The Diva Cup
| August 9, 2009 | Posted by Issa under Uncategorized |
It’s an unfortunate fact that many women are bothered and inconvenienced by their monthly menstruation. It’s no surprise, though. Periods are expensive, require a lot of contraptions, are wasteful, smell bad, and are just generally annoying.
Or are they?
I used to be highly annoyed at the different aspects of menstruation. There’s a high cost associated with buying the needed products, and then you have to make sure to have those products on hand when you need them and in great quantity. I despaired at throwing away so much every month. The smell of menstruation on a tampon or pad was yucky to me. The sticky material of pads and the scraping material of tampons was more annoyance piled on.
Then I found the Diva Cup. Well, technically, I found the Keeper first, but it smelled even worse, and then my dog ate it. When I went to replace it, I found the Diva Cup, and I’m in menstruation heaven with it.
What Is The Diva Cup?
The Diva Cup is a small cup made of non-absorbent health grade silicone that it inserted into the vaginal canal and sits near the bottom to collect menstrual blood. The benefits of the Diva Cup are almost too many to list, but here are a few of my favorites. I feel like an infomercial, but the truth is that I honestly love this product to death.
Comfort: Since the Diva Cup is made of a soft, smooth material, it’s not uncomfortable to insert or wear. Tampons used to scrape up my insides, and the plastic material on the top of pads made my outer labia raw. The Diva Cup is completely unnoticeable when I’m wearing it, and goes in and out easily.
TSS Risk: The Diva Cup doesn’t absorb or block your flow. Rather, it simply collects it in the cup. This means you can wear it for extended periods of time with no risk of TSS.
Environmental Impact: The Diva Cup is reusable and lasts nearly forever. This means that there’s nothing else to buy and no landfill waste is generated month after month.
Financial Cost: You can get a Diva Cup for less than $20. And then that’s it. No more trips to the store at the last minute to stock up. I bought my cup for around $30 about 5 years ago. That means I’ve spent about 50 cents a period since then, and that cost is still going down.
Smell: Blood begins to smell bad when it hits the air. The blood on pads? Ick. Even the blood on tampons can begin to smell. With the cup, though, the blood is not exposed to the air until you take the cup out, meaning it smells like menstrual blood, of course, but not menstrual blood that’s “going bad”.
The Hippie Aspects of the Diva Cup
Some women worry about the mess with using a cup. The Diva Cup website claims you can insert it and remove it with no mess, and I mostly agree. However, it may happen now and then that you get some blood on your fingers This happens for me most when I’m having a heavy flow, usually in the first 2 days of my cycle. I’m a big hippie, and touching my own menstrual flow is hardly a concern, but other women might be more bothered.
The other awesome hippie thing about the Diva Cup is how much you learn about your menstrual flow when using it. You can see how much fluid you’re producing. You can see the changes in the color of the flow over the course of your period. I’ve noticed that sometimes my flow is very thick and dark red and other times it’s almost watery. I find this knowledge fascinating.
Overall Convenience
For overall menstruation convenience, the Diva Cup can’t be beat. It’s so much cheaper and so much easier on your body. I’ve found it easy to always keep my cup in my purse, so it’s always there when I need it. If you know when you’re about to start, you can even go ahead and put it in, so there’s never a risk of leaking.
The Paradox
The Diva Cup has changed my experience of menstruating in an almost paradoxical way. On one hand, my period is almost an afterthought now. It doesn’t concern me or bother me much. On the other hand, I’m almost more focused on it when it’s happening, because I’m paying more attention to the details of my flow, rather than trying to wish them away. It’s a good paradox, in stark contrast to the experience of so many other women: hating and loathing their periods while spending so much money and effort on them.
Buy a Diva Cup!
Go get your own Diva Cup! You won’t regret it. Here are a couple of links for you:
- Diva Cup, #1 Pre-Childbirth Cup
– for women under 30 or women who have NOT given birth vaginally
- Diva Cup, #2 Post Childbirth Cup
– for women over 30 or women who have given birth vaginally.
Enjoy!
You do sound like an infomercial, but in a good way. The diva cup is a great idea, i love the idea of cutting down on all the waste associated with menstruation. Loved this post.
You are right about the Paradox! Your body does not physically force you to pay attention to your menstruation, because it doesn’t hurt (no cramping for me, yay!), but you do notice your flow. Frankly, I had no idea how little blood was actually involved in menstruation.
@Olivia
“I had no idea how little blood was actually involved in menstruation.”
I had the opposite discovery! I can loose as much as 7 ounces, which is way higher than they say you’re “supposed” to lose. The first time I told a doctor that, she didn’t believe me. I said I was using a cup, though, and I can SEE the little measurement line and how much I’m dumping out each time!
Frankly, I had no idea how little blood was actually involved in menstruation.
Because technology often “solves” problems by hiding them from us entirely, we often miss out on the fact that the “problem” being solved is not actually that big of a deal in the first place. But without all these “problems,” what would be buy?!
I have a series of blog posts along this line–products that solve problems that really shouldn’t exist in the first place.
http://jackbootedliberal.com/tag/reality-has-jumped-the-shark/
I LOVE my diva cup and I have used it for five years now! I love to spread the word. I have found that it helps with my cramps quite a bit, and I can’t imagine how much money and waste I have saved from using it. Once or twice since switching have I needed to use a tampon, and my god, I don’t know how women use them month after month. Awful!
So this might sound like a weird question but, I was wondering, is it big enough that you could say, put it in at the beginning of the day, go to work and not worry about it till you got home? You mention that you might get blood on yourself, which I don’t have a problem with but I was wondering about clean up. Obviously you you put it in, you have your period, you take it out and you dump the contents in the toilet. Do you rinse it out and then put it back in or do you just put it back in or…?
A friend and I are thinking about getting one and this was the first question that popped into my head.
How long you can keep it in depends on how heavy your flow is. It holds a 1/2 ounce of liquid, which is about the same as the super plus tampons. I have a very heavy flow for the first couple of days, and on those days I have to change the cup a few times. Other women like the cup for just that reason – they never have to empty it away from the house.
Clean up depends entirely on your own cleanliness level and how much trouble you want to go to. When I first started out, I would take baby wipes with me in my purse and wipe the whole thing clean before putting it back in. Obviously, I’ve gotten a lot more hippie between then and now. If I’m out in public, I just put the cup right back in. If I’m at home, I rinse it off in the sink. In a public bathroom you could take a hand-drying towel into the stall with you. I don’t recommend trying to wipe it with toilet paper, though, because toilet paper just falls apart and sticks all over the cups.
I love the cup!! One advantage you didn’t mention is that if you’re swimming or soaking in a bath, the cup does not absorb water from underneath–and then trickle it out gradually after you’re out of the water as flow from above displaces the water–which can happen with tampons.
I have to use a public restroom at work, and I have heavy enough flow that I have to empty my cup during the workday. It is really not a problem to reinsert it without washing it.