To Cloth or Not To Cloth?

It’s been about 3 years that I’ve been using cloth pads now. And I’m not sure how I feel about that decision anymore. It all started when James and I were in the beginning of starting our family, and I was very adamant that I did NOT want to use disposable diapers, I did lots of research and felt really confident that cloth diapers were the way to go.

It was one day when I was discussing my reasons with James that he asked me that if I felt that strongly about cloth diapers, why was I still using disposable pads for my cycle? And it was a really good question. I had never really thought about it before. I had friends that used other alternative menstrual products, but not cloth pads.

So I started doing lots of research and what I was finding about cloth pads felt really comfortable for me and it felt like it was the right decision.

The reasons being at the time, that I felt it was very healthy for me. I was having lots of problems with my cycle and I wasn’t diagnosed back then. So I wanted something that was really healthy, something that would allow my body to breathe naturally. Also because of the amount of waste that comes with using disposable pads each month, I felt really comfortable because I was no longer discarding any product.

My cycle is usually about 4 days and using 3-4 pads per day, well that adds up a lot, and I also thought that over time it would be fairly cost effective. Cloth pads are very expensive to start out but you only need to buy them once and then you have them for however many years you use them.

And it worked really well for quite awhile, but now it just seems like a whole lot of work.

I’ve tried many different ways of washing my cloth pads. What works for me now is that I have a wet bag in my bathroom that I put my pads into. When I finish my cycle, or when we’re doing laundry, I take my pads out, rinse them in as cold water as I can stand until they run clear and then I throw them in the wash.

So that means that now I’m literally standing in my bathroom for at least ½ hour rinsing out my pads. And it seems like a huge waste of water, adding to that the water from the laundry and it really starts to seem excessive.

In the past I’ve tried rinsing them after each use and then leaving them in the wet bag. But that leads to really moldy smells on my pads after I wash them and I am not at all comfortable with that. It got to the point that one of my pads, which happened to be the most expensive, had to be boiled with lots of vinegar and tea tree oil to get the smell out. I’ve tried soaking them for hours and that still didn’t help. I’ve tried just rinsing the yuckies off and washing them with the blood still in the pad. James obviously is not comfortable with having his clothes washed with bloody water, and I don’t blame him. I’m not very comfortable with that myself.

So I guess it came a head this weekend when in a little emergency situation I had to go and buy some overnight pads. My overnight pads that I have just aren’t cutting it, I’m bleeding through them ,so I went and bought a small package of disposable ones which I haven’t bought in years. These ones are from the brand that I’ve always used and they are new and improved and I have to say that I really really liked them.

They are thin as paper basically, and I felt like I wasn’t wearing anything at all. They are not made of plastic anymore; they’re made of really “natural” like material. Although I am quite aware that whatever it is it’s still not good for you but I just can’t see myself using cloth pads for that much longer if I can buy something that’s $5 for a package of 40 that’s going to last for months. And that are really super comfortable.

There still obviously the issue of me putting these into the garbage each day, but I’m just not sure how that weighs when you look at the amount of water that I’m wasting and the amount of soap that I’m using in trying to wash these pads.

So those are my thoughts right now.

And I just feel that this is really weird in that I’m doing lots of re-thinking of things that I thought were black and white before, especially because we’re relooking at a lot of the baby stuff in our life. I’m wanting to go healthy again because I kind of lost that and yet I’m just trying to make decisions that are right for me and letting go of all of these “I have to be a certain way to be a Mom” or “I have to be a certain way to be healthy” and I’m not sure that those are the same decisions for me anymore.