Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Going With The Flow
This is a post written by Karen, who you will find at the store on Friday evenings and Saturdays. Karen is a Work-At-Home-Mom to a two-year-old daughter; in addition to joining us at Nurtured, Karen operates a home-based day care. Karen has a background in language and linguistics, and has a way with words!
If you're like me, you probably spent a whole lot of years hating your period. Mine was always a great inconvenience to me more than anything else, though I was spared a lot of the suffering that a lot of women experience (aside from a slight case of monthly demonic possession that is officially called "PMS").
After cloth diapering my daughter, and enjoying some time-off from the monthly grind as it were, I was really starting to think about both the environmental impact of disposable feminine hygiene products as well as the amount of chemical junk (that's the science-y term) in them. The downside of being married to a chemical engineer is that they are compelled to tell you exactly what chemicals are in things, and what sort of horrifyingly poisonous but 'useful' substances lurk in a given product. This was a large part of the reason I went to cloth diapers and never gave disposables a thought: I have had contact dermatitis "down there" from a maxi pad, and even more alarmingly, the nurse knew what brand it was when I described what was going on! I had used tampons for years, but if you are prone to yeast infections, you know that tampons stop being a reasonable option pretty quickly; the thinking is that the little cotton fibres in a tampon that, in addition to other things, make tiny scratches which help the candida hide and flourish and in general aggravate matters. So what were my options?
Well, I had purchased some cloth pads a long time ago, and never had a chance to use them because I found out I was pregnant about ten days after I bought them (Karma? Discuss amongst yourselves.) I tried these pads out, but they weren't that great: more like facecloths sewn into a maxi-pad configuration. In one of my regular trips to the health food store, I saw something called a Diva Cup, and it intrigued me. Could it possibly work? How the heck did you, you know, get it to the right place? So many questions!
I did a little bit of research (you guessed it, I googled the heck out of it), and saw the rave reviews that the Diva Cup was getting, so I went back and got myself one. The sizing is really, really simple: size one if you're under thirty or have had no children, size two if over thirty or have had a child. Simple enough. I made my little purchase of the Diva Cup and the Diva Wash as well. This has been one of the best purchases, without exaggeration, of my whole life. It did really change the way I looked at my period: instead of feeling frustrated with the options and uncomfortable to boot, it was simple, convenient, and reduced my garbage to almost zero. Even better, in addition to saving the planet some extra plastic trash, for those ladies like myself, who have canine companions, having zero "lady garbage" is a big deal! As the parent of an active toddler, the last thing I need to worry about is changing myself multiple times a day. The Diva Cup is good for twelve hours at a time, which makes my life much, much easier. If you work at a busy place, the same holds true for you: you spend more time doing what you love instead of worrying about something leaking! In fact, I loved it so much I came back to April with the idea of carrying it (and I was not alone. With so many fans asking us to have the Diva Cup, it was a natural fit for the store).
Now, I'm not going to sugar coat it and make it sound like there is no learning curve. Obviously, it can take some time, and occasionally a very sympathetic and understanding partner, to learn how to use it properly. For me, that was one cycle of trial-and-error until I figured out what works. I even customized mine; for those of you who haven't seen or used a Diva Cup, there is a little tail on the bottom that you can trim a bit from, or take off completely (I took mine off completely). Don't worry though: the cup has little ridges on the bottom that make it possible to use comfortably even without the tail. Of course, if you've ever visited us at Nurtured, particularly on Saturdays, you'll know that you can always ask any of us about how to use a Diva Cup! Women are often embarrassed about things like this, which is a real shame, because we could learn so much from each other; the Nurtured girls try our best to make people feel comfortable with us and able to ask us anything. So ask!
I can't finish my little ode to menstrual products here without mentioning another favourite: the Mama Pads by Happy Heiny's. [Full disclosure time. Yes, I've tried other brands, and I prefer the Happy Heiny's over the others I've tried for fit, absorbency and comfort]. We like to say they are like "sitting on a cloud", and it is true! As I'm a generously sized girl, I prefer the heavy pads which are a little bit longer and work wonderfully, especially overnight. I have found that the cloth pads don't bunch up and move as much as the disposable ones, and they are infinitely more comfortable. And if you're still diapering, there's no extra laundry- I simply hose mine off with my diaper sprayer and put them in the pail to be washed with all the diapers. And guess what? No contact dermatitis! I switch off between the pads and the Diva Cup, and have found that to be the system that works best for me.
At the risk of veering into "TMI" territory, I'd confidently say that changing from disposable feminine hygiene products to reuseable ones has improved my health a great deal. I no longer have the physical discomfort of rashes or yeast infections, and I know at the same time I'm reducing the amount of garbage I'm contributing to the landfill as well, so I sleep a little better at night. If I made that kind of commitment to cloth diapering which was really only a two-year deal, how could I not switch to something more earth friendly that I'll be using for presumably the next twenty years? (Er...thirty. It's hard to keep track of how many times I've turned twenty-nine). At the same time, I'm saving money as the Diva Cup paid for itself in two months.
If you've not ever thought about how reuseable pads or something like the Diva Cup could work, why not give them a try? Now that I've switched, I am just sorry it took me so long to find my way to this solution (probably because of the repressed memory of stories from my grandmother who endured hanging rags up in the attic after dark so no one would see, which was the lot of many women who grew up with in times where there was much shame and misinformation about their bodies and a lack of cultural acceptance and freedom to discuss these kinds of things: but that's another topic for another day). Like cloth diapering, we have come a long, long way. If you're like me, you probably just need to take that first brave step and actually try some of the alternatives out until you find one that works for you. There are some great resources available both online and in our store to help you out, so why not give it a whirl? I promise, going with the flow is so much easier than you'd ever imagine!
Resources:
The Diva Cup
Happy Heiny's Mama Pads
The tea to soothe the savage beast that appears about a week before I need the above.
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