Rebel Without... Well, Tact, I Suppose

Read at your own risk. This is more of the TMI stuff, but, again, I like to chronicle everything.

By Wednesday evening, my "spotting" was getting heavy enough to qualify as a "light period," so I picked up, for the first time in well over a dozen years, a box of pantyliners. Yuck. Yuck yuck yuck.

In high school, I had "issues" with my monthlies. I actually had black-out, sensory aggravated, body-wrecking episodes that would leave me curled in a fetal position, eyes closed, blocking my ears, and cold-sweating until they passed. This was in addition to cramps and very long, very heavy, very irregular periods.

For whatever reason, I guess because my mom didn't use them so it never came up, tampons were not introduced as an option. I used pads. The heaviest pads you could get. And very often, despite my feeling like I was walking around with a pillow crammed into the crotch of my pants, they would leak, and I'd end up with blood on my pants, enough to show through.

At least one week (and sometimes as many as ten days) of every month (or six) of my late teens and early twenties was spent walking around constantly glancing into reflective surfaces to check for tell-tale shocks of red. I stopped at every bathroom possible to make sure it was still business as usual. I had to wash my sheets a lot. I had to change clothes a lot. It was awful.

This changed quite a bit when I discovered tampons, so that was good. But it wasn't ideal. I mean, a period isn't ideal. Period.

But then, three years ago, I discovered an absolute miracle: The Diva Cup! (Cue angelic heralding.) No waste, no leaks, no running to the store at the last minute because I forgot to stock up. Brilliant!

So, now... yesterday and last night were both very much how I remembered high school. Squishy. Potentially embarrassing. But you know what I forgot? The smell. I won't try to explain it. If you're a girl with this same experience, you get it. Ugh. Oh, and getting up in the middle of the night, even though I didn't *have* to, just to make sure I wasn't going to mess up the bed.

Everything I have read says that you're not supposed to use a tampon (or any insert), nor are you supposed to have sex for two weeks after a miscarriage. What I've read says that you're open to infection because the cervix is dilated and all of these blood vessels are open, and everything needs to come out or you can get infected. This morning, though, I found something on an Australian website that said: "Many authorities advise avoiding tampon use during or after a miscarriage. This is because of a possible risk of infection although tampons have not been proven to cause infection in this situation."

Well.

If you know me, you know that was practically a green light for recalling the Diva Cup.

The more I read, the more I see that the risk of infection is if all of the tissue doesn't pass. But they usually clock that at two weeks, and it will be exactly two weeks from the time this started when we get back.

I cannot spend our travel day tomorrow going to the bathroom every fifteen minutes. I can't pack enough liners or pads to change every single hour, or even every four hours or so, for the next week. The house where we're staying? We can't even flush the toilet paper, so I really do not want to create a mountain of tissue of which the hosts will have to dispose.

The Diva Cup is the most convenient answer.

I am now treating this like a "normal" period unless something else happens. I think we're going to be just fine.