I no longer need them “hallelujah!” but, for the last few years that I did, I discovered cloth pads and wondered why I’d spent the last couple of decades not knowing about them. So, so comfortable and full protection/coverage. On heavy days I used them with a tampon for extra security. I still have my stash and I honestly sometimes wish I still used them. I’m going to wait till incontinence comes and then I’ll bring them back out.
TBH, I knew that in the olden days women washed cloths and re-used them, but I didn’t know it was still a thing.
Men who insist upon entering menstruation discussion threads get what they came for. There is always one, usually within the first three answers. :roll eyes:
Anyway, on to real advice. I used a silicone cup for the last ten years of my period, and I only wish they’d been available sooner. For myself I paired them with reusable pads in case of leaks. For my daughter, I paired them with cotton-based period panties. She tells me that now a lot of teens are using the products that look like a diaphragm. I don’t know the name of those.
For your specific problem, Dung Beetle, I recommend the snap-on washable pads. I wore them every day for years and they were easy to wash and fairly comfortable. A little bit warm in Summer, but at least they absorbed the sweat. LOL!
The period up-charge in USA retail is stunning, so please work around them. I got all my products through AliExpress. If I recall correctly, DIVA cups here were about $32 at the time, and I got 5 for $11 from there.
https://www.aliexpress.com/premium/period.html?catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20230406110132&SearchText=period&spm=a2g0o.productlist.1000002.0
The only major drawback to reusable is changing it out when away from home. One would have to keep the soiled pads sealed in your purse or bag until you got home again. But not a big deal I guess. Just a matter of planning ahead and getting used to it.
I never had the dexterity to use a diva cup much less a diaphragm (don’t leave your lover waiting while you try to pop it in and be right back, he will have drunk all the wine and fallen asleep) I still have it all powdered and clean in its little case waiting to spring into action once again.
Back when I worked in construction and was often the only woman on the crew, and sometimes at job sites where we either didn’t have toilets or very primitive versions of them, I had to take my soiled pads home with me for disposal. You want to use a ziplock freezer bag (they’re thicker and harder to damage), preferably with a double-zip. The smallest I could find were quart size, don’t know if they’re making them any smaller these days. Anyhow - Squeeze as much air out as you can before sealing. Icky? Yes, but it works and once sealed there’s no smell and no leaks.
I bet it is menstrual discs:
Learned about them from my 40 years younger roommate.
NM, I thought this was a Downton Abby Q.
That’s what i used. I really loved them, and wish I’d find them sooner.
I confess to lurking in this thread, if only because I feel like I’m learning a lot.
(And, I, too, initially opened it thinking it was about costuming or old-fashioned underwear.)
Learning is what we’re here for. That’s is totally encouraged. So are well-intentioned questions. 
In the past we’ve had trouble with men jumping in to give ignorant answers and even taking over the discussion. That was seriously annoying.
Works for me, I was irregular as hell from the PCOS
snicker My mom told me about my grandmother and my Auntie Grace [a lovely mainland Chinese woman that shared rooms with my grandmother in college, class of 1919] giggling while telling her about a trip they did with others to NY city for visiting museums and whatever other delights they would have been allowed as juniors. They were packing up to go home, and the reason for the giggling was describing how they had put all the used rags into a small suitcase and abandoned it at the train station. It has been too many years, but I don’t think mom told me why they told her about it.
Same here. Growing up as the only male in the house, I thought I knew periods. But my knowledge is way out of date; this thread is fighting my ignorance.
Same with me, BTW you women really put up with a lot. Nature is cruel.
Except that it assumes that talking about tampons is so essentially embarrassing that nobody should ever do it; and also that teenagers don’t need the basic anatomical information; and also that their product is guaranteed to be sufficient and teenagers will never need to supplement or replace it.
It’s kind of cute if one ignores all that, of course.
(I would actually kind of expect a modern kid of that age (she appears to be well into her teens) to be saying “Mom! I know how to put in a tampon!”; but I’m afraid there may still be some whose basic education, even the sort one can get from friends and the net, does get left that late.)
In my teens, they were waterproof-lined underpants with fittings in them like the ones in old garter belts, into which you fastened the ends of menstrual pads – probably Kotex – which were designed to thread through them to hold the pad in place. Pads in those days didn’t come with sticky backs. (The first ones that did didn’t stick very well, either.)
I have a vague recollection that there were also belt arrangements, even more like garter belts, that did the same thing without the panty; you then put your underpants on over them.
They were mostly not around when I was menstruating – that is, for a fair chunk of the time they existed, but were really hard to find, and expensive. I remember seeing some at a stall at an organic farmers’ conference when I was in my mid to late 20’s (probably because, hey, reusable), and I wanted to try one; but I didn’t know whether they’d work for me, and I didn’t want to spend $25 in ~1978 dollars for one cup and then maybe find out that it leaked or was uncomfortable. (An inflation calculator tells me that’s about $120 today.)
Good idea. Men should know this stuff too. And everybody should get over thinking it’s too squicky to talk about.
And I just discovered the existence of menstrual discs about two minutes ago. Learning continues.
Yep. I had the belt-and-pad arrangement for the first, oh, nearly 10 years. Almost like a loincloth arrangement you then pulled your underpants over. Actually worked pretty well once you learned to adjust to minimize chafing and pinching, but still not fun. You’re right, the original sticky-back pads were less than optimal, hence my sticking with the “loincloth” as long as I did.
I hated the belt and pads. The “tails” of the pads would give me a wedgie all day long, and the clips they for into would occasionally give you a nasty pinch or get tangled up in pubic hair. No fun all around. The pads also more often than not formed into a weird banana shape which allowed copious leakage out the sides.
My stepmother was the first one to give me a tampon. She was Swedish, probably about ten years younger than my mother, and a nurse midwife, and she was absolutely horrified at the whole Kotex setup. The only reason she even found out about it was that I got my period while visiting for two weeks and I was both too young to deal with my bloody underwear properly on my own (see above) and too embarrassed to ask for help before she saw my laundry. However, instead of realizing that her thirteen-year-old stepdaughter would be unlikely to know anything about inserting one, she handed me an O.B. tampon (that’s right, the non-applicator type) and shooed me into a bathroom. That went just as well as you might imagine.
I used the adhesive-strip pads till I went off to college, and then got a box of tampons and studied the accompanying instructional inset very carefully. (It was actually a lot clearer, with better visuals, than the info at the Tampax website now, AFAICT.) From all the wikiHow tutorials out there, it appears likely that a lot of girls nowadays are still figuring out the key points of tampon use essentially on their own.
One day when I was fifteen or sixteen years old, home by myself, I got a tampon out of my mom’s bathroom and used it according to the instructions in the box. Later that day, Mom came in brandishing the open box and demanding to know if I had taken one. Bewildered, I said yes. She then angrily and tearfully informed me that I wasn’t a virgin anymore. 
I’m pretty sure that was the reason for the waterproof lining in the panties I had. (Which was uncomfortable in its own way.) And yes, there was often blood that escaped off the sides of the pad.
I tried using tampons, but couldn’t get them in, despite carefully following the instructions and pictures included in the package. I eventually found out why: I had such terrible cramps that when I was about 17 I had a D&C, which they thought at the time might be helpful for dysmenorrhea. (No, that doesn’t work. Thank you, researchers, doctors, universe, and my parents, for the Pill; which did.) When I woke up from the anaesthesia they told me that I had had a semi-imperforate hymen (enough opening for blood to get out, but only barely); and, very conveniently, didn’t have one any more. After that I could use tampons just fine, and did so. – it’s a good thing I hadn’t tried to have sex before that surgery; we would have had the same problem and I don’t suppose either of us would have had any idea why. I expect it would have been possible; but also that it would have hurt.
– I always found the O.B.'s easier to get in, as well as easier to carry around; plus which, once we started thinking about this, there was less waste. It seems to me that the only use of the applicator is to minimize touching your genitals; did anyone find them useful otherwise?
Yeah, at least give you the box with the instructions inside!
Unghh. I’m very sorry that you had to deal with that!
Thanks. Even at the time, I didn’t believe it to be true (or feel that it mattered). Just an anecdote about how we don’t all have proper guides to knowledge when we need them.