An nice intro video on YouTube with an interesting cultural/travel idea fix at the end. :)

Does anyone know the capacity of both sizes of the Keeper? I'm trying to complete the size chart in the Wikipedia article on menstrual cups. Also, if anyone sees any errors in the chart or the article as a whole, feel free to edit it.

i saw this posted on another community i belong to, it amused me and i have absolutly no idea what to say to this...

http://community.livejournal.com/wtf_omgz/1786490.html

people think that re useable pads are a WTF situation? people defending tampons? weird.

So, like I've said before, I'm a visual learner. I poked around YouTube after reading the post that had the "Cup-mercial" link.

I found a "non-gorey" how-to video. I like it because she presents the pros and cons. She touches on how some cultures handle waste differently and offers alternatives to the conventional cleaning methods. I was SO glad that she touched on both sides not just pros.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAKpyw-R-po


Watch it, love it.

P.S. It helped me immensely!

Hey!

I thought this video was funny.... where did they get those props from? lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bElxn6fGgSI&feature=related

Just to let you ladies who aren't on cloth_pads know that unfortunately Randee has decided to close her Moonhutnaturals website and forum.

Which also means that the reviews section has closed too. We were organising for me to take the backed up files and try to resurrect it, however the files are 2 years old, and might not even be the actual reviews (just the actual forum code)....So I'm in the process of creating a substitute. http://clothpadreviews.makeforum.org (I called it clothpadreviews without thinking that its got other stuff on there too, but nevermind). So the menstrual cup reviews are ready and waiting to be done again. Insteads and Sponges are in the "other" section. Cloth pads are taking a while to list, but I'll get them all done soon.

Just an interesting fact. I just happened upon this site and it talks about various early mentrual cups and patents. Apparently, one of the very earliest (and possibly first) mentrual cups was called the Daintette, and was made in Middlefield, Connecticut. That's the next town over from me.

Does it make me nerd to be so proud of that? haha.

This just made me giggle.



http://youtube.com/watch?v=bElxn6fGgSI

I've uses my mooncup UK the past week and it's great !!!

no leaks
no mess
no pain
no problem with getting it in properly

i could hold it in the hole day   (but i know that has to do with how much blood you lose)

only with getting it out (and breaking the vacium)  i need some practice, but so far, for my first week, i don't want to live without my mooncup anymore !

I found a Dutch site : menstruatiecup
about all the differend cups, how to use, and all the further information...

So, I emailed Kuukuppi.com and sort of suggested that they include more info in regards to how to select a cup... and I mentioned this LJ... and now it's linked on their FAQ!
FAQ: Kuukuppi.com

How cool is that?

Two questions or I suppose topics for discussion.

I told my mom about my cup today, and we got into a discussion about her severe endometriosis which went un-diagnosed for many years. Tonight I stumbled upon this website http://www.mum.org/fdacups1.htm. which strongly suggests cups can cause endo. Everything she told me today about endometriosis does not seem that it could be caused, you are just born that way. The information does not line up with the study. Anyone who has had it, or knows anything, I'd love to read your thoughts.

Second, as a cheap college student I bought the cheapest cup at the cheapest price I could find, (although I was thinking going Diva before shopping). Divacup at Luckyvitamin for $19 or so. They had awesome customer-service (I combined my college and home address for the shipping add. and they re-shipped it to my real address for free) Why should someone buy through the true cup company? Why are they more expensive through the original company? Thanks!

:D

Hey there. I was looking for people's experiences with Insteads and found this.
http://www.postpunkkitchen.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=19033&p=2
It's basically this huge thread about menstrual cups. It reminded me of this community. We're actually mentioned in there as a really good resource to learn about them! Definitely worth a read for a less formal look at cup use and questions and answers for first-timers, since it discusses taking the cup out, using in public and stem cutting etc. Just thought I'd share this. Btw, I started my period tonight, so I guess I'll get to try the Insteads for myself soon. Using organic tampons for now.

Hello everyone! I'll start with a quick introduction: I'm 24, I've had my Diva Cup for two cycles, and I can't say enough good things about it! I love this community too--the posts here were extremely instrumental in my conversion. :-)

I've been dying to spread the word about cups to my co-workers--I work in a small non-profit office with more than 16 female employees & volunteers (and one man). The subject isn't necessarily... easy to bring up in polite conversation, and so I've been hunting for other clever ways to get the word out. I loved the suggestions I've seen in older posts for stickers, magnets, and pins--something a little more attractive and substantial than a piece of paper--but I was surprised at how few of these seem to exist, at least that I could find. So, I went ahead and created my own:

www.cafepress.com/cupactivist

I've done my best not to promote one brand over another, just the concept in general, but the size of the items really limits the amount of text and number of websites I can fit. I've tried to promote web sites that would be the most informative to someone who's never heard of cups before. Also, I've purposely kept the price markups low--my goal is to share awareness, not make a bunch of money. (Ideally, I'd like to make just enough to "decorate" my office and every public ladies' room in town. :-)

I hope it's okay to promote this here; if my shilling is too blatant and shameless let me know!

Hey, I just ran across this and thought it was cool :)

Teenwire.com is Planned Parenthood's site for teenagers. It has excellent accurate information on sexual health, everything from info on STIs to discussions of whether it's more difficult for overweight girls to date. I just noticed today they have a video called You've Got Your Period - How to Use a Pad, Tampon, or Cup! (I can't link to the Flash video, but the link is on that page).

I think that's kind of awesome :) I love that it doesn't try to push cups, but simply presents then as an equally reasonable option to pads and tampons. And it mentioned reusable pads too! I have some minor niggles in that the animation makes the cups look huge, but none of the other products look too realistic either, so I guess it's no big deal.

P.S. I highly recommend their 'How To Use A Condom' and 'How Pregnancy Happens' videos. Absolutely excellent site, and they just got even more brownie points from me.

this community got a nod from sasha of eye weekly's love bites! (free toronto-based entertainment weekly). i love sasha's column. she's awesome.

http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_02.22.07/fun/lovebites.php

Hey, it's me again. I'm still working on my alt. menstrual project for school and I'm at the point where I need to pick which products I'm focusing on for analysis. Obviously, I'm going to write a lot about the Keeper, but I've run into a little problem. Which site is the main website for the Keeper? I've been looking at both www.thekeeper.com and www.keeper.com. One is based in Texas and the other in Ohio. It definitely looks like keeper.com is the one I should use, but is thekeeper.com affiliated with the same people? I'm mostly curious because keeper.com, if it is indeed the site one I should use, doesn't look all that interesting for the type of analysis I want to do. It doesn't seem to be really selling the product in the way that the other site is. No testimonials, no smiling woman, a less "feminine-looking" color scheme. Sigh.
While I'm at it, even though this is a cup community, does anyone know the main site for Sea Pearls? There's jadeandpearl.com, which clearly distributes it, but there's also seapearls.co.uk. Is the latter just the UK version of the former?
Thanks a bunch if you can help me out.

Seeing as the topic of lubes comes of quite often, I found this really great site that clears up the differences between silicone, water-based, and greasy lubricants. It's very well-written and informative :) Hope you find it as helpful as I did!

Hello!

Feministing.com had a great interview with Madeleine Shaw, founder of Lunapads. I thought y'all be interested in reading it. I found it really inspiring and cool. It makes me wish I had ordered my Keeper from Lunapads instead of the private seller that I got it from!

Here's the interview right here. Rock.

x-posted to menstrual_lib.

The brochure I posted a couple weeks ago is now available for download. Go to www.menstrualcups.org, then click on "activism". It's there as a .pdf and as a .doc. Thanks so much, Kelly!

Remember that article about menstrual flow and the assertion that "women don't use a measuring cup to catch their flow?"

This article evaluated the Instead cup for such a purpose, as did this one. And even more awesomely, the women in the study reported that they liked the method. Score.

Also, the dioxin/tampon link is, according to this study, bull. The dioxins we should be worried about are not prevalent in tampons, and there isn't a difference between 100% cotton (hippie tampons) and cotton/pulp brands (ob, Tampax). (This one has full text available, if you lack access to PubMed.) Here's another study that talks about rayon, dioxins and unbleached tampons.

I found this article on Newsweek through a link on MSN's homepage and there were a couple things I thought people in this community might be interested in.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11103465/site/newsweek/

The first was on page 2 where it defines various degrees of "flow".

And the second was this quote:

To prove it was reliable, the researchers randomly recruited 31 women between the ages of 35 and 55 (all of whom were still menstruating and none of whom were using hormones) who agreed to meticulously save and preserve all their used menstrual products from three complete cycles.

Can you imagine how much easier it would have been if the women, instead of collecing their used products, could have just poured everything into a jar?

There's a recent post over at iud_divas which includes a link to a reply from Managing Contraception on the subject of IUD and menstrual cup use.

I thought it might be useful to add to our memories, or tags.