Category: #Periodically

  • Review: It’s Only Blood – Anna Dahlqvist #Periodically 25

    Review: It’s Only Blood – Anna Dahlqvist #Periodically 25

    Last week I attended the launch of gender, sexuality and human rights journalist Anna Dahlqvist’s book It’s Only Blood: Shattering the Taboo of Menstruation. The conversations on the night, between Dahlqvist, the founder of Bloody Good Period Gabby Edlin and the audience were interesting enough, but the book itself stands out as an enlightened piece of writing about the profound impact that period taboos, period poverty and poor menstrual hygiene have on menstruators’ lives.

    The book was originally published in Swedish and has been translated into English by literary translator Alice E. Olsson. Olsson was at the launch and discussed the fun (and struggle) of translating some of the menstrual colloquialisms.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/BjJ2uqLFo_-/?taken-by=baraliteblod

    It’s Only Blood is not a list of historical period myths, instead it’s a contemporary assessment of how reinforced menstrual shame continues to cause harm on a monumental scale. “Even though shame and silence are experiences shared by menstruators all over the world, the consequences become far more serious when an additional dimension is introduced: poverty,” Dahlqvist writes.

    The testimonies, many from school girls and activists from Uganda, Kenya, Bangladesh, India, America and Sweden, are combined with Dahlqvist’s research of UN legislation to highlight the fact that inaction when it comes to menstrual hygiene, education and resources means that many human rights are being violated, and yet, there’s a distinct lack of retaliation by politicians. The book is also coloured with Dahlqvist’s personal anecdotes and descriptions, which makes this serious book palatable – it’s rare to get a non-fiction book that you can’t put down.

    “Power over the period is a necessity, a precondition for participation in public life,” Dahlqvist writes, in reference to the serious social and educational issues poor menstrual hygiene can bring about. When school girls don’t have access to running water or locking doors, their options are rather bleak. If they bleed in public they’ll experience immense shame (the weight of which is only heavier when menstrual myths maintain that seeing or touching menstrual blood is bad luck), returning home to secretly clean and change a cloth at lunchtime, avoiding school entirely or hoping, at risk of infection, that one cloth or pad can survive a whole school day. Unsurprisingly, this has a profound and direct impact on their education. The book also explores how, contrary to popular opinion, these problems don’t go away as menstruators leave school.

    One particularly interesting part of It’s Only Blood is the connection Dahlqvist draws attention to between infections, like UTIs and Bacterial Vaginosis, which can be caused by poor menstrual hygiene, with HIV and HPV (leading to Cervical Cancer). Society, including period product providers, encourages menstruators to aspire to be clean and fresh while simultaneously not letting anyone around them know that they are bleeding. With all this shame and secrecy, it’s no surprise then that students in Malawi dry their menstrual protection under their mattresses or that in Bangladesh, one women hides her cloths in the roof, rather than drying them in sterilising sunlight. It’s a public health issue, why aren’t we treating it as such?

    Not only is Dahlqvist’s book intersectional in the stories that it tells, it also covers the intersections of menstrual hygiene with poverty, politics, commercial business and cultural and social stigmas. If you’re already active in combatting period poverty It’s Only Blood will spur you on and if you’re new to the discussion, the book will motivate you to join the ranks. Activists’ stories of feats large and small show how desperately change is needed, but also how in some cases, how little it takes to dramatically improve things.

    It’s Only Blood perfectly showcases how menstrual shame causes problems for everyone and why shattering the taboos will undoubtedly improve individuals’ lives and society in broader terms.

    Buy It’s Only Blood from Wordery by clicking here.

  • Period Product Reviews – Thinx, Clue Premium & Me Luna #Periodically 24

    Period Product Reviews – Thinx, Clue Premium & Me Luna #Periodically 24

    Having a blog of this nature means that I am regularly being asked “have you tried…” and the answer is often “yes”. I’m lucky enough to sometimes be sent things to try out, like Natural Cycles and Thinx, and more oftentimes I buy things out of genuine intrigue. Today I want to write a few short reviews about three period/menstrual cycle products that I’ve been playing with lately.

    Thinx – period-proof pants 

    Technically speaking, Thinx call them “period-proof underwear” but I’m British and I can enjoy that alliteration!

    thinx.jpg

    My first impression was, “they look bloody massive!” And that’s coming from the queen of ginormous pants. Honestly I think it was just because I’m not in the habit of laying out a new pair of pants for a photograph, but what makes them feel bigger is the fact that they are quite substantial. The Thinx site boasts of its four-layer technology including a layer of “moisture-wicking cotton,” whatever that means.

    I’ve heard a lot of good things about period pants and even more about Thinx as a brand itself so I was excited to give ’em a try. Supposedly they can carry up to two tampons worth of blood, impressive. Thinx recommend you either use them solo on lighter days of your period or as back up for a tampon or cup on heavier days. I tried solo on a lighter day first and was immediately alarmed by a smell. Am I doing that TMI thing again? Who cares. There was an odour that I can’t say I am used to, and it wasn’t like that sanitary towel smell you get if you open a draw of pads, it was an unhygienic and unpleasant smell. Funnily enough, I didn’t ask anyone to sniff me to see how noticeable it was, but it was pungent enough to annoy me.

    Rinsing them is no ickier than rinsing out a menstrual cup and after that you just throw them in the wash and air dry them. I was disappointed that after the first wash there were a couple of threads pulling away from the waistband but it hasn’t affected how they feel which is undoubtedly more comfortable than a sanitary towel. The next time I tried them as a back up to a cup and they worked really well. There was still a smell but not nearly as potent.

    Conclusion: I love the idea of having a totally waste-free period but I’m not sure I’m sold on period pants after this experience. I’m open minded though and as always, I think it’s a step in the right direction! Also heads up, it’s a US company and I had to pay import tax before I could collect the package, but this might be because I didn’t pay shipping since the company sent them to me for free. 

    Clue *Premium* 

    Well this is what they called it when I purchased it but that word seems to have disappeared now. It seems it’s now a “Clue Membership”.

    We know I love Clue. As a menstrual cycle tracking app I have raved about it since my second menarche (I know that’s not actually a thing). I don’t think #Periodically would exist without it. I’m even a Clue Ambassador.  I do wonder if what I’m about to write might get me kicked out of that club. I hope it doesn’t because I think part of an ambassador’s job is to raise any red flags.

    Last summer it became pretty clear that Clue were looking for ways to make money, fair enough. The app is so clean and lovely that it would’ve been a shame to see it riddled with adverts or if they’d started selling users’ data to third party companies. So they announced they were going to introduce some paid features into the app – Clue Premium. I defended the decision at the time. Clue has served me well for a long time, I was, am, happy to support the company in all the good it’s doing. Until I saw how much they were charging. In the UK, if you want to pay month-by-month it will cost £9.99 each month. To pay for six months in one go it’s £31.99 and for a year it’s £42.99. That’s bonkers. One of the main reasons I’m trying menstrual cups and period pants is to save money on my period. Now I’ve got that money back, I’m hardly likely to invest £40 a year on my period all over again. However, Clue promised that everything that was available on the app before Premium would still be available on the free version of the app.

    So what extra features could Clue possibly introduce to justify £40 a year?  When Premium was rolled out to everyone, it made itself known by sending notifications every now and then saying “you have a new Forecast today,” and when you tried to view the forecast it would ask you to pay. Again, fair enough. So I paid for a month. I was very sceptical, but I wanted to see if it was worth £9.99. The notifications stopped. Every time I clicked the forecast button I was told “we can’t see your Forecast yet. Track your health everyday so Clue can provide a personal Forecast.” “The more you track, the smarter Clue gets,” it told me. Let’s be clear, I input an incredible amount of data into Clue every day. In fact, I’ve just checked and the last time I didn’t track was in March 2017. I have tracked upwards of 20 different categories daily for over a year, and more sporadically almost three years. If Clue can’t create a Forecast from my abundance of data, whose can they?

    An entire cycle went by without a single forecast. I was ten quid down, nothing up and pretty pissed off. And then, a couple of days before my subscription was ending I got a forecast, and then proceeded to get it for a few days. At the end of the second day of my period it told me that today and tomorrow I could expect to feel focussed. That figures, it’s something I’ve noticed thanks to Clue and that I try to exploit. It had some interesting information about hormones and asked me to confirm if I was focussed, both good things but it was pretty anti-climatic.

    I reached out Clue half way through my trial to check I was doing everything right, they were as friendly as ever and explained that, “we’re currently working on improving the algorithm which shows Forecasts, so that it can pick up more from the patterns the user has tracked. Keep an eye out for improved forecasts (and additional Premium features) that will be launching in the next month or so.” Typically, the day my subscription ended there was an app update which included notification of your cycle going out of range as a new Premium/Membership perk.

    Conclusion: Maybe I need to give it a longer trial but honestly I cannot justify spending more money on an app reading data for me when the app makes it so easy to read in the first place. This might be the problem with Clue Premium; the free app is so good that it’s difficult to imagine what premium features they could make worth the money. Forecasting is an interesting idea, but as it is now, it is not worth £42.99 a year. I think it was wrong for Clue to charge so much for so little so early on.

    *Update!*

    Me Luna Menstrual Cups

    Me Luna is the only cup brand I’ve tried but it hasn’t given me a reason to look elsewhere.

    meluna

    I’ve talked about my early experience with a menstrual cup in way too much graphic detail, but I haven’t really mentioned it since. I started with a soft Me Luna cup and while I think it was right for learning how to use it and going easy on my messed up reproductive system, I was still having some issues with leaking and wanted to master the art.

    So I upped the anti and ordered a classic cup, which was terrifyingly rigid in comparison to the soft cup. And yet, since I’ve found my fold (#FindYourFold) it wasn’t an issue, in fact, it was an improvement. I find it never moves out of place any more, it pops open easier and I only leak when I am extraordinarily heavy, which is a rarer occurrence now I’m on the pill. I do notice my internal pain issues a little more with the firmer cup, but only on insertion – once it’s in there are no issues.

    On a slightly ickier note, this time I got a dark blue one and I’ve found that staining is far less of a problem compared to the pale cup of my past.

    Conclusion: I can’t fault my Me Luna cup. I feel like I’d already fallen in love with the art of menstrual cupping but changing to a firmer cup has only made me love it more.

    Let me know what you think if you’ve tried any of these products or if there’s anything you think I should try, get in touch: @Hilarysaysblaah

  • My Vaginismus & the Vaginismus Network #Periodically 23

    My Vaginismus & the Vaginismus Network #Periodically 23

    I had a different blog planned for this week but after a rather special evening on Friday I’ve had a change of heart. Today I want to talk about something I’ve only touched upon before – Vaginismus. 

    In #Periodically 18 – “Can I examine you?” – I spoke about how my gynaecologist had informed me that as well as the unidentified shit storm working its way through my womb that I had now also developed a “superficial problem” – vaginismus. But that’s the first and last time I mentioned it. Since then, I’ve turned the blog’s focus towards the hormonal adventure I’m going on in an attempt to resolve the internal issues. Given that #Periodically is a blog where I very graphically talk about the inner workings of my reproductive system, why did I stop talking about vaginismus? It was a diagnosis I was neither expecting nor knew much about, but when I started #Periodically I wrote, “I don’t want to write about it after the fact, because after the fact might not be for a long time. I want to write about it while it is happening.” The same is true for vaginismus, so let’s do that. Today I want to talk about vaginismus, what it is and how an evening with a group of extraordinary women at the Vaginismus Network completely transformed my feelings towards it.

    Vaginismus is the uncontrollable clenching of muscles in and around the vagina upon penetration. It can be compared to shutting your eye if someone tries to stick something in it. It’s a reflex, a physical reaction and not one that you have any direct control over. Most of the time it results in penetration, whether that’s a finger, a cotton bud, a speculum or a penis, being impossible and/or incredibly painful.

    The pelvic examination where my gynaecologist noticed I had vaginismus was painful and uncomfortable, more so than normal. When he said that I had vaginismus I was surprised because I don’t think it’s something I’ve regularly experienced during sex. I can think of one, maybe two occasions where I now think “oh, is that what was happening there?” It’s probably also relevant to note than this was nine months after I stopped having sex, for a variety of reasons, including the fact my deep dyspareunia (sex that hurts deep inside) was too much to handle, physically and otherwise.

    This means I developed vaginismus after having had normal and healthy (sort of) penetrative sex in the past. On Friday, I learnt that there’s a word for this too – “secondary vaginismus”. Many who suffer from vaginismus have never been able to endure let alone enjoy penetration, going overdue for pap smears and not being able to use tampons – this is primary vaginismus.

    My gynae gave me the news and said I would need therapy, physio and maybe anti-depressants. In reality he only referred me for therapy, which I started last week after a four month wait. I’m still not having sex but I have had the displeasure of noticing vaginismus on my own for the first time. Why? Menstrual cups! Just when I thought I had mastered them, something bloody well changed. There I was, cup in hand and sort of in vagina. As I tried to get it in place I experienced that horrendous, breathtaking pain for the first time since I last had an internal ultrasound or sex. I immediately removed the cup, steadied myself and caught my breath. When I tried again, lo-and-behold my vagina was closed for business. Rock solid and painful, nothing was getting in there. So it was nickers down, on the loo with a menstrual cup in one hand that I had my first personal encounter with vaginismus.

    Like I said, I have only just started counselling, so I’m at the beginning of a weird “journey” to discover why my body is doing this and how I can stop it, but I personally think that what I’m displaying is “harm avoidance behaviour”. My vagina is closing to prevent further pain inside – it’s quite clever really. There are of course other reasons it could be happening, from the whiplash I’ve experienced from surgery to ultrasounds (all of which have involved something entering my poor vagina) to something I haven’t even realised yet. It does add a further complication to my situation though. As my GP(s) and I concentrate on finding a solution to the internal pain worsened by penetrative sex, I now have to deal with the very real possibility that if and when I next try to have sex, it might not be able to happen. Man, that’s piling a lot of pressure on any future relationships I may have!

    I am lucky in so many ways. My vaginismus is secondary, meaning I know that sex can be a positive experience and that my vagina is, or at least once was, capable of opening. My vaginismus being secondary also means that I have a definitive time span in which to search for what changed to trigger my vaginismus. My vaginismus is apparently sporadic, or it only happens when there’s serious internal pain, meaning that most of the time I can use menstrual cups – tampons pose something of a different challenge, however. It’s likely that my vaginismus will be triggered by sex, but since I’m not currently dating or having sex it’s not a problem I have to deal with at the moment. I have time.

    On Friday I attended the Vaginismus Network’s first meet up in London. I didn’t know what to expect when I walked into the Sh! Women’s Erotic Emporium, but what I found was a room full to the brim with brilliant women who happened to have vaginismus. For most people there, including me, it was their first time meeting others with vaginismus. What was really empowering about the event was that as united we were with the spasming of our vaginas, everyone was completely unique in their experience, not only of the condition but of life, work and relationships. Vaginismus can affect anyone with a vagina, it holds no prejudices. For some it’s easy to pin point what causes vaginismus, for others it’s easy to speculate (like me) and for a few there’s literally no obvious reason why it’s happening, which can make recovery all the more tedious and complicated. Founders Lisa and Kat have created something incredible. As you know, I attend my fair share of female health related events and talks, but this was different. It was like being at the start of a revolution. Some of the ideas being spitballed at the event could be game-changing. It’s certainly spurred me on with that “secret” project I’ve been working on lately.

    In my very limited experience with vaginismus, the impression I’ve so far got from discussions about it (with people who have no experience of the condition or even having a vagina) is that it’s a case of women needing to relax, to lighten up or to be less uptight. Holy moly it felt good to bitch about those judgements with people who really got it. And the truth is, now that a few of us know that we’re not alone in our thoughts on vaginismus, we know that we have to go out and talk about it – otherwise no one is ever going to understand, let alone start researching the damn thing. Friday night saw a barrier come down, so while our vaginas might not want to open, now at least we can open our mouths to talk about vaginismus.

    My experience is new and manageable for the time being, but for many of the people I met on Friday, this is not the case. I am so grateful to have found a group like the Vaginismus Network so early on, imagine what could change if the same was true for everyone? A huge thank you to Lisa, Kat, the inspirational and hilarious psychosexual therapist Sarah Berry and the Sh! Women’s Erotic Emporium for creating such a safe, supportive and fun environment – you’ve already made a difference bigger than you know. Keep an eye on the Vaginismus Network – it’s one to watch for sure.