Products for women that make my life a little better
As a 35 year old working woman in a predominantly male dominated profession, I am at a stage of my life that is not simple. But I still realize even as a fairly liberated women, who gives not many f*cks, it’s so hard to write about fertility or menstruation, two things that are indelibly tied to being human and being a woman.
I wanted to write about 3 products that are basically for women that made my life a little simpler. Good products are powerful because of the personal stories they enable at an individual level, and all of these products made my life as a woman a little simpler.
Our parents never had fancy fertility trackers, and probably never needed them. As an Indian woman, and someone who grew up in India, sex education was close to nonexistent. I can still not talk about my fertility or sexual health with my mother, or most women in my life. As we started trying to conceive about 2 years ago, it was really hard for me to track my ovulation. I had to pee on a stick and then read a chart, and then make sure I remember to pee and so on. I work as hard as any man, and the tax that womanhood imposes on you in many many ways goes completely unrecognized and calculated in many cases. Anyway, Ava is a watch that you wear every night, synch with an app and it helps you predict your ovulation days. I tried to synch it with peeing on a stick on the days and around the days it predicted my cycle, but on the whole, it somehow did not work for me, and neither did the sticks. I ended up seeing a fertility clinic and a doctor to get to my cycle.
I didn’t know much about my own fertility. I will confess, I did not spend much time thinking about wanting kids, I still don’t, it wasn’t a priority for me. So going to a doctor and getting an unending set of tests, seems like a LOT of work. But modern fertility was easy, I paid them, they sent me a kit, one morning, I pricked myself, got some blood on a panel, sent it back, and voila, in a few days I had a basic assessment of my hormones. It was a pretty seamless experience, and though I did follow it up with a visit to my doctor, I did this before I intended to see the doctor at all.
Last but not the least, and I think this gives me the most personal satisfaction, it was the humble The menstrual cup. This was perhaps the hardest switch for me in terms of a change in habit. I have consciously tried to move to reduce plastics and disposables in our lives, and the products I use for my own menstrual cycle seemed like an obvious place to start. It took me about 3 months to get it right though, in terms of using a menstrual cup and feel comfortable. I augment it by using the Luna period underwear which is fantastic. This combination of cloth pads and the menstrual cup together has helped me have zero waste periods for a year now. I also find cups much much more hygienic than using pads or tampons. There is no icky wet feeling and no blood just soaking up into something against my skin.
