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Why I switched to Reusables
I first heard about cloth pads was a brief mention of someone using cloth pads in an online women's mailing list. I thought the idea was interesting - certainly a good environmental choice, but I suppose it never occurred to me to look into it. A couple of years layer I was walking through a market and I saw a stall selling cloth pads. There they were, strung out on a clothes line, flapping away happily in the breeze. What struck me was the patterns and colours. They looked so cool!
 
Unfortunately I was with my family, and as we got closer to the stall and was about to have a good look, my mother realised what this next stall was and rushed us onward. The idea still in my mind, I thought about it for the rest of the day - vowing to look up cloth pads when I got home.
 
And so I did. Back then (1999) there wasn't that much I could find on cloth pads. A few sellers and websites talking about them. Being a sewer, I wanted to make them myself. So I found a pattern, went out and bought purple flannelette, corduroy and nylon, and some blue towelling (I couldn't get purple)... and set about making a couple of pocket pads. Unfortunately I wasn't happy with my first go. The pattern I used made pads too short for me. Undeterred, I created my own pattern and made a couple more. The nylon wasn't waterproof enough for me, so I bought a plastic table cloth and cut that up to make waterproof inserts for my pocket pads. Then I decided the pocket pad wasn't suited for me, and I made new pattern and made them as "All-in-One" pads. Finally happy with my venture to cloth, I haven't looked back since.
 
For me, the Environment was a large part of why I switched. Knowing how many disposable pads I had been using (particularly since my flow was so heavy and channelled where it shouldn't, that I often needed to wear 2 pads end to end to get enough length and put 2 pads side by side to get enough coverage at the back overnight. I was using a LOT of pads! The other thing that persuaded me to switch was the "fun" aspect of the colours. Being able to have purple pads (or whatever colour I wanted) was a large part of the attraction. Just like it's nice to wear a pretty bra, it's nice to have something nice in your underpants
 
After a while, I realised that I used to have pain during my period (a throbbing, sometimes stinging ache deep in my labia and an almost bruised feeling)... but I hadn't felt it for a long time. As it only happened during my period, I naturally assumed it was just a side effect of menstruation (I thought it was related to abdominal cramps). I realised then that I'd probably not had it since I'd switched to cloth pads. When I brought it up to my mother, I found out she had it too, but only some months. Which she was able to pinpoint to a particular brand of disposable pad. She had also thought it was "normal", but it disappeared when she made the switch to cloth pads. It would seem that we both had a reaction to something in the disposable pads.
 
It is unfortunately not uncommon for women to experience pain from using disposables
 
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