To wonder what the hell women do in toilet cubicles that takes sooooo long?

[Ashbeeee]

have always wondered about this when standing in huge loo queues.

I just go in, wee (or ahem you know) , flush and come out. Why the several minutes people? Is the entire female population constipated ?

I agree camel. There are some women who take ages and ages Note -honestly! Next time you're in a really long queue, watch - there will be one locked cubicle (with no noises emanating from within) and only after every other cubicle has been used 3 times over will the occupant emerge. Or - there will be someone in the queue who disappears into a cubicle and you'll never see her again, even though everyone else in the queue will be in/out/gone

I can flood through a super plus tampon, two super plus towels and into my knickers and through jeans in a space of two minutes.

Surely that degree of hemorrhaging would precipitate a transfusion?

Having just been to the loo at work, I offer another reason - loo roll dispensers where the sheets are so tightly packed you are either desperately trying to extract a wisp of tissue, or trying to deal with the pipe-blocking wodge that came out all in one go.

OOAOML - or trying to work out which way the loo roll is in its holder when the paper has disappeared inside it and you don't know if it is over the top or underneath! I can spend ages trying to find the end.

hmm I'm intrigued by those that think covering the seat in toilet paper is OTT, precious or germaphobic. The amount of times I have gone into a public loo and seen the seat covered in wee, or smeared with blood, etc. Gross! who would happily sit on that? wiping it is not going to wipe the germs away. And if it looks clean I always think, yes but did the previous person just wipe off a load of pee/blood/excrement? Some toilets have those disposable toilet seat covers, which I think are brilliant. IMO all public loos should have them, they'd save time and are less wasteful than covering the seat in layers of toilet roll, some of which falls on the floor...
oh and squatters you give me the rage with your splashing all over the seat! Presumably you're squatting because you know the seat is probably covered in splashes of other people's wee, but if you didn't squat the seat would be much cleaner!!!!

Happenstance

That was a very unhelpful comment. I hope you never go through what I go through every 25 days. Yep I do flood though all sanitary protection within minutes so do many other sufferers.

Try looking at websites for endometriosis and then comment.

Red - I must admit, I did wonder at that as well. If you're soaking that amount of sanitary protection every 2 minutes then how do ever leave the house? That amount of blood loss is truly staggering - as Happen says, that must be verging on haemorrhaging, surely? Has your GP or Consultant recommended anything?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenomyosis

Sir

I book my life around that time of the month. No holidays, no wedding invites, parties etc. I sleep on a bath towel over the sheets and get up every hour or so to change tampons and towels and live on painkillers for up to four days each month. I often vomit with the pain and have actually cracked a tooth whilst vomiting and I fainted and hit my tooth on the side of the loo.

I have had laparoscopies and am looking at further surgery now.

There have been many threads on MN for sufferers of endometriosis.

But if I do have do go out and need the loo and spend ages in there............forgive me.

I'm not as bad as Rad but I often get a day a month where it's better for me to stay home. I can go out if I have to but I might need to go to the bathroom every half hour or so to prevent an accident. At least I get my period over and done with more quickly.

Sorry, I meant Red not Rad.

Sometimes if I'm out for lunch/dinner I'll hang around by the basin faffing because it takes me roughly 30 seconds to pee. I'm in and out like a shot. I have to hang around because people always exclaim 'Have you been already?' So I feelike I can't go out straightaway!

Sounds awful - hope the surgery helps.

For me, it just takes forever for the wee to come out. And usually I have 3-4 spurts, each of which take a minute or more to get going. Sometimes I actually leave and have to get back in the queue as I realise I'm not done! A little distressed to see that no one else has answered this. I complained about it to Dr's when it started some 20 years ago, much lesss severe, and it's only gotten worse and worse, but each time I mention it to a Dr they seem to ignore it. Surely it's not meant to take that long to wee??

You know, I'm finding the lack of empathy on this thread really disheartening as well as the implication that faster loo users are somehow superior. As one of those inferior women, I'm not taking 'too long' on purpose to irritate you.

Please forgive me for my dyspraxia which makes clothes adjusting difficult, my anxiety around when I might have another chance to use the loo due to my upbringing wherein needing a wee was an irritating inconvenience, and, of course, my taking a bit longer due to having borne 3 DC.

I have MS. I take ages. I'm over it. You should get over it too.

Oh god, this has always wound me up. I've never understood what women DO in there. Obviously I know some may be constipated/have invisible illnesses etc but you can't tell me that all these women do. They don't. Some are just faffing about.

Your lack of empathy and support is sadly not surprising. I'll swap with you and your fabulousness any day of the week.

Sparkly I have ME and endometriosis. I'm not someone who doesn't realise what invisible illness is like.

I'm talking about women who are faffing without thinking of the massive queue they are holding up. Not women who are sick.

Perhaps we should all wear Tshirts or Id badges to prove we have a reason for taking ages. Or perhaps people should just mind their own business.
I hate waiting when my system is playing up. But I don't waste my time slagging women off for their toilet habits. I'm too busy managing my own and, if my little daughter is with me, trying to pretend that everything is OK.

Mind our own business? That's a bit much.

I'm sure that there are good reasons for some women taking ages in the toilets, but when you're desperate for the loo, or your child is (DD has IBS for example, if we're going to be competitive, when she needs to go, she needs to go) so it's only natural to wonder and think come on

God, you can't ever have a thread on here about getting irritated with people taking ages without people getting offended. I have an invisible illness and I am not offended.

Yet it's perfectly ok to have threads where people say how irritating they find it when people wear certain clothes/speak a certain way etc.

In a toilet with 30 odd cubicles and a massive queue, there is no way in hell that every woman in there has a problem that means it takes her ages to go to the loo.

I'm sorry that I don't know mumsnet etiquette on this. This is the first time I've seen a thread like this. My deepest apologies for being offended.. I'll buy the handbook.

You are following MN etiquette perfectly sparky. Like I said, the same thing happens every time one of these threads pops up. They're meant to be lighthearted.

Agree iam