I Kept Hearing About Menstrual Cups… Yet I Kept Procrastinating
For the longest time, my reason for not trying a menstrual cup was simple: familiarity, predictability, and the convenience of sanitary pads — the way habits often are, even when they aren’t exactly pleasant.
Let’s be honest — periods already come with enough baggage: the constant awareness of bleeding, the discomfort of it against your body, and the mental calculation of when the next pad change is due.
I got my first period when I was in 5th standard, and now I’m in my early 30s. Yet somehow, periods still feel… unsettling. People often ask, “Even after all these years? Don’t you get used to it?” And honestly, I don’t have an answer. Thankfully, I’m not someone who experiences unbearable cramps every month, and I genuinely count that as a blessing. But discomfort isn’t always about pain. It is the entire experience I suppose?
The Hesitation
I had been hearing about menstrual cups for almost a decade. But to me, the whole concept felt unnatural — almost too unfamiliar to even consider seriously. And this may sound strange, but somewhere in my head, I had subconsciously labelled menstrual cups as something for “modern” or ultra-progressive women — not someone like me, a regular middle-class woman who had simply grown up doing things a certain way.
But then comes a point in life when you start wanting to challenge yourself in small, deeply personal ways — beyond work, deadlines, and the endless mental load adulthood already brings. Maybe I was slowly growing out of my own conditioning too — becoming a little more open, a little more “modern,” for lack of a better word. Because isn’t growth supposed to look like questioning things we accepted for years without thinking twice?
Around the same time, I decided to learn swimming as an adult. It was something I had wanted to do for years, and finally gathering the courage to start felt like a small personal victory in itself. But then came another familiar interruption — you know what. Missing a few classes out of an already limited number of sessions started feeling frustrating because, for the first time, periods weren’t just uncomfortable; they were also actively getting in the way of something I was genuinely excited about learning.
And that’s when it really hit me. I already knew there was a way women swam, travelled, and moved through life without their periods becoming a monthly limitation. I had known about menstrual cups for years. Maybe it was finally time to get past the mental block I had built around them.
The Experiment
Like most first-time users, I didn’t jump straight into it. I first entered the research phase. And by research, I mean serious research! :P Cup sizes, firmness levels, brands, folding techniques, insertion methods, removal hacks, “what if it gets stuck inside the body” scenarios, sterilization, pros, cons, horror stories, success stories — I went through all of it.
Eventually, I settled on a medium-sized cup from Pee Safe. And thanks to Blinkit, it arrived within minutes — which honestly felt both convenient and mildly terrifying because now there was no backing out. But I didn’t rush myself. I let it sit unopened for a few days. If that’s what it took for my body and mind to slowly get comfortable with the idea, so be it.
But I was sure of one thing — I did not want my first attempt to happen on an actual period day. I wanted a rehearsal first. A trial run. Some time to understand what exactly I was dealing with. So one day, I gave my husband a casual heads-up that I might be locked inside the bathroom for a while and that he shouldn’t panic if I didn’t emerge anytime soon.
I sterilized the cup while re-reading the instruction manual, washed my hands thoroughly (with trimmed nails, of course), went into the shower area, got into a squat position, and attempted my first insertion. Naturally, it did not work on the first go. But then I paused, closed my eyes, tried to actually understand my own anatomy through touch, angled the cup differently, and tried again. And this time… it went in! A tiny, deeply personal achievement I’d say :D
Of course, the story did not end there. While the cup eventually did go inside completely, a new problem showed up almost immediately: The cup refused to fully open inside. Then again, had everything worked flawlessly in the first attempt itself, I would probably have considered myself a menstrual cup prodigy. So instead, I decided to celebrate the small win for the day, read a little more about what had gone wrong and how to fix it, and try again the next day.
Turns out, I had underestimated how high the cup could actually go inside the body, which meant I hadn’t let it sit high enough to fully open itself. So the next day, armed with slightly more confidence, I tried again. And this time, at least theoretically, it was a success! Took it out and felt at peace.
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Now all that remained was the real test — periods themselves. Because while practice runs were reassuring, I still had no idea how practical this would actually feel during a real cycle. But for the first time, the thought of getting into the water despite being on my period no longer felt impossible.
The Moment of Truth
I weirdly felt excited when my period finally arrived one afternoon. In fact, for the first time, I was actually looking forward to it — apart from those occasional moments in life when getting your period also comes with a different kind of relief, you know :P
I immediately ran to the bathroom, followed all the processes with surprising enthusiasm, and finally put the cup on for real.
A few hours passed. No leaking. No sensation of flow. No disaster. Except… it turned out to be a false alarm! Apparently, my body had simply decided to troll me that day. But that happens sometimes, doesn’t it?
In the meantime, though, I could feel a slight poking sensation near the entrance. It wasn’t painful exactly, just mildly uncomfortable. But then again, pads had felt strange and uncomfortable once upon a time, too. So I convinced myself this was probably one of those things the body simply gets used to with time.
The next evening, the wait finally came to an end. This time, I inserted the cup slightly higher because I had finally understood what the problem was the previous day — since the cup was sitting too low, its stem was staying close to the vaginal opening, causing that constant poking and friction-like sensation. But despite the growing confidence, I still wasn’t ready to trust it blindly, so I wore a sanitary pad as backup. By the way, later I learned that if the discomfort continues even after getting comfortable with the cup, the stem can actually be trimmed. Of course, only after being absolutely sure that the stem is the real problem because, well… once trimmed, there’s no Ctrl+Z for that.
A few hours passed, and the system seemed to be working suspiciously well. The pad was completely clean, while the blood was quietly collecting inside the cup exactly the way it was supposed to. What an unbelievably unnatural invention, I remember thinking. And yet, I was fascinated.
But more than anything, I was relieved. Because for me personally, the hardest part about periods had always been lying down through the day and night. The fear of leaking, staining the bedsheet, and sleeping cautiously instead of comfortably. So naturally, the real test now wasn’t walking around or sitting through the day but whether this tiny silicone cup could finally let me sleep like a baby.
That night, right before sleeping, I pushed the cup in one final time, took a deep breath, and hoped for the best — of course, while also wearing the longest overnight pad I owned, just in case. And for the first time in a very long while, I slept without constantly thinking about my period.
When I woke up the next morning, and got down from the bed (in standing position), I could feel a slight bubbling sensation — almost like the cup politely informing me that it was time to empty it. And when I finally reached the washroom, I was genuinely relieved to see that not even a single drop of blood had made its way onto the pad!
I sat down calmly, pinched the base of the cup to release the suction, took it out carefully, emptied the contents, rinsed the cup with water, and put it back in again — just like that. And strangely enough, the whole process felt far less “icky” than I had imagined it would for all these years. In fact, it was surprisingly simple.
The Shift
And with that, I couldn’t help but feel a strange wave of emotion — because suddenly, it felt like so many small, quiet restrictions I had just accepted all these years were no longer there, and that a whole set of possibilities had quietly opened up for me.
Road trips where I used to constantly worry about finding clean public toilets to change and discard pads? Not a problem. Trying to be consistent with swimming, even when my cycle didn’t cooperate? No longer a weekly pause button. Planning a beach vacation, but pads taking up more space in the luggage than clothes? Not anymore!
Environmental impact wasn’t what motivated me to try a menstrual cup in the first place. I was simply looking for a more practical solution for myself. But if that choice also happens to reduce some waste along the way, I’m happy to take that as an added bonus.
It’s not that everything suddenly became perfect or effortless. There are still moments of figuring things out, small adjustments, and the occasional doubt creeping in. But something has definitely shifted in the way I experience my own body and move through my routine each month.
And maybe that’s all it needed to be — not a dramatic transformation, but a quiet removal of something I had unknowingly built my life around.
Everyone’s experience with menstrual cups is different. This is just mine. If you are in a similar place — wanting to try but sitting with doubts or apprehensions — feel free to reach out. I’ll try and help to the best of my knowledge and experience. For me, it turned out to be one of those small decisions that ended up changing a lot more than I expected.
And if you made it till the end, thanks for reading :)
