Friday 8 July 2011

Mooncup Madness

(Men may prefer not to read this post)


I have long thought about buying a Mooncup. They are the ultimate in environmentally friendly sanitary protection - avoiding the waste that you get with tampons and normal towels and not requiring the huge amount of water that seems to be necessary to launder reusable cloth towels. Plus the Mooncup doesn't have the health risks attached to tampons.

So the Mooncup would be ideal. But I have always had visions of wrestling with a full Mooncup and ending up with blood spattered all over the bathroom on a regular basis. Plus although the Mooncup isn't actually expensive (it costs about £20) that is expensive compared to what you pay per month for regular sanitary protection. And I've never wanted to have to pay that knowing that I'd be needing to buy my usual protection for at least a few months before getting the hang of the Mooncup.

Anyway, I won a Mooncup in a competition on Greener Leith, which recently ran a series of blog posts about the advantages of Mooncup. So now I have no excuse to at least try and part of the deal is that I write about my experiences here.


Well, my period started just before we went to Arran. I didn't want to take the Mooncup on holiday with me, not wanting to end up spattering blood over a beautifully decorated B&B bathroom. Plus the advice is that you try the Mooncup for the first time halfway through your period. So that didn't give me much time.


I tried, I really did, but the Mooncup was resistant to my efforts (it seems quite springy and its tricky to get it folded down whilst getting oneself into the right position). I did manage to fit it once but then after I'd emptied it, it didn't seem to want to go back in. I'll try again next month and see what happens. I'll keep trying for a few months, but doubt I'll have the staying power of the women in the menstrual cup discussion forums, some of whom have tried for two years before they felt comfortable with it. (This discussion forum is actually a good place to find out more if you're wanting to start using a menstrual cup.) I suspect Mooncup isn't for everywoman, but it is worth a try, as it is environmentally so much the better option and will in the long run save you quite a lot of money.

As ever text in red contains hyperlinks which take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

9 comments:

Nia said...

Well done, and good luck!

Sallie (FullTime-Life) said...

Gotta say this is one of those times when I am glad that I'm older than Ms. Methusalah!

bunnits said...

Congratulations! Keep us posted. I'll pass this information on to my daughter. As for me, I have entered the crone aspect and no longer need such things.

RG said...

Well, let's see here ....

resume for data entry clerk said...

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Draffin Bears said...

Hi Juliet,

I have never heard of the mooncup so thanks for sharing.
Good luck and I hope that you can make it work for you.

Happy weekend
Hugs
Carolyn

Anonymous said...

Keep trying! It took me about three months to get the hang of it but it was worth it - haven't bought tampons for seven years!

Jade said...

Some of my friends swear by the Mooncup, but I just can't bring myself to go there, mainly because of a past experience.

Many years ago, I was using a diaphragm for birth control. I was told that one of the benefits was that I could use it during my period instead of a tampon, so I gave it a try. The results were not pretty, to say the least; while it did collect menstrual flow effectively, trying to remove it while keeping the contents from splattering was a massive fail.
Perhaps with a lot of practice, I could have gotten the hang of it, but I don't have that kind of patience--and considering that my last period was less of a period and more of an exclamation point (four days of extremely heavy bleeding), I'm better off sticking to tampons and pads.

Crafty Green Poet said...

Rabbits' Guy, well i did say men may not want to read this...

Anonymous - I'll definitely try for up to six months,

Jade - that sounds bad, but I've heard the mooncup can hold quite a lot of blood...