Why?

When I first heard about cloth pads from my friend Suz (who, as it happened, was a vegan, pot smoking, self-proclaimed anarchist with awesome black dreads that once kept a live turkey in her flat and I’m not even exaggerating) I thought “oh that’s just the sort of weird hippie crap she’d pull”. It took several years before I came to admit that they were in fact, more than just that. The main reason that I gave them a second look was that I started itching something fiercely during my period. When I switched from pads to tampons the itch was replaced by a dry, sore feeling. Which, I have to say, wasn’t all that fun.

So, I started looking for possible replacements, and found out that disposable pads are made with both bleach and various plastics. Considering that they are bright white with an adhesive strip I should’ve realised this sooner, but there you go.

Then I learned that (back then, anyway) the companies manufacturing disposable pads doesn’t have to provide a list of ingredients on account of them being “medical devices”. There has since been a few lists published online (Google is your friend!), and yeah, that list isn’t exactly happy reading.

I was broke at the time, so I made two pads from flannel scraps that I had laying around, and loved them so much that I went out and bought more (extremely cheap) fabric the next day. The feeling of being on my period without being itchy, sore and/or sweaty was amazing.

Now that I’ve used cloth pads for a while there’s one thing that I’ve noticed. I seem to bleed less into the pad and more into the toilet. I’m not sure why, but the pad rarely gets so full that the blood is pooling on the surface, and there are almost never lumps and stuff like I remember from disposable pads. That more than anything else makes me wonder if my awful, awful periods growing up had to do with my body reacting to the disposable pads.

And then we have the fact that pads and tampons don’t break down over time. They will always – always! – be in a landfill somewhere. Until the end of time. Unless you burn them, I guess, and then you got the nasty smoke from the plastic to deal with. Considering how many pads I used before I found out about cloth I’ve surely created my own little mountain of bloody waste. Ewww. I’d much rather toss in my pads with the towels and sheets when I do laundry, thank you very much.