Tampon - is it for you?

As you know I recently went for a trip to Redang Island (click redang-vs-lang-tengah). Enjoyed my first day of snorkeling then I found OMG.. I gonna have my period...

Was praying for a miracle but bam! It came in full force during dinner.. What am I do???

I don't want to miss out on the 2nd and 3rd snorkeling trip for this trip but then I'm a regular sanitary pad person..

So I was battling between tampon - snorkeling.. when I ultimately decided that I do not want to miss out on the snorkeling since I come all the way to Redang.

And I was pleasantly surprised to see that the design for tampon have advanced a lot compared with 10 years ago.

How to insert a tampon

The tampon actually came in a plastic applicator. Trust me it is much much easier to insert plastic applicator than a plain cotton tampon. Less friction.

My notes on tampon:-

1) I was under the misconception that I can used ONE tampon for both snorkeling trips cos I thought with the tampon in, it will be sort of like "waterproof" but turn out water can seep in.. making the tampon full.

* * * * *

2) tampons comes in a few sizes. You choose yours depending on your flow. If you have heavy flow or during first few days, you use the LARGE (or SUPER for Playtex brand) ones but note that larger tampons means larger plastic applicator as well.

Which means it will be slightly harder to insert and remove than the smaller ones.

* * * * *

3) it is uncomfortable to remove too. I didnt know this. I expected it to come out easily.. hehe.. Anyway, the manual says find a comfortable position to insert it.

One position which works for me is putting one leg up the toilet bowl. This I find really helpful! Same goes for removing.

* * * * *

Being the only person in our group of 8 ladies who have not used any tampon, I was asked many times by them since I have used tampon before, WILL I CONSIDER using tampon in the future?

Well initially I was quite happy with the tampon until I found:-

a) I tend to have like a nagging discomfort in my stomach whenever the tampon is in.. this feeling goes away when I remove the tampon.

When reading the manual in detail, it state that certain users may also experience TOXIC SHOCK SYNDROME (TSS). Symptoms generally are rise in body temperature, low blood pressure, rashes, seizures, headaches (see toxic-shock-syndrome).

So maybe mine is a lesser syndrome. Not sure.

* * * * *

b) I don't like not knowing whether the tampon is full or half full inside. I mean with a normal pad, you just look and you can see whether you need to change it.

But this is not the case with tampon. You cant like pull it out and see and insert it again if it's not full ;p

Because I had a terrible case of overflow on the first night of using tampon! Not that I did not take precaution by using a panty liner.

Even the panty liner was soaked (ok ok.. too much detail, I know). I only used it for slightly more than 2 hours but the box clearly state that a large/ super tampon can be used for like 5 hours.

* * * * *

VERDICT for me:-   I'll only use tampon during trips which require swimming.

But it is interesting to note that there is an app for Apple to keep a monitor on when to change your tampons (click tampon-timer-iperiod-companion) cos seriously.. you have no idea when to change that thing!! :(