the period pad minefield

After the shock of discovering that I was bleeding out from down there, I obviously needed to get on top of it.

Now, I knew about pads and tampons, but my knowledge on them was pretty limited. I had no idea that those two items stretched out into a very wide selection of different types, sizes and brands.

There didn’t seem to be a regular, standard pad for general use. I was honestly overwhelmed when I first walked down the women’s aisle in the shops, and noticed this whole section just for periods.

I got hit with all the brightly coloured packaging and the different pad designs on the fronts. It tells you on the cover what kind of flow the pad can absorb but how on earth are you meant to know if your flow is light or heavy to begin with? In fact, does anyone ever really read the front of a pack of pads? 

In my confusion, I just picked out the ones my mum got for herself to start off with, because I couldn’t be bothered to stay for long trying to figure out which ones were best suited for me. Surely, I’m not the first girl to take this approach!

There are a few other ways to deal with periods besides just pads, but I personally have never tried them.

Tampons and mensural cups scare me a bit, just the idea of shoving them up feels uncomfortable. And then you have the (very unlikely) chance of the string of a tampon breaking when trying to remove it, and though I’m not one to cringe or faint over the sight of blood, the idea of taking out a menstrual cup and emptying of out the blood sounds disgusting. I’d surely gag over either.

I mean… it is just blood, but this is different from the blood that comes out from a cut; only girls will relate to this. I’m sure that both these products are very useful and something you’d get used to over time, but I haven’t adventured to use them yet, and honestly, I’m still not sure that I ever will.