I figured that in 25 years of regular periods, I was personally responsible for having put about 9,000 tampons and applicators and 3,000 pads or pantiliners out into the environment.
???
That’s like, 30 tampons and 10 pads per month!!! I believe you and all, I’m just amazed that someone could have a flow that heavy!
I use oh, maybe 8 tampons each period. Never counted, just a guesstimate.
I generally use Instead for heavy days, and a tampon for light days. I occasionally get leakage, but I don’t really worry about it - I wear cheap cotton underwear, and throw it out if it gets too stained to wash out.
I’m really surprised to find I come in at the “heavy” end of the scale here (2 hours per tampon on a heavy day). Although I never really discussed it much with girlfriends - kind of self conscious talking about it.
I certainly do have to change during the night at heavy times - usually for the first two nights. And use a pad, all the time as backup.
I also never got on with the winged pads - much prefer the ordinary kind. Wings are just too fiddly and I don’t think they make me feel any more secure.
If my cramps really gear up and I’m wearing just a pad and I can’t get to a bathroom within 30 minutes or so to change it, I will saturate the pad (at least in key locations) and I will leak. If I’m wearing just a tampon (even supers) and my craps gear up and I can’t get to a bathroom in 30 minutes or so, I will soak through the tampon and leak. And since my cramps can come at any point during my period, day or night, I’m kind of a belt and suspenders kind of person: Tampax (cardboard applicator, supers) and Always (the ones with wings, with the spades on them–regular, I think.)
My mom’s philosophy on feminine hygiene products was always “whatever’s cheapest.” Cheap-ass pads and tampons caused me no end of trauma as an adolescent. Now I am 100% brand loyal.
I’m definitely tampons only, and have been since I started buying my own fem-giene products. Pads are just–ick. When I was a teen, I hated that “squish” feeling. Plus, have you ever tried to carry on a normal conversation when the sticky stuff is holding your pubic hairs hostage?
Usually I use Playtex (for some reason, Tampax are uncomfortable–just the opposite of amarinth). However, I too have ruined many pairs of underwear from the down-the-string/around the side leak. Thanks to my fellow dopers, though, next time I will definitely try OB non-applicator. And hey–it may not be the Keeper, but without an applicator, it’s much more friendly to the environment than a standard tampon, right?
Warning! Possible TMI below.
BTW, Glory, my husband can smell me when I am right out of the shower with a fresh tampon. This used to really freak me out (I mean, I thought perhaps I hadn’t learned how to properly shower), but then he told me that he could tell when his female coworkers were menstruating by the smell, so I figured it wasn’t anything I was doing wrong. (Luckily for all concerned, he never let his female coworkers know that he knew.) He does have an exceptionally keen sense of smell; I always ask him to verify whether something’s going bad in the fridge.
Right now I use Kotex pads (Ultra thin long, something like that). I’ve wanted to use tampons, but I’ve had this fear of them, because someone (maybe my mom, I can’t remember) was saying that you have to change one after 8 hours or YOU’LL PROBABLY GET TOXIC SHOCK SYNDROME OH MY GOD and so I’ve been almost petrified of the idea.
So, ladies, dispell my ignorance. 
What’s the actual chance of TSS from tampons, how often do you have to change them (if you have a light flow day, for example) without being in danger, etc.?
Oh, I forgot to add: I want to try tampons because I’m paranoid that there might be a smell that I can’t notice but others can, y’know? I don’t want to be known as a stank factory once a month. 
I don’t use tampons except on really heavy days, so I don’t think I can help much. I HATE the feeling of taking one out when it’s not…um…saturated? Owie owie owie. So I don’t use them much, since I tend to have only one heavy day, which is not heavy at all compared to some of you. You have my sympathy, ladies!
I’m a tampon user - Tampax “normal” absorbency. I also have to wear an incontinence product, so I’m covered with the leakage as well.
I’m a tampax girl. I love tampax. It’s funny to read about the painful removal because after using tampax exclusively for 12 or so years I had that happen for the first time a few months ago. It made me pretty angry the first time it happened! I got determined to get it out and forced it and then wound up in the shower fishing little bits of shredded tampax out. Just for me, it’s because it took me a half a year to realize that my period has changed and I don’t need to wear supers anymore and I don’t need to change it compulsively on the third day. Generally I use tampax with no problems and I haven’t worn a pad in years.
One thing that’s always attracted to me to the keeper is that I find tampax doesn’t do much absorbing for me anyway. It doesn’t expand and when I change it it’s like I pulled the plug. I spent years looking at these commercials showing various tampons expanding in test tubes and thought I must be getting defective tampax because they never expand til they hit the toilet water. They expand a little overnight but even then, yeah, they only get about an inch longer and it’s not like they’ve absorbed much of anything. Those commercials are dumb.
Maybe that’s why some people have trouble getting them out. Maybe your flow is liquidy enough to absorb into the tampax and expand it and then since all the liquid is absorbed there’s no lubrication to get it out! I’m not sure but if it worked that way for me (like it shows in the commercials) I wouldn’t want to use them either.
You are not supposed to wear them longer than eight hours. If it makes you feel any better, I actually once forgot I had one in and discovered it days later when I started to fool around with a boyfriend. (Now that was scary, and gross.) I didn’t get sick.
I couldn’t imagine keeping one in that long without desparately needing a change, personally, but from reading this thread, I suspect I’m on the heavier side of things. (When I wear them, I need to change them every two hours at the beginning when it’s heavy, to every 3-4 hours on a regular day.)
I’m sure there are websites with information on TSS.
They were called Rely, made by Procter and Gamble. I remember using them.
This may sound weird, but this is an interesting thread. I keep waiting for it to cause me to start my period, but so far I’m dry
I used to be a Playtex user. I never could and still don’t understand how so many of you can stand those cardboard applicators for Tampax. Even the “easy-glide” ones I just hate. And pulling out a Tampax was like pulling out a bottle brush or something–uck!!!
Playtex worked for several years just fine until I went through a phase of very heavy periods in my late 20’s and I was going through like 2 boxes of tampons a week!!! (my periods sometimes lasted 2 weeks or more during this phase) I started using pads at night because I hated getting up in the middle of the night to change out tampons, and I just stayed with them. I also got to the point where I just didn’t like having a tampon in there all night.
I prefer the Always without wings…the wings really don’t add anything to the equation, and seem bulkier to me. I really have less leaks without wings than I do with them…go figure.
I hate pads. I’ll only wear them in times of absolutely dire emergency; or if I’m going to sleep, I’ll wear one of those ultra thin ones, which are pratically useless but better than nothing. I can’t get to sleep with a huge wedge of absorbant sickness slapped between my thighs.
As far as tampons go, I like Kotex and the Playtex Gentle Glide whatevers the OP mentioned in her pre-conversion state. I won’t use anything scented. The scents are usually worse than even some of the worst menstruation anyway , I’ve never had a problem with odor, thank God. I don’t like cardboard aplicators, but I’ll still use them, but not if I can help it. They feel sort of gross…and when I was eleven, I got a cardboard applicator stuck up there on a family trip to Disney World. I’d just started using tampons on that cycle, and these ones were the first in a new pack. The others I’d used had the little rings that you push together at the end that let you know you’ve pushed too far. Trying to shimmy that thing out was a blast and a half, let me tell you. I’ve always had a dislike for cardboard applicators since then.
I’ve never tried applicator-less tampons, only because I’m 17 and still live at home with my mother, and she’s usually in charge of the good ol’ femine hygiene purchases. Once I’m on my own I’ll check those out, as well as the Keeper and Instead, and the like.
On the rare occasion that I have to resort to using a pad, I’ve noticed this too, HelloKitty: the wings don’t really do anything. (Well, aside from get stuck to the underside of the pad and have to be pulled off again, then not adhere properly to the underwear :rolleyes:).
Originally posted by monstro
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[QUOTE]
Are there people here who do not wear pads as a back up when they’re wearing tampons? If so, aren’t ya’ll scared? I know I’d be!**
[QUOTE]
I don’t wear pads as a back up, ever, and it doesn’t worry me at all. I’ve never had any…“run over” so extreme that it’s been a problem, just a tiny bit of spotting on a rare occasion. (Actually, even when I’ve started my period unexpectedly I’ve never had that much of a problem with it). I use high absorbency tampons, change them as frequently as I can, and just have an only moderately thick cycle on the worst of days. Plus I hate hate hate pads, like I said, even the really thin kind, and would rather risk the rare spotting than wear a pad all the time.
My mother on the other hand, doubles up and sometimes even that isn’t enough. (Yes, she tells me these things, not that I exactly lust for the info).
I do the exact same thing!! I thought I must be the only person on earth with this problem. My flow moves much more towards the front than the back. Ever since I started turning my pads around, I never have to worry about leaking.
I also use the Always Ultra-thin Overnight with Wings (whether it’s day or night). The one with the club on them. (Love that feature, if I’m sending my husband out I can just tell him to look for the club on the package.) Have to have the wings–before I got pads with wings I would always stain the sides of my panties and it would flow right through onto my pants in two little matching spots, one on the left and one on the right. Plus, with the wings, you KNOW that pad isn’t going anywhere. In high school, a girl I know (not me, thank god, I had enough high school embarassments as it was) was wearing shorts and her wingless pad managed to work its way loose and hang down on the inside of her thigh. Many people saw it before it was pointed out to her. With the wings, that sucker isn’t going anywhere.
I’ve tried tampons a few times, but have never really liked them. It’s kinda awkward and painful to get them in (I have hard time getting anything in there at all unless I’m really turned on) and they always felt a little uncomfortable in there. It’s been years since I’ve tried, so maybe it would be better now, but I’m relatively happy with pads, so I’ll probably just stick with that.
Possible TMI below:
I have mixed feelings about dri-weave (however it’s spelled). On the one hand, I agree that it keeps you feeling nice and dry once everything has been absorbed. On the other hand, I have two problems with it. Number one, I think that layer of plastic or whatever it is prevents super fast absorption. Especially the chunky parts of my flow–they tend to sit there on the surface of the pad for a bit before they manage to soak past the dri-weave layer. This leads to the chunks getting kinda squished and smeared around everywhere, and getting absorbed by my pubic hair, which causes the hair to stick together and get really uncomfortable. Also, these pads are SO absorbant that they seem to absorb the moisture right out of my skin and I get really dry, irritated skin in the butt area.
Anyway, this thread has been really informative (and occasionally very entertaining!) Thank god for the SDMB.
One thing I’ve found from reading this board, is that there is a huge variation in how women menstruate.
I only need one mini tampon that lasts me the whole day, so before reading this thread, I didn’t even know some women would wear pads and tampons at the same time.
And changing every two hours ?!? I put it in in the morning after my shower and take it out before bed of a night time and it all goes smoothly. I don’t need anything of a night. I haven’t had ‘leakage’ or ‘clots’ or ‘overflow’ of any of the other stuff I’ve been reading in this thread. When I wasn’t on the pill, my flow was a little heavier, but I still only used one moderate tampon a day.
Everyone’s different. I guess I got lucky in this department, but I’m sure I made up for it elsewhere
Does anyone else get this weirdness? My period usually lasts about 3 1/2 days, first 12 hours or so very light, then heavy for 2 days (2 hour changes) tapering off on the fourth day to a very annoying dribble. Then, and this is the weird part, I get nothing for about 12 hours - then the damn thing comes back! Not much, just a little mini-gush for a couple of hours followed by another 12 hour dribble. Times I’ve been caught out by this when I think it’s all over ……
Someone should invent panties with replaceable/removable crotches. No one wants to wear stained ones.
I ran track in high school and after running a few miles while wearing a pad I decided I had to try tampons. And after appreciating how much less mess & smell there was, I have never gone back.
I use Playtex Smooth Glide tampons & then some kind of long pantiliner for light days.
I’ve tried OB tampons, but I didn’t feel like I got them in right. But I’ll have to try them again sometime.
Why’s that so outrageous? Between 5 and 6 days, that’s a change of tampon every 4-5 hours, more frequently on the occasion when things were really bad. And I’ve never used any inserted product overnight, so that’s at least 5 pads each month even after I began using tampons exclusively during the day.
I should note that I never used a high-absorbency tampon. It never felt particularly comfortable or safe, so I used a lighter absorbency and changed more frequently.
When I was around 10 my mom gave me a booklet put out by the Stayfree company called “It’s wonderful being a girl”. It looked like complete BS at the time and my early experiences with diaper-pads confirmed it. Tampons made things easier but I still really hated that time of month because of the hassles. Mostly I’m really lazy but I hated all the extra work necessary: making sure you have a supply of pads/tampons, making sure they get changed in time, making sure you don’t leak - and cleaning up the leaks, etc.
So now I’m a Keeper devotee. I have several friends who had problems like those reported already, but I have never found it to be uncomfortable to put in or to wear (and emptying/cleaning it isn’t a problem once you get used to it), and have really appreciated the benefits (aside from the waste/cost reduction) :
I have a pretty heavy flow - all you ladies are saying “I’m on the pill so my flow is light” - you’re so lucky ! Mine went down from five days of really heavy to three days of really heavy and one of heavy. Grr.
Yah, that’s about right for me. A $60 Keeper has replaced 10 years of periods. Each period requires three days of about 6 tampons each (changing ~ every two-three hours) and two days of three, plus six pads or so (night + backup protection).
I think they have a money-back satisfaction guarantee - I know it’s not for everybody but for those it works for, man, it’s an Ogsend. (I’m starting to sound like a commercial. I prefer to think of myself as an evangelist.)