Menstrual Cups & Cloth Pads -A Great Duo!
Amy Perkins
Guest blogger from Uplandmama and a Tree Hugger Cloth Pads User.
She be small but fierce…a truly fickle thing, easily irritated and driven to extremes. She can be abrasive, harsh, and commanding. She can also be dainty, generous, and gracious. She is a powerhouse of strength and fortitude. She is, your vagina. The day that I made the switch to reusable menstrual products was a day she was not happy. She was fed up with chemical laden, rough cotton tampons. She made her opinion vividly known via pain, a rash, and rawness. I don’t blame her. I was done too. A quick google search had my husband and I off to the closest place to purchase a menstrual cup. My vagina and I haven’t looked back since.
I had been thinking about reusable menstrual products for myself for a while. I was already cloth diapering my son and the same lovely women who taught me about cloth diapering were also using cloth menstrual pads. After my second son was born and I was faced with daily incontinence and got my period back quickly despite breastfeeding, tampons and disposable pads were quickly turning into a money sucking black hole. After venting my frustrations to my favorite fellow moms, one pointed me in the direction of Tree Hugger Cloth Pads. I knew I wanted to try them, but just never did take the leap. I also quickly discovered menstrual cups in my research on cloth. I loved the idea of a reusable “tampon alternative.” I knew that if I ever made the leap, I would start there.
Cut to about a year later, me with an angry screaming vagina, and a mad dash to a drug store at night. It took a bit of trial and error, but I quickly came to love my cup. My vagina loved it too. She quickly went from being spitting mad to quiet and reserved. With my cup use came a plethora of benefits that I wasn’t even expecting; slightly shorter periods, minimal cramping, and less leaking to name a few. I did however find a new need: cup backup. I turned to disposables for a short while, but she-who-shall-not-be-named’s opinion was made loud and clear. Disposable pads weren’t going to work for me anymore either.
So, I finally caved and made my first Tree Hugger Cloth Pad purchase. Since then my cloth collection has grown and I’ve come to realize that there are very good reasons to use a cup/cloth combo!
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Options! I don’t know about you, but I live for options. As we discussed previously, Ye ‘Ol Fickle one likes options too. Give your vagina options. Some days I don’t want to deal with a cup; I want to just snap on a pad and go. And there are certainly days that Miss Fancy Pants Vagina doesn’t want a cup either. On days when she just needs a break, it is nice to know that cloth is there to give us the comfort we long for when we are already having a bad day.
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Backup! Cloth is a great option for backup for a cup. Whether you could use cloth just in case of leaks or you keep some stashed away in case you ever misplace a cup, or, in one instance that led me to tears, FLUSH your cup, having cloth on stand-by is a must.
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Peace of mind! I am a very heavy bleeder a couple days out of my cycle. Even with my cup holding a very generous volume, I am also a gusher and have large clots. All of those things can equal a disaster not matter what you are using. I love having the peace of mind that no matter what my darling vagina is going to throw at me, I am well prepared.
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Money Saving! Having an assortment of options doesn’t have to break the bank. In fact, you need to see your cup and cloth as an investment. Using cloth in tandem with my cup, saves me so much money that I would normally be spending on disposables every month, because even with the best of menstrual cups, I still need that backup! (Check out the Tree Hugger Savings Calculator to find out how much you could be saving!) Also, with cloth lasting YEARS you can feel free to indulge a little. 😉
So, if you are a cup user who needs a little backup or peace of mind or if you are a cloth user who thinks you wouldn’t have need of your cloth if you switched to a cup, think again! Using a cup and cloth might just be the winning combo your vagina has been begging for. Don’t believe me? Just ask her.