost of a box of tampons; I’m not sure they could make them much cheaper, and it’s not a huge outlay in one go, but it’s probably still enough to - understandably - put people off, especially if they thought of trying more than one brand.
For me, my flow was so heavy that tampons went in, got full, then had to be changed practically by the time I’d washed my hands. I have to empty my Mooncup maybe ten times a day on the heaviest days, but it was more frequent with tampons. Plus the added pain.
Mine is the most expensive brand (the actual Mooncup), but that’s partly because I bought it about fifteen years ago when the market wasn’t as, heh, saturated. Haven’t had to replace it. I do not work for them, honest!
I have endometriosis (and fibroids) so mine is much higher than average and isn’t a good example.
But I’ve had a lot of conversations about this with women over the years, and it’s unusual to get down to the official estimate. That official estimate - on different reliable health-related sites varies between 30ml and 80ml per period (I think the 5ml I read before was supposed to be per day). Obviously not everyone will be removing 29ml of blood every time they empty their mooncup, but even if it fills up three times, that’s more than the highest official estimate.
Perhaps there’s some different estimate of the word “blood,” though I’m not sure how. It’s also likely that the people with a really light flow aren’t going to bother with a menstrual cup, so that would skew the results which are anecdata to begin with.
But, still. Two to three teaspoons full for the whole period, like some of those reputable healthcare sites say? That’s two-three regular size tampons per period. The NHS is more realistic when it says 6-8 teaspoons full - but that’s still one totally full regular tampon a day (no pads in addition) and it really, really is not unusual to need more than that, without having a medical condition with other symptoms apart from some pain.
That’s especially true in your teens and twenties, or before you’ve given birth (for some women it gets worse after having given birth, because of course even that can’t be predictable, pfft).
No; it involves humans. I still find it odd; but humans are odd.
IIRC, which I might not, they were something like $15; which would be about – hmmm. I just found a site saying that $32 in 1980 would buy about as much as $100 in 2019. So say about $45 or so in today’s money?
Me too. By the time it came, I was convinced there was something wrong with me, so I thought I was dying despite having read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
As a father I’ve only skimmed the thread, but it was a good reminder to talk to my wife about refreshing our daughter about these things. She’s 12 and hasn’t had her first one yet but there are classmates who have. My wife found a good book at the library.
What a great article! I never knew exactly what Toxic Shock Syndrome was. All you ladies (and men!) should read it! Early diagnosis and treatment is critical. And you don’t have to be wearing a tampon, or even of menstruating age.
I never had a good estimate of volume until i started using disposable cups, which I see the manufacturer has rebranded as “menstrual disks”, but that’s about what my periods were, post childbirth, pre-menopause. I never had any real troubles with menstruation except that i was irregular, so i never knew when i might suddenly have soiled underpants. And those two weeks that i used rely tampons.
I suspect it’s like everything else. People who don’t have a lot of trouble talk about it less than those who do, because they don’t think about it as much.
Yeah, in retrospect, the news articles about the risk of toxic shock may have saved my life. I was young enough that “menstruation just got a lot worse” wasn’t really a red flag, and i hadn’t associated my cramps and minor fever with the tampons. But then i read a news article about it, stopped using the absorbent tampons, and never had serious menstrual discomfort again.
I threw out my mom’s stash when i found it, more than ten years after they’d been removed from the market.
Also, if anyone who’s had trouble with cups wants to try again, the product i used was rebranded as “disks” in part because it sits differently in the vagina and is a slightly different product that may work better or worse for any particular individual. Check out my link.
Pro Tip — when you hear that your periods will become irregular during menopause, that doesn’t necessarily mean less frequent.
I was on a beach trip with a friend in her late forties and her period started…she seemed vexed…….”I know I counted right, this wasn’t supposed to happen for nine more days”.
I tried a reusable disc too. It leaked, and since the back sits against the cervix it wasn’t any less painful than tampons (they seem to make my cramps worse).
No woman of today can feel that having her period is particularly pleasant.
While looking for the commercial about ““Have a Happy Period,” I found this letter.
AN OPEN LETTER TO MR. JAMES THATCHER, BRAND MANAGER, PROCTER & GAMBLE
Last month, while in the throes of cramping so painful I wanted to reach inside my body and yank out my uterus, I opened an Always maxi pad, and there, printed on the adhesive backing, were these words: “Have a Happy Period.”
But, while I feel I shouldn’t need to point this out, considering some of what’s been said and asked in this thread maybe I do: no, we are not all going out of our minds every month, either from cramps or from uncontrollable bad tempers.
I agree that “have a happy period” is pretty tone-deaf. But for most women, most months, the thing is a nuisance. That’s all; just a nuisance.
I don’t know; if there’s a wide variation in how unpleasant a period can be, then I can definitely see the less-unpleasant ones being considered “happy”, and wishing a person to have one of those rather than the other kind.
Hmm, I wonder if your shape is a little different from typical. They didn’t sit against my cervix, but against the back wall of my vagina, so the rim of the cup (disk, whatever) surrounded the cervix. Once I placed them properly, I barely felt them. In fact, I DID once forget one at the end of my period, something I’d never done with a tampon. I had to jiggle each one a little bit to get it to “seat” right, but then it was quite stable, unless I strained to move my bowels.
Speaking as someone who pretty much always had painless, moderate-flow periods, and who even had nasty PMS that went away around when the blood started, so in some sense I was “happier”, I would NEVER have described any period as “happy”.
Maybe if you were afraid of an unwanted conception? That’s pretty much the only “happy period” I can imagine.
I had trouble getting it to go in and stay in. It was a lot bigger than I expected!
Yup. I had very painful periods, so it certainly wasn’t a happy time. Thankfully they seem to be better since I had my daughter, sometimes I don’t need any painkillers at all. Still a nuisance though.
Oh yes, like I said, it was rare to get down to the official estimate. I didn’t mean that to say that nobody ever was at that amount.
The latter paragraph isn’t the reason most were above the supposed limit, though. These are women that I just know, and for the main conversation that I’m thinking of, we talked about using mooncups and similar - they mostly used them for environmental reasons, not due to their flow. They were all (IIRC) in their thirties at least, and a lot had had kids, which makes them less likely to have problems - of the many and varying problems that women encounter - rather than more.
(Probably about 30 people in one particular chat about this specific topic. Plus several other conversations randomly over the years with individuals. Not a huge number, of course - though occasionally some of the older studies that accepted truths are based on turn out to be based on just as small a cohort).
So they’re not a really representative group, as most groups of friends tend to be, but if anything they’d be under-representing women who are likely to have heavier flows.
