Hello everybody! I hope you are all well today (unlike me, who is sick at home with a sore tummy).

So as I've mentioned to sweetrush, I'm working on a menstrual cup user's guide of sorts. As we know, the little booklets that come with the individual cups are a bit spotty and can have some instructions that are just plain wrong for some women (such as "if you can't rotate it, you're doing it wrong").

The writing stuff isn't an issue for me - it's what I do for a living AND what I do for joy. However, I'm a little concerned about the graphics. I have very little experience with them! So I was wondering if there are any graphically-inclined folks in this community who might be willing to help with this little project? I was thinking line drawings for illustration of cups and diagrams for insertion and the like. I'm planning on releasing the final product under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license, so you'd have to be cool with that.

On a sillier note... I've decided to name my Mooncup Batman, because I've decided it would be hilarious if more women called their vaginas THE BATCAVE. And then last night I had a dream that I named my cup Barack Obama, which is more than a little creepy. (THANKS, BRAIN.) So who else has named their cup something amusing? I know there's an Anastasia Beaverhosen in here...

Hi all :)

Lately I've been chatting to the various cup companies, which is a bit of a new development. It might be just me, but I get the impression that cups are on the verge of becoming fairly mainstream. I've certainly seen traffic here climb steadily, there's a profusion of new companies and products with a wider variety of choice, and it seems like everyone is doing good business. Mooncup are advertising on the London Underground and terrestrial TV for heaven's sake!

This is really exciting and it's making me fidgety. I've decided to put some more of my time into this than I'm already doing and I have a few projects planned:

• Turn the menstrual cups website into a really good, thorough, browsable resource


• Revamp this community's userinfo


• Sort out discount/affiliate links with all the cup companies


• Start promoting the website/community

Well, I'm prepared to put the work in, but I also need your input on some of these to help me choose what direction I go in.

Poll #1222051 Moar questions for you
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Firstly, how do you feel about companies posting here directly? Assuming they clearly identify themselves as such.

And what kind of setup would you prefer to arrange with them? 'Both simultaneously' would be ideal of course, but given the choice would you prefer...

If by some miracle we actually get money out of this, what would you like me to do with it? Assuming expenses like website hosting are already covered.

Are you interested in helping in any capacity?

If you're feeling a general desire to help but none of the above seems like you, then I would like to say... you already are helping. It's absolutely you guys who keep the community the awesome place that it is. Please keep on showing newbies the ropes, starting interesting discussions, and generally making this a fun place to hang out. Without that, this entire post would be pointless. It's appreciated by your mod as well as the posters you help!

Thank you all :)

I've had a very happy cup moment and figured I'd share it with you lovely ladies!

Hi all! I have a few unrelated things to say.

Firstly, to get this out of the way:

Recently I've noticed and had pointed out to me a surprising number of occasions when people are screening or deleting comments, and deleting whole posts. Please don't do this. This is a community. We are very happy to help out, but it's very bad netiquette to just get what you need and then disappear away with no trace. When you delete a post you're deleting other people's words as well as your own (which isn't fair), and it prevents other people who might have benefitted from being able to read and learn from what was posted (which isn't helpful). I can't stop people from doing this, but I would really rather you didn't. If this is problematic for you, for example if you want stronger anonymity, let me know and we'll sort something out.

And definitely don't do this if you're buying or selling. You will panic people and call your good intentions into question.

Secondly, and much more excitingly! Like purple_obsidian, I too got my Miacup in the post today. It's exactly as she describes - the invoice looks like it's a greeting card in disguise, and the box looks like a jewelry box! Lovely. They are definitely going for the upmarket sort of appeal, it looks like a real indulgence and something you wouldn't have any qualms giving as a gift. I wonder if the other cup companies will follow suit with 'deluxe' packaging type stuff.

Unfortunately I'm pretty busy at the moment, but I will do a post with measurements and pics as I get a chance.

Finally: I recently posted a loong post in my journal about what I've learned from this community about cups and why they're getting popular. Please feel free to take a look and stick your oar in, I'm really interested in any input you guys have about this:
http://sweetrush.livejournal.com/16406.html

Evening all. How do you ladies go about discussing menstrual cups with those you know, and perhaps converting them?

( My epic struggle... )

I know others have some great success stories in converting others to cups. I wish I could bring some friends over too! :)

For those of you who use Stumble Upon, it might be a helpful idea to go to the various cup websites (or even this comm / other cup-related websites) and give them a thumbs up. Maybe some people will find out about cups if information comes up as a stumble for them.

Okay, so anyone getting the Mooncup news letter knows about this, however it does not hurt to pass the message on to those who don't have the news letter. A good little one for those of us in the UK, just copy and paste the sample letter, change as you see fit, and send off to your local MP using www.writetothem.com to search on your UK post code. A quick little piece of action that could make some difference.

X-posted to menstrual_lib and menstrual_cups

Jo Swinson, MP, is calling for the Government to encourage use of reusable sanitary protection in an Early Day Motion. Early day motions (EDMs) are formal motions submitted for debate in the House of Commons and are useful in drawing attention to specific events or campaigns and for demonstrating the extent of parliamentary support for a particular cause or point of view. The massive surge in awareness of real nappies over the past few years is, in part, thanks to similar Early Day Motions bringing the issues around disposable nappies to the attention of the Government. Jo Swinson's EDM is an important first step in putting reusable sanitary protection on the political agenda. You can help in this process by emailing your MP and asking them to sign the Motion. For a sample letter, contact details for your MP and to read the Motion please click here.

Following on from this recent post about ways of treating yeast infections, I wondered whether anyone could recommend the UK brand names of probiotics that can be taken vaginally and have proved effective.  The brand names in the linked post include Jarro-Dophilus, FemDophilus and Accuflora, but I've not been able to find them in the UK.

I managed to reach 40 years old without ever having a yeast infection, but have been very stressed and now have had a chronic one on and off for the past 6 months and am reaching my wits end with the over-the-counter treatments.  I find that it clears up during my period (the ph balance alters) but within a week or so it is back (I've been professionally diagnosed that it is thrush).  I may try the raw garlic cure, but I'm very sensitive to garlic and I'm not sure it'll be suitable for me.

Many thanks for any advice.  I've found these tablets Vagiclear by Higher Nature - has anyone tried them and found them to be beneficial?

On another topic, the Summer edition of the Mooncup UK Newsletter has details of an Early Day Motion about reusable sanitary products that is being brought before the House of Commons to raise awareness.  Those of us in the UK can support this by emailing our MPs and asking them to sign the Motion.  Mooncup UK have full details and a sample letter and details of how to contact your MP at the link above. 

I play a dorky game called horseland.com....
and this is the mini news for dorky little shows,
and well it's pretty self explanatory.


andddd some good news:
I put another post on menstrual cups on a kotex website for gals,
and I've had a lot of people look at it!
It makes me glad that I posted it. =]
There are over 400 viewings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YAYNESS.

A few weeks ago I put one of the menstrual cup posters with the pull off tabs in a bathroom stall at school.
I went back yesterday, and all the tabs were gone :)

And this was just one stall in one bathroom...so I think I'll be putting up more soon.

The other day I went to the Kroger pharmacy to pick up my son's prescription. On a whim, I grabbed one of those free-bee magazines on their counter. Mostly, I got it because it had recipes in it that looked good. I flipped through it tonight, and look what I found in the back!

( YAY! )

How exciting is that? Especially in a pharmacy free-bee! Maybe the idea will catch on and eventually cups will be being sold in the feminine hygiene isle instead of all those dreaded tampons.. :)

Mods, please feel free to delete this if you find it spammish, but I'm trying to get together a (free) menstrual online magazine, and we will be featuring articles and information on menstrual cups among other things.... so we're looking for contributions of articles and other content... perhaps stories about people's experiences with cups, how they found out about them (how they are so much better than tampons :)) and so on.

We're still in the planning stage, but we have a community where we're discussing this, so if anyone is interested, please come over and check it out. :)
http://community.livejournal.com/vermilion_mag

Apologies for those seeing this more than once.

Alright... I know that one of the reasons women switch to reusable menstrual products is the benefit to the environment. We then go on to realize that they're also safer, less expensive in the long run, and a lot more comfortable once we actually start using them. And then we start to wonder why other women haven't heard of/considered these options, etc. But I think a lot of us were drawn in by the environmentally friendly element.

On that note... I'm kind of a community service geek; I love helping out and volunteering and being an activist. So last week on one of my mailing lists I got a request asking me to help out at something called Go Green Expo 2008. I'll admit that my lifestyle isn't completely earth-friendly and sustainable (being a busy and broke college student can lead one to be rather complacent and wasteful... sigh. I'm trying to be better, I promise) but switching to using a cup and cloth pads has definitely led to a raised consciousness and a personal desire to be nicer to the environment. So, naturally, I wondered whether there were any Cup or Cloth Pad manufacturers coming to the Expo. A quick search revealed none. I thought that was weird, and wondered if maybe they would allow volunteers to give out homemade pamphlets, but that didn't seem to fit in with their professional "expo" atmosphere.

I went from the Expo site to a site called The Green Guide. There I found lots of posts denouncing the wastefulness of paper napkins, but zero on the wastefulness of sanitary napkins. No coverage of alternative menstrual products on either website. There were many mentions of reusable diapers, but nothing even remotely related to reusable menstrual products. Why is this? Is menstruation (something completely normal that every women goes through) still too taboo to talk about, even on a "progressive" website? There may have been one or two mentions of organic tampons and pads, and that's a start, but aren't those wasteful, too? It really aggravated me.

I'd thought about e-mailing Lunapads or GladRags or a couple of Cup manufacturers, and then asking them if they want to contact these sites and let them know about their products, but I don't want give the advantage to one brand (I know that's what bothers a lot of cup users about those of us who like to "evangelize.") But I would like to get some other opinions, because this is really bothering me. Why is it "cool to go Green" but not OK to promote reusables? What can we do to change this?

If any of you would like to contact the people at those websites and suggest they do a piece on reusable menstrual products, you can try looking here and here, for starters. If anyone has a better idea, please share.

Cross-posted to cloth_pads and menstrual_cups

I was on the tube earlier (that's the London subway, for Americans and other aliens) and I saw a Mooncup advert :) It read "No wings, no string, no gimmiky things" and had some details at the bottom. And it had a picture of a tampon in a museum case saying something like "exibit number" then a picture for the Mooncup. Bad description, but nicely designed and clear, and I was very happy to see it :)

Hello all,

I've been a lurker here for a few weeks, and I decided that, hey,  it seems to be time to give myself a little introduction.

Well, I'm a 22 year old Woman, and I finally got around to buying my Diva cup this morning! I used Lucky Vitamin.Com
Such a good price as well!  12 dollars off of the Retail Price..


I lived with two women who had them, and I've used it before, with fantastic results.. Although, I prefer to use the larger size (one of the perks of living with two women of different ages, they had one of each)
I find that the larger size is less prone to leakage for me.

I did have a keeper at one point.. but i didn't even get to use it, because in the dry run it made my lady parts itchy and irritated after only 10 minutes  (we think i am allergic to the latex).

I am just SO glad that I finally got around to buying one of my very own.. (thank God)

My mother and my sister are both like, "oh how GROSS!! why would you stick that thing up inside you to catch blood?!?!?!?!"

I just laughed, and said,"Well, you stick tampons up in there, Don't you? and what, have to take them out every 2 hours?Mine i don't have to empty for at least 5, sometimes even 12.. and mine has no waste that fills our landfills, or clogs our sewer pipes."


I want to go to the local high school and, promote the idea of the diva cup.. but i don't know how to go about it.. Has anyone done it before?
I used to be the Student assistant in my health class the final year of school, and the teacher still seems to be teaching..

Does it seem like a horrible idea? or do you think that it would be a good one?

After getting a cup myself, I told people at my company that we needed to do a page on them.

Here's our page on menstrual cups!

Check out the links and the guide note on the right. Recommend links we missed! Use the message boards to talk about the menstrual cups, your experiences, and basically tell everyone how awesome a cup is!

I'm really glad we wrote this, and I hope y'all like it.

I had emailed Diva Cup with an inquiry, and in their return email, they also mentioned this:

Watch for us in Cosmo, Shape, Yoga Journal, Natural Health, Vegetarian Times and more this Spring!

How exciting is it that magazines like Cosmo are finally catching on!! I'll definitely check it out. If anyone sees the article before I do, please do post the vol/pg number on here!

Hey everyone!

THis post doesn't really have much of a point, except to say that I am so very excited about the fact that menstrual cup use seems to be growing in popularity!

When I first got my diva cup over a year ago, i came to this page pretty much every day to pick up little tips and tricks. I've had almost no problems with my cup, so I haven't been back in a while. Well, right now, I should be studying for a midterm, so I'm obviously surfing the internet, and I see that there are 2 new brands of menstrual cups on the market! I think this is awesome, as it seems to me that manufacturers must be thinking that they can break into an expanding market.

Since I've started using a cup, I've convinced 4 friends to buy one, just because I'm always talking about how amazing it is. (especially the first few months. I was soooo happy not to be using tampons/pads/panty liners anymore) And it seems to me like I come across people who know what menstrual cups are a lot more often than I used to. This is a big deal to me, because a year and a half ago, I had never even heard of menstrual cups!

Anyway, this is basically just a lot of random gushing, but honestly, it pleases me to no end to see more women considering more eco-friendly (and body friendly!) menstrual products!!

Yay!

Hello all,
I was wondering how did you tell your adult friends, or high school friends about menstrual cups?
My adult friend, well,we're really close (she's basically a mom to me), but I have no idea how I can tell her that there are alternatives out there for feminine care.
I know all she uses are pads,and I just don't know how to tell her.


It's like, I don't want her thinking "oh she's crazy looking up stuff like this." type of thing....
but at the same time I want to tell her.


But how to?


Thankssss. =]

Ok, so I finally, finally FINALLY got my period, after almost 6 months of waiting!!! I went off the pill in October, and haven't had a period still. Yes, super frustrating!!

Anyhow, my period started yesterday, and I have to say, I'm having a MAJOR love affair with this cup! It's beyond fantastic. It's easy, clean (yes, CLEAN!), and sooo comfortable. There have literally been no leaks, and no cramps, and no discomfort so far, which is beyond unbelievable. I have been using cloth liners, which have not got anything on them, so they're virtually useless....the Divacup is THAT amazing!

Why did I spend 14 years of my life using stupid pads and tampons????

I wish that there was a way to advertise this better, and to also get rid of the misconceptions that people hold about this. I had one person be all grossed out today when she heard "cup" and "collecting menstrual fluids"- ewwww, I was weeeeeeird!! I don't get it. People use tampons all the time, which also "collect menstrual fluids", but also contribute to cramps and discomfort. How is the cup so different?? Personally, I think it's muuuch more sanitary. (especially considering that tampon strings can get caught anywhere...and it's not sanitary!)

Have there been stickers designed to put in bathroom stalls? If there are, I want to spread them far and wide- everyone should know about this!! I was talking to my sister today- I also converted her, and she's also majorly in love, and we were wondering why more people don't know. She said that if this were better marketed, pad and tampon companies would go down, and since they're multi billion dollar industries, they're never going to let that happen.

I guess word of mouth is the way to go. But man, seriously. Amazing! The best thing EVER invented!!!!

Hey all. I'm new here and relatively new to using a cup: I bought my Diva last year, but put off actually using it until a few cycles ago. I've never been entirely comfortable with menstruation, for many reasons, but I've found that using a Cup is helping me to get over it. So now that I love my Cup, as a naturally passionate person, I want to find a way to spread that love.

So I've been thinking about it, and while word of mouth amongst friends is great, I've been thinking about getting rid of leftover disposables and spreading the word at the same time. I know that in some college dorms and even in some apartment buildings, they'll set up a "free box" where people can put clothes and stuff they don't want anymore for someone else to take. So maybe those of us who have something resembling a free box, or live in the type of building that would be conducive to having a free box, could arrange little bundles of free tampons with little brochures wrapped around them. Or maybe we could leave a box on top of tampon machines in public restrooms at school or at work, because those stupid things are always empty anyway. But it would be a good way to do good as well as spread the word.

So, does anyone think this could work? Or does anyone have any better ideas? Or cute little pamphlets, brochures, or stickers to put with them? I'm not really the visual-artist crafty type, so maybe someone who is that type can come up with a more specific plan of how to combine the two. Thanks!

Hello!
I've seen the commercials and now I've come across the website for Tampax and Always' "Protecting Futures" campaign.
http://www.protectingfutures.com/home.jsp
Just out of curiosity, what are your opinions of this effort?

Quote:
"How we're protecting futures

What if you couldn't go to school when you had your period? As amazing as it may seem in the 21st century, that's the reality for some girls in Southern Africa.

Tampax and Always are doing something to help protect those girls' futures. In partnership with the United Nations Association of the USA's HERO campaign, we established the Protecting Futures program.

Your purchase of Tampax or Always helps us donate $1.4 million through 2008 to the United Nations Association's HERO campaign to help provide feminine protection and education to girls in Southern Africa. That money will be used to provide health, hygiene and puberty education. It's also going into building classrooms, toilets, wash stations and dorms. And it's being used to provide the students with meals and clean water. In addition, we'll be providing pads to these girls to help them not miss school when they get their period."

Reactions?

(cross-posted: cloth_pads, menstrual_cups, menstrual_lib)

 

link for video is here
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vAKpyw-R-po

WooHoo!  

Last Monday I put up one of the posters that you can print out from the publicity section on menstrualcups.org (this community) just changing the font to something more girly, and adding "No leaks or messes ever again!  Yay!" to it.  I stuck it in on of the stalls in a public high school washroom (I don't go to the school, I homeschool, but anyway) and this week when I went back, I checked and ALL BUT THREE of the little tabs were gone!  Oh yeah...makes me proud.  

So girls, this thing is getting out there, fast!  I encourage you to print out and cut up a couple of those posters, stick them in your purse with a roll of tape, and next time you use a public washroom, you know what to do.  Get the word out!

Sharin' the joy. :D

God bless,
Sheila