My Lunette Cup Experience – Trying Again

I remember the first time I purchased my Lunette cup, in Montpellier France; I had heard great reviews and was in my second wave of minimising the amount of things I used on and in my body. I was also having a slight suspicion that perhaps, having always been a pad´s girl, the pads I was using were contributing to my cramps. I had started opting for organic pads, but they were pricer and harder to find when travelling. So, while shopping around one day for  new organic pads in a natural store in Montpellier, I saw the Lunette cup and decided to just go for it. It would of course be a few more cycles before I dared to give it a try.

My fears; 

My main fears or concerns, included the amount of blood I would have to touch but also hygiene. Since I was still in school and working part-time, I was scared of having to use public bathrooms to clean the cup out. ,.ewww.

There are some that say they only needed to change theirs every 6 hours, and some as lucky as every 12 hours. Now, I do not know if it was the sizing, the placement or the paranoia, but I felt the need to check up on it at least every two hours. You know, just to be sure that it was in the right place and all. It also took me a few times before feeling like I had put it in right. You can watch as many tutorials as you like but nothing beats trying it on your own body a few times.

I knew I had done a great job when there was no blood on my safety pad, but I was far too scared to go cup and undies only.  I mean, does anyone actually have that kind of confidence in their cup placement? What about if you sneeze? Or laugh too abruptly? No?

Where is the blood coming from anyway?

Okay, so I feel like I paid attention in biology, but it still didn´t turn me into a gynaecologist if you get my drift? I knew that the blood came from up there, but where exactly?- So I needed to roll up my sleeves and go digging for the source of the blood waterfall so that when I put my cup in, I knew exactly what and where I am supposed to be catching the floodgates. The times I took time to do exactly that, I felt like I got my cup placement well enough there and felt safe and dry. It does take a few tries before you start hitting the spot though, at least it did for me.

My cup runneth over

Another thing I needed to really understand was, how much blood am I really shedding per cycle? In the first few days, my cup needed a check up 2-3 hours. It wasn´t full every time but I just felt better checking on it often to be sure how much time I have between emptying it. It varies obviously during the days of flow, decreasing in time as the days pass. But at first, I was and still am surprised at how much blood or lining you/I actually shed per cycle,…

Sucked my cramps away?

Okay, this might sound silly, but I had this little theory, that perhaps one reason the cup helps with cramps was because it made it easier for the blood to flow? Like the suction? So your muscles didn´t need to contract to push the uterus lining out of you? At least that´s my theory so far! Also, I think just keeping my sensitive punani away from the chemicals found in conventional pads,I was minimising the cramps as well in some way- you never know..

One more time

Not wanting to buy more pads because of a number of reasons (organic ones are hard to find in Brazil for me as of now too), I have started trying to use my cup again and I was quiet pleased with the results. After such a long time, I figured it out easily this time  after a few tries rather than cycles. My flow was much shorter and much less painful. I was basically a fully functioning human, just with a secret party in my pants 😉 (btw that´s the nicest thing i´ve ever compared my period to,..#progress)

So far, I feel brave in giving it another good go and hopefully it only get´s better!

Hope you are blooming and bleeding peacefully wherever you are