I’ve been thinking of switching to cloth menstrual pads and I’m wondering if anyone here has experience with them?
My research shows a very wide variety of kinds, sizes and material for them. They look so soft and comfy!
The tree hugger ones are pretty intriguing:
Any advice or thoughts?
I’ve used LunaPads in the past. The full ones are good for laying around the house when you are crampy and miserable, but a little bulky for wearing out and about. I still use the smaller insets sometimes for a liner on light days.
I find they are a good tool in the toolbox, but probably wouldn’t work for me as a single solution (my DivaCup comes close, but even that doesn’t cover every need all the time.)
I use Party In My Pants. After about ten years of use, they need to be replaced - since I’m pre-menopausal I’m hoping I can just get by a little longer. Love them.
I’m not a Divacup girl - anything touching my cervix including tampons cramps me up horribly.
(I’m also not a heavy flow type of girl - on those strange days when I have heavy flow - and part of being perimenopausal is that nothing quite works the same way it used to - I use disposable pads.)
Good info, thank you!
Me neither!
I am also perimenopausal and that’s what’s got me thinking of this change. My periods are so different now, much longer and after days of wearing tampons things just start to get a bit sore.
I’m thinking of ordering a start up pack to give it a try. It’s pretty expensive but the amount I’m now spending every month is probably close to $20 so when I compare it to the price of cloth pads, it doesn’t seem all that bad.
I, on the other hand, have had good success with the Diva cup. I used tampons for 20+ years, and have used the Diva cup for the last ten or so. It holds A LOT (I use the smaller of the two sizes). I don’t notice it at all during use, and I’ve had less cramping with it. It takes a few cycles to get used to using it. I wish it had been available way back in the 80s, it would have saved me a lot of grief. And money.
I have used Glad Rags for close to 15 years.
I highly recommend them as both durable and comfortable. I have never had to replace a pad for wearing out. In fact, it’s been so long since I’ve even looked at their website, that I had no idea they has so many new products and colors! Most of mine are the plain organic cotton.
I like that you can insert as many liners (or none at all) depending on your flow. I have two of the night pads and the rest are day pads. I see they now have separate panty liners, but I just use the day pads with no insert.
Buy one or two and give them a try - if you don’t like them - you are out the $10 or whatever it is for one. If you like them, you’ll have a better idea of how many you need to round out your collection.
How many you need depends a lot on how often you feel the need to change them. I find I need to change them less than with normal pads - YMMV
I’m cheap - my daughter says like a little bird - and I invested in my collection over several months while I was using up the disposables I had on hand. That way it was never much of a budget strain. I think I have eight or nine, and have to do a mid cycle load of laundry.
Definitely buy a couple and give it a try. If you like them, buy some as the budget allows and supplement with disposable until you have enough to get through the month. I just went and looked at my stash and I forgot I have three of another brand that I bought, way back when I first started using cloth. The brand is not on them. I found I liked the ones you could add inserts to better.
Like Dangerosa, I find I change them less often than I do with disposable. I think it’s because now I can’t stand the way disposable ones feel. I have 15 day pad and two night pads. Only on exceptionally heavy months have I had to wash mid-cycle.
Also, I have a bucket that I put in the master bathroom so that the pads can soak until I am ready to wash them. I just change out the water every so often. I usually put a scoop of Oxyclean power in the water. Almost none of them are stained.
I wasn’t sure about the kinds with inserts. During the day do you just change out the insert or the whole thing? I guess if you’re just changing out the insert, then you need fewer pads and more inserts?
Thank you for all the links!
I’ve used them for about 10 years. I get really unpleasant rashes from having the plastic in disposable pads against my skin. I started with GladRags but found they were ultimately too bulky. Now I use Party in my Pants. They are thinner, more absorbent, easier to clean, easier to carry and store, and less prone to leaks. I could only use my GladRags when I was at home, but I can wear the PIMPs out of the house and around town easily. I use them with a Diva Cup, so they are just for backup unless it’s a light flow day. I started out by getting one and trying it out. They’re around $12 to $15, depending on which size you want.
Some 20 years ago, the American Chemical Society’s magazine, C&EN, held a sort of “contest” asking people to name the best chemical advances of the 20th century.
I told my mother and her mother. Mom mentioned The Pill and Grandma berated her “the Pill? HAH! The Pill! I didn’t need no Pill, and your Aunt Laura is so stupid she would have gotten pregnant twenty times anyway if she’d had it. Pads! Tampons! THAT is a great advancement!”
Half a dozen other ladies born in the first two decades of the 20th century or the last decade of the 19th agreed, as did their very-ashamed daughters who had actually moved from cloth napkins to throwaway ones, and my submission was among those selected for the magazine.
So, while I haven’t used cloth pads, the consensus among those who used to live without other options is that they suck - and not enough!
I have a Party in my Pants liner, and I find it shifts and bunches. Obviously they work for others. I vote with the others - give it a try.
I’m a Divacup girl, myself.
I use both right now. The cloth pads are way better for me. They don’t stink as much. They are thinner and more comfortable. They snap in rather than using adhesive - so you don’t get that really unpleasant pubic hair pull when they fold over. I change them less.
The downside. I have to wash them. I’ll also keep a bucket of water in the bathroom, then throw them in with a load of undies and towels when I wash.
What do cloth pads have to keep liquid from soaking through the bottom of the pad into your underwear and pants? Anything?
A waterproof layer of fabric. I think different brands use different fabrics. Mine feels like a high tech camping cotton - i.e. not raincoat plastic, but something more along the lines of a thin treated canvas.
Oh, its that waterproof layer that is giving out on my “used them for ten years” pads - they’ve just been washed so much that they are less waterproof. They aren’t leaking yet, but I’m beginning to see staining on the back side.
I still change the whole thing. The part I like is that if it’s a light day, one liner. Just spotting, no liner. If it’s a heavier day, two or even three liners. I don’t have to buy different sizes of pads for heavier flow vs. lighter flow days or be stuck with just bulkier pads the whole time.
Mine don’t have a waterproof layer, just several layers of cotton. That being said I have never, not even on my heaviest day bled through all the layers to my clothes. It really depends, I guess, on how often you change them.
I looked at the Party in my Pants website, and I recognize some of the fabric they’ve used. As in, I know where to buy it.
This is the kind of thing that makes me want to experiment with making my own rather than pay $10 apiece.