To wonder why mooncups aren't promoted more as affordable sanitary protection?

[malificent7]

Mine cost £1 from ebay. It was from China so a bit of a wait.

As it is reusable, it would be good for girls from poorer families.

In fact , why arent they promoted in general??

I guess there are a few drawbacks...can be a bit messy . I would never wash them in a public loo sink but they dont need to be washed everytime they are emptied.

Tmi sorry.

That was not the taxpayer funding the Always giveaway at your school!

It's Procter & Gamble, owners of rhe Always brand, that do that. They donate sample packs to schools to raise brand awareness amongst adolescent girls, and preserve their market share.

I really really struggle with people thinking it is 'disgusting' Maybe because my line of work makes periods 'the norm' I don't know.

're cloth pads: they fold small with poppers so if out just fold and pop I a zipable wash bag.

I can't see moon cups taking off in a big way.

• Toilet cubicles are normally too small to be able to rummage inside yourself to change them
• There tends to be no sink in the cubicles so you cannot clean them and you aren't going to dash out with bloody hands to wash them and then run back in to reinsert
• Not everyone feels comfortable inserting things inside themselves

I also heard about mooncups on MN and dismissed them as a bit woo, until my periods changed after my last pregnancy.
All 5 days flow suddenly flooded out in the first two days. By the time I’d got home from the school run/arrived at the office, I’d soaked through a tampon like a baby’s arm and mattress-sized ‘night’ pad.

Mooncups have been great, I still find them a bit sucky to insert and remove, I don’t think I’d have managed it as a teen.

Toilet cubicles are normally too small to be able to rummage inside yourself to change them
You don't need to do cartwheels to empty them. No additional space is needed. If there's enough room to change a tampon or pad, there's enough room to empty and re-insert a mooncup.

There tends to be no sink in the cubicles so you cannot clean them and you aren't going to dash out with bloody hands to wash them and then run back in to reinsert
This just isn't a problem. You don't need to wash them every use and your fingers don't get that messy. All easily dealt with using a bit of tissue.
When you insert your fingers to grab the cup, the blood is inside the cup so your fingers really don't get visibly messy.

Not everyone feels comfortable inserting things inside themselves
True, and I wouldn't suggest they would suit everyone, but they are a very good solution for far more women than currently use them.

Women can sometimes get evangelical for a reason.
I haven't used mine for 17 years for the hype, I use it because it's fantastic. I rave about it because I was sceptical when I first read about it. I thought it was downright weird. Then I read more about it, and was other people's accounts that convinced me to give it a try. I think it is worth almost all women giving it a try because the advantages to your pocket, your body, your convenience and the environment are significant.

I bought a mooncup a few years ago and it's great. Love it and can't believe more people don't use them,
Saved me a fortune, is environmentally friendly, easy to use, it's life changing and needs promoting more, in my humble opinion.

In Africa, Zimbabwe in particular they are called butterfly cups and are being widely promoted as a way of keeping clean and able to continue normal life for poorer girls and women who previously managed with rags or shutting themselves away. They are a wonderful invention, I wish they'd been around when I needed them.

Sorry if I have missed this, but how do you know it is full and needs to be emptied? Obviously you can check but lots of people have said they don’t need to empty unless a very heavy random flow so can you feel it becoming full inside you?

Sorry I am debating getting one but not 100% convinced, long term tamon lover here lol. I do however get a lot of Utis after periods so maybe this could help?

Sorry if I have missed this, but how do you know it is full and needs to be emptied*

I don't quite know how I know but I definitely do. Even if it's in the middle of the night. I think it's a combination of it feeling full and of possibly it starting to feel wetter perhaps as there is a little blood leaking inside. I do also wear pads as sometimes I need a bit more leeway if I can't get to a bathroom (e.g. On a long walk) I think some people with lighter periods don't even have to wear pads.

I know they aren't for everyone but if they work for you they really are a game changer.

I would be careful about the one you're getting from China as it might not be made of medical grade materials where mooncup and Melina are

Because mine hurts like fuck to use.

Maybe part of the problem is that a company can't really give out samples, because the product lasts a lifetime basically. Now since you can buy you own sample for £1 this isn't really a big deal for most, but it does mean you won't get anything like the pad give-aways in schools mentioned uprhread.

vileyrose, aha that makes sense! Researching a few brands now. Any recommendations?

I do think mooncups might be trickier for young girls/teens. I hated using tampons as a young teenager; I hated the feel of inserting and removing them. It made me very tense. Not sure I’d have managed with a mooncup at 12.

Happenedforariesling - did you chop the stalk off? Mine was unbearable until I removed the stalk completely.

There are lots of charities that promote cup usage in Africa. Unfortunately they come up against a lot of political, religious and cultural issues that are irrelevant in the UK but totally stop the promotion of it there.

Btw pad and tampon give aways at school are paid for by the pad/ tampon company (we called ours the tampax lady) they’re samples, nothing More than a corporate community outreach programme.

Because it literally feels like a cup the size of the moon stuck inside you (IME)

Nobody is saying anyone should be forced to use a mooncup, just that it should be offered as an alternative alongside the other two forms of protection. Because mooncups are not heavily promoted, many women do not know that they exist or do not understand how they work. People who don't want to use them do not have to use them, just as people can choose between tampons and pads.

The whole 'who pays' is pretty irrelevant. There is such a huge environmental benefit to mooncups that it would definitely be worth the government funding handing them out to women. But even if not, they can still ensure that they are promoted in schools, including sessions explaining how they work and how they are used. We had the same for condoms at school and pretty sure that was not durex just handing out free samples. We were taught how to put a condom on because condoms reduce teen pregnancies and STDs so it is a good thing for people to know how to use them. Mooncups reduce waste and can actually relieve period symptoms and save money so again, it is a good idea for people to know what they are. Nobody HAS to use them.

As for the person who said toilet cubicles are not big enough- wtf. It's no different to removing a tampon- just that instead of the blood being soaked into absorbent material, it is contained in a cup which is immediately emptied down the loo- you don't even have to look at it. You hold the plastic tip when removing- you will get no messier than pulling out a tampon-string. It is beliefs like this about mooncups that make a public promotion and education system a good idea because it would dispel many of the myths that are around.

If you’re not squeamish about blood and can’t get on with mooncups I highly recommend these - very absorbent and comfortable www.amazon.co.uk/IntimateCare-Sea-Sponges-Mediterranean-Biodegradable/dp/B01N1V9DMV?tag=mumsnetforum-21

We had the same for condoms at school and pretty sure that was not durex just handing out free samples

You can get condoms free from family planning clinics. Birth control is available for free on the NHS, SanPro isn't

I remember my free towels and tampons were Always and Lillets, this was the early 90s

When I was a student welfare officer in the early 00s, I used to go to collect big boxes of condoms from the PCT, so there were always free condoms to access

then had to stop leaving them out openly in baskets in the loos because of rumours someone in the Catholic society was going around stabbing the packets with needles. Which was almost certainly bollocks, but we couldn't take the risk, so we had to change it so distributing was much more reliant on someone asking you for a stash of free johnnies

The tampax lady came to our school must've been about 95. We got a sample of minis, storage case & a leaflet (probably called becoming a woman )
It didn't work on me, I just bought whichever was cheapest.

www.always.co.uk/en-gb/puberty-education-programme-always-tampax

bananafish but the point I am making is that there should be a public education programme giving mooncup as a realistic option alongside tampons and pads due to its numerous benefits. If it's really too much to ask for the government to fund handing out free cups, fair enough. But why can't they give out information on them, just as schools explain about pads, tampons, the pill, condoms etc even if no samples are given out?

By the way, we were not given free condom samples at my schools. We were taught how to put one on and I don't think this had anything to do with it being free on the NHS. It was to educate pupils about the need to use contraception to keep them safe. Educating about mooncup alongside pads and tampons will also give girls a full range of choice of how to manage their periods and will be particularly beneficial to those who may not be able to afford to buy sanitary protections.

violet I'm not in disagreement! I'm just saying that's why the condoms were given out, because there's already a well established programme for providing them. I don't disagree that providing all information would be a very positive thing - just that providing free menstrual cups is unlikely to be workable. Completely agree that good information should be a basic requirement

I didn't start using one until I was 30. I wish I'd had one years earlier - I was always very keen to buy environmentally things but hadn't heard menstrual cups and thought washable sanpro was a step too far (I have some now). More information about them would have been great. They can massively reduce waste and save money in the long term.

I have a Femmecup now as I left my Mooncup behind in a holiday cottage and was too embarrassed to ask the owner to post it back to me. It's very similar to the Mooncup but the material is slightly different.

Our council gave us £30 child for using cloth nappies, presumably because it means less landfill waste for them to deal with.