Period talk
Last night I was reading an article on xojane in which a woman discussed her bewilderment with learning to deal with her period in middle school. in the comments this somehow led to a discussion on menstrual cup, diva cups in particular and I was all ears because I love my diva cup. I think it's the best ever invention and curse whatever forces that didn't make it immediately available the day I started.
While I read this long thread person after person talked about her normal, moderate, and even somewhat heavy period being able to be captured by her diva cup for over 12 hours with not a hint of leakage. being able to sleep without a worry and basically being completely worry free as far as overflow goes. It started me scratching my head b/c as much as I sing the praises of my cup from the mountain tops I still wake up after 7 hours tops and have to shuffle off to dump it and clean the blood off my thighs. I don't have a leakage issue in general but I try to go 12 hours there will be overflow for sure, 8 hours is the max most days. What was odd to me is that before reading this thread I would have (and have) said my period was fairly light these days.
When I told Das this he laughed at me for a good five minutes straight. I believe his words were something to the effect of just because you aren't bleeding like a stuck pig anymore doesn't mean your period is light. He has a good point. It is funny the way that comparison can skew perception. I used to have periods so heavy that I'd bleed through the overnight pads within a couple of hours all the while accompanied by fever, chills, "can't stand up straight it hurts too bad" cramps, nausea, and fainting, I was also irregular. This started at 12 and continued into my early 30s. My parents were adamantly against teenagers on birth control for any reason so even though it was suggested by doctors to help my symptoms it was never explored. I just had to suffer. My mother told me hers were that bad when she was younger too but resolved when she had my older brother. I had accidents often at school and I fainted on more than one occasion. After leaving home I have been on so many forms of birth control pills to try and lighten, regulate, and ease my periods all with only some success. Since I've had a blood clot a few years ago that's no longer an option. The whole having babies thing didn't work the magic I was told it would. The funny thing is that since switching to the diva cup things lightened up and the pain went down to manageable levels most of the time, I don't faint as often and I'm even regular about half the year.
I started thinking about how so many things in life are the way I'd thought about my period. You start off with conditions so utterly horrid that there is no denying the horror but then things get marginally better and because you've been steeped in the extreme horror for so long you become willing to accept lesser horror as good instead of being able to see it as the horror it actually it. It makes it easy to become complacent because hey remember how terrible things used to be? We are practically in heaven now. That's a dangerous way to think, we lose our vigilance, we don't push for better, we settle for less than we know we deserve. Done intentionally it could be a pretty darn effective weapon. And here I was doing it to myself.
While I read this long thread person after person talked about her normal, moderate, and even somewhat heavy period being able to be captured by her diva cup for over 12 hours with not a hint of leakage. being able to sleep without a worry and basically being completely worry free as far as overflow goes. It started me scratching my head b/c as much as I sing the praises of my cup from the mountain tops I still wake up after 7 hours tops and have to shuffle off to dump it and clean the blood off my thighs. I don't have a leakage issue in general but I try to go 12 hours there will be overflow for sure, 8 hours is the max most days. What was odd to me is that before reading this thread I would have (and have) said my period was fairly light these days.
When I told Das this he laughed at me for a good five minutes straight. I believe his words were something to the effect of just because you aren't bleeding like a stuck pig anymore doesn't mean your period is light. He has a good point. It is funny the way that comparison can skew perception. I used to have periods so heavy that I'd bleed through the overnight pads within a couple of hours all the while accompanied by fever, chills, "can't stand up straight it hurts too bad" cramps, nausea, and fainting, I was also irregular. This started at 12 and continued into my early 30s. My parents were adamantly against teenagers on birth control for any reason so even though it was suggested by doctors to help my symptoms it was never explored. I just had to suffer. My mother told me hers were that bad when she was younger too but resolved when she had my older brother. I had accidents often at school and I fainted on more than one occasion. After leaving home I have been on so many forms of birth control pills to try and lighten, regulate, and ease my periods all with only some success. Since I've had a blood clot a few years ago that's no longer an option. The whole having babies thing didn't work the magic I was told it would. The funny thing is that since switching to the diva cup things lightened up and the pain went down to manageable levels most of the time, I don't faint as often and I'm even regular about half the year.
I started thinking about how so many things in life are the way I'd thought about my period. You start off with conditions so utterly horrid that there is no denying the horror but then things get marginally better and because you've been steeped in the extreme horror for so long you become willing to accept lesser horror as good instead of being able to see it as the horror it actually it. It makes it easy to become complacent because hey remember how terrible things used to be? We are practically in heaven now. That's a dangerous way to think, we lose our vigilance, we don't push for better, we settle for less than we know we deserve. Done intentionally it could be a pretty darn effective weapon. And here I was doing it to myself.
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