MoonWit!

I am proud to say that I now own reuseable pads.

For anybody who cares to know, ever since I got onto the NuvaRing, I really only bleed four days of the week I don't have it in: Thursday til Sunday.

Ever since I've started my period, I've pretty much relied on my mom to give me pads for use. She owns a pharmacy, so I usually get them free. Sometimes I have to buy them at the last minute, but on the whole, I get a regular supply. Considering that I generally use one pad a day (I know this sounds disgusting to some of you girls who change like every few hours like they should be), I take a long time to run through a full pack. Fact is, when my mom packed me off with a whole bunch of pads in my first year, I still hadn't finished using them at the end of the school year and just packed them away for use later on. And I came back with even more pads, lol.

Anyway, despite many demonstrations on the durability of pads and the gel inside of it and all that fun stuff, the fact that pads were so disposable bothered me somewhat, especially since in high school, toilets would often be clogged with irresponsible nitwits throwing their used pads down into the toilets instead of wrapping them up (as is demonstrated so many times, you'd think they'd know by now) and throwing them into the garbage.

Reading up on sexual health and just general good care of my own genitals, I figure that the synthetic, non-breathability of modern pads just don't cut it for me. Sure, it's convenient, and I don't have to deal with all that blood, but still, having to set aside bags for disposal and dealing with the smell that comes with lack of ventilation isn't exactly what I'd call ideal. Of course, sites such as The-Clitoris.com, which I read for general interest at first, also influenced me in this ideal that the vagina shouldn't have to be suffocated all the time. I don't follow everything on the page that discusses vaginal hygiene, eg, I still wear synthetic underwear, and I love wearing shorts.

Funding is also another thing. It's one thing to have my family pack a shitload of pads all the way from Malaysia to me every few months, but sometimes I have to buy pads too, and it can get pretty expensive.

So, at the local women-friendly store, Venus Envy (one of my favourite places in Halifax, if you couldn't tell by now), reuseable pads are sold. A mix of terry cloth and cotton which can be either standard white or really pretty decorative colours, they have wings with buttons to be secured onto the panties. The brand I got is called MoonWit, and they're pretty colourful ^^

( And of course, mine are just darn cute. )

Downsides to reuseable pads? Well, they're still pretty new, so of course they're not popular. Then there's the fact that I'll have to wash it, but honestly, women have gone years and year just washing blood off their skirts - it's not really that big a deal.

I've seen how some girls treat pads - very gingerly as if getting in contact with the blood is going to give them some disease they'll never get rid of. While it's true that dead blood isn't exactly healthy to keep in contact with, anymore than with any other bodily waste, what can't be fixed by washing hands thoroughly?

I'm not very squeamish about most kinds of mucus stuffs within the human body, and I'm certainly not going to shrink from my own blood, so I'm definitely going to try these pads for my next period.

"I liked the little drops that fell into the toilet. Like paint." - I was 12. My Mother Slapped Me.; Vagina Monologues, by Eve Ensler.