Pads and tampons, ladies how did you learn

Its actually pretty easy to figure out on my own once i was given a pad, i was more annoyed by my mom keeps helping and teaching me nonstop when im not even in the mood for listening

I use pads. I read instructions on the box. I was clumsy so couldn't fit it with the panty. Next day I asked my classmate. I had heard her talking something about “period” and “bleeding”. The bleeding wasn't much till then. Luckily it just stained my panty and not my pants. Next day when bleeding increased I was prepared. But that stupid classmate spread the news in whole class that I don't know how to use a pad. All the other girls gossiped about me. Though I am sure most of them also needed help with this. I cried rest of the day in school. Didn't go to school for next few days out of embarrassment

My mother showed me about pads, but they were the old school belted kind. My sister showed me the more modern adhesive ones that were new. My cousin Jane told me about tampons a few months later, yeah she actually had to help me put one in the first time which wasn’t intended to be sexual but was anyway. Once I discovered tampons I never went back.

My older sister showed me how to use pads as I was to embarrassed to ask mom. At the time of my fist period I was enrolled in swim classes and two days later I had a lesson so I had no choice but to tell mom and ask what to do. That is when I learned what a tampon was and mom put it in for me I started practicing and was doing it my self by the end of my first period

@Rosefeild Did you feel compelled, even coerced, to use tampons to have these swimming lessons?

@Pecan_nutjob during the lessons yes. I still hate tampon’s too this day and prefer pads

No one ever told me about periods, so when I started mine I thought that I was dying. Catholics 🙄🤷🏼‍♀️😂 I tried to hide it the best I could and just accepted that I was probably going to drop dead. My mom saw some blood on my clothes a couple times and I couldn't keep saying it was from a bloody nose. She finally pointed to her vagina and asked me if it came from "down there" and I said yes. She told me that I had started my period and would need to wear maxi pads and gave me this giant cereal sized box of them. She showed me one time how I was supposed to put a pad in my underwear and dispose of the old one. She never explained anything about what a period was, but she did give me this book called Period. I was mortified about that book and I slipped it behind this massive oak bookcase that was at our house. It was a few years later when my sister started her period and my mom wanted to know where the Period book was, but I wasn't telling her what I had done with it. My sister probably had the same scary period experience that I had.

I have a bit of nostalgia for those big, vintage boxes of maxi pads. I actually got one a few years back and keep it unopened indiscriminately underneath my sink cabinet in the bathroom 😊

No one ever told me about periods, so when I started mine I thought that I was dying. Catholics

Didn't you even get a however much reduced and redacted basic sexual ed class in school? Explaining about periods for young ladies would be the very bare minimum you would expect them to consist of.

@agracier there was never any sex ed at the Catholic school that I went to, but I was only in the 4th grade at the time so I'm not sure I even understood what sex was. My parents also never talked to me once about sex or any type of body thing that was related to sex.

I always used tampons. The instructions were on the box. It was easy to do. The things are easy to carry around. No panties are required.

there was never any sex ed at the Catholic school that I went to, but I was only in the 4th grade at the time so I'm not sure I even understood what sex was. My parents also never talked to me once about sex or any type of body thing that was related to sex.

But what about other schools later, when you were older in higher grades? Did none of them give any kind of sex ed courses, even if they weren't Catholic schools?

I would think it doesn't matter what kind of school a school professes itself to be, sex ed should be a universal requirement at some point, however rudimentary and basic.

Btw: my parents never talked about sex to me either, except for my father giving me boxes of condoms whenever he came back from overseas, telling me to better use them and not get anyone pregnant and thereby ruin both our lives. And his harping about circumcision, but that wasn't so much sex on his part as disease and infection.

@agracier

But what about other schools later, when you were older in higher grades? Did none of them give any kind of sex ed courses, even if they weren't Catholic schools?

I've never had a sex ed course ever, not even in high school. In high school I did have a health class, but the only sex ed aspect was that the teacher talked about STDs and showed us graphic pictures on a projector of penises and vaginas that had STDs. I finally got an explanation about what sex was from two girls from Beverly Hills at Catholic summer camp during elementary school.

I would think it doesn't matter what kind of school a school professes itself to be, sex ed should be a universal requirement at some point, however rudimentary and basic.

I completely agree with you. Education is a good thing and everyone should have it. The only explanation that I can think of is: Catholics 🙄🤷🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️😵🪦

Maybe things are different now as I was in high school in the 1990s.

I think that not having any sex ed was probably not a good thing. I think the lack of education made it hard for me to do things like go to the gynecologist and I avoided going for a long time. I never had any guidance about what I was supposed to be doing. In addition to that, my embarrassment and shyness about that kind of stuff did me absolutely no favors.

Btw: my parents never talked about sex to me either, except for my father giving me boxes of condoms whenever he came back from overseas, telling me to better use them and not get anyone pregnant and thereby ruin both our lives. And his harping about circumcision, but that wasn't sp much sex on his part as disease and infection.

My parents never talked to me about anything about sex. That is great that your dad gave you condoms and didn't want you to get in any trouble 🙂

I completely agree with you. Education is a good thing and everyone should have it. The only explanation that I can think of is: Catholics 🙄🤷🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️😵

Maybe things are different now as I was in high school in the 1990s.

I got sex ed in a Catholic school. That would have been in 1965, in a Belgian Jesuit high school. But it was a boys only school so the female aspects were not really gotten into. And to my feeling, it was all a bit too poetically presented. Btw: we got it during religion class ... ha ha ha

My parents never talked to me about anything about sex. That is great that your dad gave you condoms and didn't want you to get in any trouble 🙂

Yup, being lifelong in the Merchant Marine, he knew enough about the stupid things and situations young men got into ... ha ha

To Allie80 - "No one ever told me about periods, so when I started mine I thought that I was dying. Catholics 🙄🤷🏼‍♀️😂:"

Sex Ed in years past has been criminal in negligence and now people want to quash it again? Totally cruel. My own story is not mine, but happened to a sweet girl in my 7th-grade class in New Jersey. "Susie" was a nice Italian Catholic girl in my class, quiet and respectful, intelligent and thoughtful. One day about 11 AM as I sat in my classroom we heard screaming in the hallway - "I'M DYING!! I'M DYING" "Susie" ran down the hall leaving a trail of blood and bloody cotton. She was caught by a teacher in a stairwell, huddled and crying, completely traumatized and frantic. She had no idea what was happening to her and like Allie, thought she was going to bleed to death. This is just caused by absolutely vicious forced ignorance. Why not tell girls what will happen when they mature? Disgraceful! My mother, raised in Lutheran Denmark was likewise ignorant of sex. When my sister was born in 1938 mother was unsure as to where she would come out; her guess was her navel. Didn't happen that way, or course. Our culture is just bizarre in its view of sex and secrecy - it is a way of denigrating women and is completely disrespectful. When will we change?

Sex Ed in years past has been criminal in negligence and now people want to quash it again? Totally cruel. .... Our culture is just bizarre in its view of sex and secrecy - it is a way of denigrating women and is completely disrespectful. When will we change?

I fear the correlation of bad treatment of women and enforced sexual ignorance is linked to Abrahamic religions. For valid or not valid historical reasons, they do not treat women very well. Certainly not as equals to men.

The topic title has been edited to better say who this topic is directed at..."Pads and tampons, ladies how did you learn" as the OP did ask...

To the females: how did you learn how to use pads and tampons? Reading the instructions in the box? Mommy told you about it? Maybe mommy did it to show you the first time?

Some posts have been removed because they were not from ladies.

@Rosefeild My sister was, sadly, forced to use tampons not to skip swimming classes by her PE teacher and our mother. At that age they were uncomfortable for her to use (I surmise she had a tight hymen) and it was traumatic. Sad that you experienced something similar.

Id seen mom use a looped pad and belt and although tampons were on the market I am old enough to have used the same style belt and pad.

Mom showed me how to use it.

Adhesive pads and tampons I self taught.

Fast forward to when it had gone full circle one daughter needed nothing more then pep talk diagram from the box and couple of attempts me otherside of the door.

One stressing out when tried and insisted on help.

I learned totally from the packaging. My mother taught me nothing. It was probably just was well. She used those hippie O.B. tampons with no applicator. She said it was for the environment. Oh well. I use applicators.

I was excited to help my oldest daughter with her feminine hygiene needs, but she decided to be very secretive. She didn’t even tell me she had started. She just helped herself to the products I always keep available for guests and everyone in the bathroom. I found out from doing laundry. Perhaps my youngest daughter, when it’s time, would like some pointers. We’ll see.

I just figured it out for myself.

My mother sadly passed away when I was four and it was just my father and I thereafter. He was great with all sorts of things that a mother would usually take care of with a daughter, but this I just felt kind of embarrassed about and didn't want to go to him about it.

My mother showed me how to fix panty linear properly in my underwear before I had got my period.

For tampons mom gave little pep talk and waited the other-side of the bathroom door. I came out triumphant, Id had vaginal exams before that plus a straddle injury apart from a small tag I later had removed hymen was thing of the past.

My mum explained it, but my older sister was in the bathroom with me the first couple of times.

Ok,,, I’m sorry for responding to this thread, but felt it appropriate.

I’m male, but when I was 19 (1971), I had surgery to remove a pilonidal cyst at base of tailbone. At the end of a week long stay in the hospital, one of my nurses came into my room before I was discharged and gave me a little paper bag with a ‘present’. My very first Kotex belt. She told me to use pads as bandages to contain the drainage from surgery site if I wanted to be up and around. Had to pick up a box of pads on way home.

From a book I was given about a year early. Sex education explained in a mild manner.

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My mom grew up in a home where sex and the bathroom were never discussed.

In the late 1930s, when my mom started her period, she thought she was bleeding to death and ran to her mother for comfort and help. Her mother recoiled at the situation and couldn't or wouldn't deal with it. She said, "Call your sister."

So, while my mom sat emotionally distraught and bleeding to death, she called her only sibling, her big sister May, who was nine years older and was away attending college. May reassured her little sister that she wasn't bleeding to death; she was just growing up; she was becoming a woman. May told her to get some sanitary napkins from their mom and to used them every month to soak up the blood.

And my mom never transitioned to tampons. She used pads until she had a hysterectomy in her early 40s.

On the other hand, a generation later, all three of my older sisters used tampons. In fact, my middle older sister used to send my to the store to buy tampons for her from the time I was about 9 to 12 years old.

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@Vasbyt Weren't tampons somewhat taboo in the 1950s/60s, people saying, at best, that only married women should use them?

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@Jacana Yes, while the tampon was invented and introduced in the 1930s, it didn't get widespread use until the 1960s and 1970s because of the freedom it gave women to maintain normal activiities, according to an article at

https://goauntflow.com/blog/the-history-of-the-tampon/

And then in the 1980s there was the sometimes fatal "toxic shock syndrome" from bacterial infections.

So my mom never switched from pads to tampons. And her hysterectomy was in the early 1970s so it wasn't an issue. My sister said that Mom continued to use pads even after her hysterectomy just to catch any drainage. My mom was a fastidiously clean person. She did not like germs or bodily functions.

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My mom told me about them. I was a curious child so naturally I asked a lot quite early and I wasn't caught off-guard when the moment came. Though unlike her back when she still had a period, I don't use tampons. Don't like how it feels to take out a gorged tampon and learning about toxic shock syndrome definitely made me not trust them.

Not a ladie but owner of a vagina so I'll give my two cents

Pads were very self-explanatory. I think I saw them used by mom before I got my period and just did the thing. For tampons I knew you put them inside but for how to get them in, it was 100% learning by doing. In retrospect, I wasn't very good at it in the beginning. But now, if I got my period again, I could do it in my sleep

Cliche I know but my first period came while I was at school. I was not prepared at all but I knew about them because my older sister had hers. I remember going to the school nurse with a whole bunch of toilet paper stuffed in my stained underwear and getting too nervous to go in and ask for help that I sat there on the bench crying.

Someone must have said something to the nurse because eventually the nurse came out and asked me if I was ok and I said “there’s blood down there.”

She took me in and gave me a pad and asked if I wanted to know how to use it or if I wanted to read the instructions on the packet. Obviously not her first time. Years later on when I was used to periods I figured out how to use a tampon on my own.