Well, because I’ve always been taught that douching is unnecessary and even unhealthy. It’s like someone saying they make themselves vomit to clean out their stomach once in a while or saying they slit their wrists once in a while to let out blood. Their reasoning is so off and it just seems to be based on a notion of biology that’s so outdated that it makes me wonder where they got their health information from.
Never once in my life have I ever even thought of doing this.
I’m 40, I grew up hearing “douching is bad”. Early in adulthood, I had a lover tell me he adored the smell of womanly bits. He said he once dated a woman who used extensive feminine hygiene products and it was offputting to put his face into a labia that smelled like baby powder and not the smell of an aroused, sexy woman. That helped shape a lot of my feelings about my own parts - that it doesn’t smell bad and that men appreciate it.
1 - Well, everyone is different, both biologically and in their habits. In my posts about douching, I tried to be careful to imply that I personally would not be comfortable not cleaning things out a few times a month. My surprise is that most women don’t douche occasionally, not because you’re gross, but because I thought it was the norm.
So far as the vagina being “self-cleaning”, as I stated above, my standards are different than my vagina’s. As you noted, it slides things out, and more than once I’ve had a small blood clot slide out onto my underpants after my period has ended, and more than once, I’ve also had a nice clot of stinky semen wet my underpants the day after. Yuck-o, not for me.
2 - The biology degree (not the job - he’s in IT) was an attempt to explain that my husband wasn’t some Neanderthal woman hater, in the face of some thinly veined accusations against him. He’s freaked out by germs, not to a clinical degree, but as a normal human quirk. He doesn’t like musky vaginas, and I’m with him on that.
I am totally floored by the fact (?) that douching has become some feminist deal. I guess I’m not a very good feminist, as I don’t self-identify based on my genitals, and I make judgments based on my own accomplishments. Gender is almost a non-issue for me, unless confronted by some irrational sexist - which does not include my husband.
Yes, discharge is normal, and I always pay attention to the smell, color and consistency of my discharge. But, discharge can often be yucky, to me, and I’d rather cut down on the amount of it.
Semen, on the other hand…I can’t imagine letting that hang around up there for a while. I do the “push” after sex to get things out, but it often hangs around up toward the top, and, say, on a Saturday morning at home, before my shower, I have had lots of it run out all at once and wet my underpants through. Thanks, vaginal cleaning system! At home, it’s no biggie as I can change/shower, but it has happened in public, and then I have wet underpants. No thank you…
Semen has an average pH of about 7.2, almost neutral. Vaginas usually sit around pH 4.0. Both numbers can vary based on diet, activity level, etc., and of course is tuned to a person’s biology. And the next day, my vag smells bad - sharp and pungent. And it’s a very distinctive smell. Perhaps my husband and I are on the far end of pH, and therefore, we react more than other couples. I also note that semen has a lot of fructose in it, which is a very reactive substance. So, I’m not willing to wait for my vagina to slide it out and normalize the pH, because I’m not comfortable smelling that way.
As I stated above, I’m 33, but I must have missed the full-bore, anti-douche education. I am aware of the dangers of constant douching, but the dangers in terms of increased STD transmission, stripping the mucous membranes, introduction of dangerous bacteria and the rest come from people who must hard-core douche every day with chemicals. Which I do not do.
Frankly, I bet that it’s the kind of “zero-tolerance” science, where the possible benefits of an occasional warm-water douche can not be mentioned, for fear that someone will misinterpret it and douche to the extreme. That’s bad education.
I have really heavy periods myself (the occassional “clot”, if that’s what you mean), but even then, I just pads and panty-liners until my period is over. I’ve never noticed any “old period gunk” inside my vag. If you do, then that’s a problem.
Like I said, I don’t use “soap” soap. I use Caress soap like my doctor reccomended. You don’t WANT to get rid of the mucous and fluids in your vagina – that’s not a good idea. It’s there for a REASON.
As for “panty smell”, yeesh. Duh, of course your panties are going to have a faint odor. That’s your own body fluid – it’s not dirty or bacterial. You wash the outside area gently, but you don’t have to scrub inside.
Your nose is a muscous membrane – do you flush it out with water?
The idea of cramming your fingers up your vag to clean stuff out is so completely bizarre to me that I am half-wondering if we are all being punked in this thread. Do the people that do this think that if they do not go mining for gold up in there, that any foreign substance will just hang out permanently? Do they imagine that people who do not perform this task must go in with a pitchfork and shovel to clean out the detritus if they ever actually want to clear a path for achieving pregnancy?
Also, you can count me in with those that find it highly, highly dubious that squirting some vinegar and water up your hooter is going to keep completely and totally 100% odor-free for the next 24 hours or however long until your next douche. It might deodorize for a while, but it’s not going to stop your normal secretions.
The idea of an odor-free human body in general is just… weird. And impossible to achieve, as well.
Really? My dermo recommended Lever2000.
Agreed about dryness, vaginal dryness, so I have read, is not fun.
Actually I DO occassionally flush my nose/sinuses out with water, with the full approval of not only Doper docs (Hi, Qadgop!) but more importantly my real-life MD I go to. There’s this device called a “neti pot” for that very procedure (and a few others, like water pick attachments)
Women DO vary in their biology, including production of secretions. Sateryn76 may be on the far end of the spectrum. Personally, when my allergies force me to take courses of antihistamines for a period of weeks I notice a significant reduction in secretions regardless of where they are coming from. There are various conditions that also cause a reduction in secretions. Again, this can result in a particular woman not being very “productive” in that area, in which case her vagina is not going to self-clean as efficiently as a woman with greater production of secretions. In fact, I’ve know women who’s vaginas are so productive they wear panty-liners - all the time. They’re the opposite end of the extreme.
In other words, it’s conceivable to me that some women’s bodies don’t self-clean as efficiently as those of other women, and for those particular women occasional or moderate use of a douche may make all the sense in the world. Just like some people swear by their neti pots and other people have no use for them.
Really, this is getting to be like discussions of what to do about body hair, which also varies enormously between different women.
Yes.
I am almost 56, old enough to be some of y’all’s mom.
I remember seeing my own mom’s douche bag before I was old enough to have any idea of its purpose. I think she used it fairly regularly. She never suggested I use it, though, we did not speak too much of such things. I wonder if she quit at some point. She was widowed at 48, and later remarried.
Agreed.
I’ve never douched, but on occasion I’ve used a hand-held shower to kind of spray up there a bit.
Agreed.
I grew up on Our Bodies, Ourselves. I was influenced by their take-charge, think-for-yourself attitude.
We all have vaginas, but the chemistry of every mucous membrane is not going to be identical.
Some of our methods may even vary from region to region, as well. For me, two hours of gardening in north Florida does not leave in the same condition as it once did in Colorado. It can be a sweaty business, and I don’t consider myself neurotic for changing my underpants.
Never douched. I think it’s kinda gross. But I’ll admit, I bought a canister of FDS and used it… i was working as a groundskeeper at a golf course for the summer and it was a pretty nasty smelling minge by the time I was done. If I had to do something after work, I’d use the baby wipes I kept in my car and a shot or two of FDS to freshen up.
TMI ALERT!
First of all, removing a tampon and having blood clots come sliding out after it is one of the most disgusting feelings I have ever experienced and is one of the reasons I would gladly have all my reproductive organs removed.
I once had a discussion with my mother about blood clots because I accidentally walked in on her in the bathroom washing a large amount of blood off her hand. My mother told me that she frequently gets blood clots so large that in order for them to come out, she has to get in there and help them out. She had discussed it with every gynecologist she had ever seen and they all told her to not worry about it. She did not have endometriosis or any other uterine issue that may have caused it. She just had very very bad periods. Now, my mother didn’t douche. But she did have to get up in there and root around fairly regularly.
I douche only a couple times a year and there’s always a reason for it (usually the post period spotting is taking too long to clear up). My period generally lasts 1.5-2.5 weeks and occasionally I just want to try to speed things up a bit. I have done it 3 times because a condom broke and I was headed to work. I wasn’t about to spend 8 hours standing at a machine, with limited bathroom breaks, and semen seeping out of me.
I have discussed it with my gynecologist (after making sure there wasn’t actually something wrong with me other than a bitchy uterus) and he told me that douching is only a problem if it’s done compulsively. He said it’s perfectly ok to use occasionally when the need for extra cleaning arises. Of course, he also told me that douching is unlikely to make my stupid period stop before it’s ready but he did allow the fact that after 2 weeks of bleeding, a girl might feel pretty damn gross and need the psychological assist from the douche.
By the way, I am 30. Both my older sisters have told me they have never douched and they’re horrified that I do. I had never been told that douching was a problem until I was in my mid-20’s. My sisters just decided on their own that it was gross (especially my middle sister but she also used to have unprotected one-night-stands so I don’t know what her reasoning is).
Two and a half weeks? :eek:
I sat straight up and sneezed when I read that. My god. That must have been the worst 20 minutes EVER.
I, like Diosa, have made fun of douche commercials with my girlfriends if we’re just sitting around shooting the shit. Of course I meticulously wash my labia - and I buzz the whole area with a men’s hair buzzer, which keeps the extra smell/sweat down. But rooting around in my cooch? Aw hell no.
My gyno’s practice is geared towards older women (like, 35-45) because he’s big into infertility treatments in the city and I’m one of his very few younger patients. He had a big discussion with me on my new patient visit a couple years ago, seriously telling me it’s Not A Good Idea, but that it was ‘okay’ to do so only if I had an infection.
Incidentally, I used to wash my hair daily. When I got to college, I literally couldn’t wash and dry it (it’s thick and mid-back length) every day, so I stopped washing every day and started using Batiste dry shampoo. Now, I wash every 3 days, and on day 2 of non-washing, use Batiste. But where my hair used to look greasy at the end of the day now takes all of 3 days to look so. It’s amazing what you can trick your body into doing.
Diosa:
Yeah. Ever since I was 10. It really sucks. I have had at least one Pap per year since I was 17, plus a 4 year period where I had them every 6 months. I’ve also had 2 colposcopies. The constant diagnosis is that my genetics suck but there’s nothing actually wrong with me. Birth control pills do help but Depo had me bleeding nonstop for over 6 months. I usually just take a low dose of birth control pill and I can keep them between 7 and 10 days.
See, I have to wash my hair everyday – it’s baby-fine and poker straight, so it gets sooo greasy. The last time I went a few days without washing it was when I was in the hospital. I didn’t wash it for four days and by then I was ready to climb the walls, I wanted a shower so bad.
One question about douching – why vinegar? Wouldn’t that really, REALLY dry you out, to the point of stinging? And complaining about vaginal odor – vinegar really reeks. I use it to clean out my coffee maker for Christ sakes, and I can hardly stand the smell of it.
No no. Remember, the vagina is slightly acidic at most times of your cycle. This protects against infection from many bacteria and may work as a very-mild-gods-don’t-rely-on-it spermicide. Not enough to kill enough sperm to prevent conception, but perhaps to “thin the herd”, so to speak, and help ensure that only vigorous, healthy sperm make the swim intact.
So vinegar, properly diluted in water, actually more closely matches your vagina’s pH than plain water, and is less irritating and less dangerous (in terms of making the vagina a nice place for bacteria to multiply) than plain water.
Vinegar still skeeves me. Actually, sticking a finger up there and scraping out blood and semen really skeeves me. It sounds like it would feel really uncomfortable.
I actually wouldn’t mind smelling like freshly made easter eggs…
I empathize. I used to have week+ long periods with extremely heavy flow - the only upside was that I was irregular and would only get them 2-3 times a year. Now that I’m on Yasmin they’ve been shortened to around 7 days.
Try just one day of not, and use Batiste on your roots. Trust me, you’re not as greasy as I am; I’m half Indian. Batiste has a 4/5 on amazon with 110 reviews. Shampooing is a self-defeating premise; the more you shampoo, the faster it gets greasy. Seriously, just decades ago people were only washing their hair weekly. I mean, if you don’t dry/style your hair daily, then I guess you don’t waste much time washing it daily, but really, trying it out can’t be a bad idea.
I’ve done the every other day thing and it never works for me. I think I just need to wash every day. Plus, washing my hair is useful for when I want to blow dry it anyway.