(Note:  this is not my Diva Cup.  Nor is it my hand.  It's just a picture I pulled off the internet.)

To the male readers of my blog:  this post contains descriptions of lady stuff.  You have been duly warned.  Proceed at your own risk.

I have to put a plug in for the greatest invention ever, one that I wish I’d known about when I was thirteen, one that has seriously changed the way I live a quarter of my life—the Diva Cup. 

I grew up knowing all about the facts of life.  My mother started her period at the age of nine, which is considered young today, but in 1963 was almost unheard of.  Not wanting me to go through the same experience, she made sure that from the time I could talk, I knew damn well what was in store for me down the road.  And whenever she and her sisters got together, they played a game which I call Gynecological One-Upmanship, in which they complained about who had the worst female trouble and childbirth experience. 

My mother always talked about how awful it was for women in the old days, when they didn’t have disposable maxi pads or tampons and had to use rags.  I never quite understood why this was so disgusting and horrible, especially considering she herself used cloth diapers on both my brother and me and shit is generally grosser than blood, but like most American junior high girls, when I did get my period in seventh or eighth grade, I first used disposable maxi pads and then after a couple of months used a combination of maxi pads and tampons. 

I’ve been lucky in that I’ve never had cramps ordinary Midol couldn’t handle or bad “female trouble,” but starting about a year after puberty, I had to use the Tampax Super Plus absorbancy AND a giant overnight pad for backup on the first day or two of my period, and had to change both every hour or two, and then I’d bleed gradually less heavily for another five or six days.  And the total cycle was only twenty-five or twenty-six days long, meaning that I had a little less than three weeks off for every week I was on the rag.  The gynecologist I saw in college found no abnormalities and said that my cycle was just on the “annoyingly heavy and frequent end of what’s considered normal.”  My options were to either put up with it or take the Pill and hope that would lessen things a bit.  Not being comfortable with taking daily artificial hormones to fix something that wasn’t really broken in the first place, I opted to put up with it and continued buying tampons and pads.

However, after fourteen years of recurrent heat rashes, after getting bladder infections an average of every other month, after realizing that I’d spent $200 in one year on “feminine hygiene” products, after a week of 90-degree Louisiana days with my crotch wrapped in the equivalent of Kleenex and Saran wrap, I was willing to try just about anything to make the whole experience more bearable.   (And this isn’t even getting into how much of an ecological impact disposable pads have—they’re worse than disposable diapers, simply because babies only wear those for about two and a half years, but women spend an average of eight full years of their lives menstruating.)

I have hippie friends who use cloth, and they pointed me to Many Moons and Lunapads washable cloth pads.  I bought some and figured I’d use those as back up for the tampons.  If you have never used reusable pads before, don’t believe what your mother said about the bad old days of “rags.”  The big problem with those was not the rags themselves, but the hassle of washing them in the days before automatic washing machines.  If, however, you have access to a covered bucket filled with hydrogen peroxide and cold water and a modern washing machine, cleaning them is a piece of cake.  The cloth pads are 8,000 times more comfortable and absorbent than the disposable versions.  (If you have a sewing machine, these are also pretty easy to make yourself for a total cost of less than a dollar a pad.)  No more heat rash for me!

But I was still getting bladder infections every other month, always during and for about a week right after my period.  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why.  So I didn’t use tampons for several months, relying solely on the cloth pads.  I didn’t get a single bladder infection, but there was the hassle of constantly changing/washing pads, plus the general discomfort and hassle that comes from having stuff dripping from your crotch for a week. 

And that’s when I decided to take the plunge and try the Diva Cup.

It looks sort of like an elongated cervical cap.  (Dr. Amy, don’t get on here and tell me that it isn’t really a cervical cap and doesn’t fit like one and can’t be used for birth control—I know that.  I’m just saying what it looks like.)  Basically, you fold it in on itself, insert it, and turn it so it pops open, making sure that it’s actually all the way open and that an edge of it isn’t hung up on the wrong side of your cervix.  It catches the menstrual blood, and when it’s full or 12 hours have gone by (whichever comes first), you empty it into the toilet, wash it with soap and water if you have easy access to a sink or wipe it down well with clean toilet paper if you don’t, and re-insert.  (You have to wash it at least once every 24 hours.) 

It is the greatest invention ever.  Instead of having to run to the bathroom every hour or two the first day or two of my period, I can go for up to four hours.  After that, I can empty it once in the morning and once in the evening, meaning I do not have to deal with it in the bathroom at work at all.  Unlike with tampons, I can use the toilet without having to change it for fear of contamination.  And other than a drop or two here and there the first day, it does not leak, making the cloth pads more of a security blanket than an actual necessity.  I found it online for $21.99 including shipping, and it supposedly has a ten-year lifespan.  It paid for itself in three months of not buying tampons, and there is no running out of tampons at some inconvenient time or place.

I will never go back.