Lunapads

Hi Folks,

Just wanted to let you know that my life was made measurably nicer when I used Lunapads as extra padding when bicycling in Acadia National Park in Maine. Usually, I’m very saddle sore after spending the day pedaling away with my husband. But, after a day on the bike, huffing and puffing up and down the hills on the park’s famed carriage roads, only my knees ached, not my seat region.

For each of the rides, I wore an organic cotton maxi with the liners in addition to a pair of lightly padded bike shorts and nylon zip-off pants or shorts. Sincerely, they were the most comfortable bike rides I’ve ever had. I’m never going Luna-less again.

So, even if you aren’t in the red part of your cycle, try Lunapads when you cycle!

Your Pal,
Deb

A happy little post for a Friday afternoon…

Our first song has just been sent to us, courtesy of Filmmaker and Mom extraordinaire, Camille Brown. You can see a trailer for her teen period movie, “A Period Piece” by visiting her site. She’s pictured here with her daughter - what a beautiful photo.

When she sent me this song this afternoon, I just had to post it - enjoy!

“La La Lunapads”

My Lunapads are coming from outer space

they’re going to replace

my disposable ones

my disposable ones.

No more waste

No more waste

And so I sing, la la luna

la la luna

la la Luna

la la la lunapads

I celebrate my red with green

I celebrate my red with GREEN

my flow is like a teen-ager

my body is not in danger

anymore

I don’t buy pads from a store…

Reusable

Bubble Mosaic

Purple Stardust

Hearts

keep me feeling creative

It’s delightful to be recyclable

every month

every month

so I celebrate the Earth

I shed red tears of joy

Oh, la la luna

la la luna

la la Lunapads

I celebrate my moon cycle

while riding my bicycle

with two toddlers in tow,

Oh, la la luna

la la luna

la la Lunapads

A recent customer email caught my attention. Not that I ever tire of the “usual” (“How do I use this?”, “Thank you!!!” etc), but this one struck a personal chord and I’d like to share it with you. In 1992 the first inkling of what was to become Lunapads (product and company) was stirring in me: the “the glimmer in my eye”, you might say. One day I sat down and wrote a letter that was basically a brief outline of a dream: to bring a group women together to make and sell environmentally responsible products. I sent it to about a dozen or so people that I respected for their feedback. Much to my surprise and disappointment, I didn’t get any replies - good thing it didn’t stop me

Andrea Bloomquist has honored us by bringing us her desire and ideas in hopes that we might be able to help her create her dream. To me, there are few things more powerful and inspiring than a young woman wanting to make a difference in the world, so let’s help find a way to put her to work!

“My name is Andrea. I am a graduate student at the University of Washington in Seattle, studying educational leadership & policy with an emphasis on higher ed. I am set to graduate in August (yay!) and am doing some serious soul-searching to figure out where to let my branches sway next.

I have been reading all about Luna Pads and Diva Cups and am a recent convert (no more waste!). I also have been spending much of my time over the years, especially recently, thinking about how I can put my interests (women’s reproductive/sexual health, education, the environment, and international issues) together and pursue a career.

I am writing to you in this very early stage of my brainstorming in the hopes that you may be able to point me in an interesting direction. Through your customers, clients, friends, colleagues, etc., do you have any knowledge about an organization (large or small) that could use the help of a passionate, bi-lingual (Spanish), woman to educate women about the Diva Cup or Luna Pads so that they can be free to pursue their education, secure stable employment, support their families, etc.? I believe I have a lot to offer, so I am looking for that person/organization that is saying to themselves “if only we had someone who could help us spread the word…”.

It is looking very likely that I will travel to Australia for 3-6 months beginning in January, 2009. After that I may be relocating to Colorado to be close to my mom. So, these are two potential location where I could help spread the word. I am open to others…

Any thoughts would be much appreciated. I absolutely admire the work that your team has done. It is so inspiring to see the birth and growth of your company. I hope that someday I will make such an impact as well.

Thanks very much in advance for your help.”

Go Andrea! Thanks for having the courage to share your dream with us. If any of you want to contact her directly, send your thoughts to blog@lunapads.com and we’ll make sure she gets them.

If you look around these days, mainstream consumers are slowly starting to get it about the environment: hybrid cars, getting rid of plastic water and baby bottles, bringing reusable grocery bags to the checkout line, etc.  But what about using reusable cloth pads and menstrual cups?  When I was recently talking to Suzanne at Birthfest about how reusable pads and cups might be on the cusp of a mainstream breakthrough, she asked me to write a post about it.  

There is evidence all over the Internet that women are increasingly discovering the comfort and convenience of reusable menstrual products. I haven’t seen any significant coverage of this issue in the mainstream media, but even if there were I’m not all that confident such stories would have much effect. Instead, it’s going to take women themselves to bring the issue to the forefront, spreading the news by word of mouth. We women have a natural talent for creating networks which function as very effective vehicles for the dissemination of information.

And the Internet provides the perfect medium for this. For example, when I was pregnant with my first child, I joined the Natural Family Living discussion board at Mothering.com. It was here I learned about cloth diapering. After switching to cloth for my own baby it was an easy next step to try out Lunapads. After all, if putting cloth against my baby’s skin, instead of paper and plastic, could feel so good then why not do the same for myself? Lunapads were just as fun to buy and use as cloth diapers (who’d have thought I’d actually enjoy getting my period?) and it felt good to reduce our household waste. I couldn’t wait to spread the word!

And I’m not the only one: more and more bloggers are writing about reusable menstrual products like the DivaCup. In my local community of mama friends we organized an online Buying Club with the support of Lunapads. The first one was such a success, and the women so happy with their products, that we organized a second one.  And now that Lunapads has an official buying club policy on its website, you can easily put one together and take action on the power of word of mouth.

There is one small problem with all this enthusiasm, however.
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Hi! I’m a 23 year old Canadian living in Southern Indiana with my husband (married Jan. of 2007), and our two puppies. My husband is a Youth Pastor, and I aspire to be a teacher. Hopefully I will be able to finish my schooling and start teaching when we move back to Canada. We are actually praying about moving to Vancouver in the near future! I honestly took finding Lunapads (and the fact that they were based in Vancouver) as a sign that maybe we are supposed to move to Vancouver!

I discovered Lunapads on a fluke, which I also consider a true blessing! My husband and I have been doing our best to go all natural/organic in our life. This included our soap, facial cleaners, lotions, toothpaste, and even deodorant. I do most of my shopping for these things on drugstore.com in the “Natural” section. I frequently surf the site to find new products and read reviews, and I stumbled upon the DivaCup and Lunapads. I had never even heard of reusable ‘feminine’ products, and the thought grossed me out to no end!

However, as I am looking into cloth diapering for the family my husband and I plan to have in the near future, I knew enough to know how good reusable products are for me and for the environment. I was also raised by a mother who is very into alternative, homeopathic/naturopathic living, so I tend to have an open mind when it comes to things other people might think weird. So after some thought and discussion with my husband, I decided I would try the DivaCup Kit with Mini Pantyliners in Cocoa Kaleidoscope. I also decided to order through the Lunapads website (instead of drugstore.com), because the customer service was amazing, because of the $5 off for new customers, and because I got to select my own fabric.

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I heard about cloth pads and menstruation cups but I thought it was not worth it for “only once a month”. Then I started cloth diapering because I was concerned about my son’s sensitive skin and chemicals in disposable diapers. I also felt guilty creating more daily diaper trash than 2 weeks of household waste. I figured that this reasoning would apply to me too, even though I wore disposable pads or tampons just once a month. Despite being pretty thrifty, it never even dawned on my how much money I could save using cloth pads.

I Googled cloth pads and found most pads sold here in Germany were inferior to Lunapads (which are sold in Germany). Some of the pads have to be folded, lack prints, and don’t have snaps. I decided to give Lunapads a shot, especially since the prints were so nice! I mentioned Lunapads on my blog and the nice girls at Lunapads sent me a great surprise. Now I am a big Lunapads fan, a subscriber to the Lunapads Blog feed, and even a member of the I heart my Lunapads Facebook group.

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My introduction to Lunapads came at an opportune moment in my life. I had used cloth diapers with my daughters and was convinced to apply the same thinking to my own monthly wasteful habits. In one article I read, the author pointed out how over a woman’s lifetime she would contribute to a landfill site by leaps and bounds over a baby’s mere two years of dirty diapers.

Finding a cloth pad was difficult in small town Ontario so I went looking on the internet. I found the Lunapads website and ordered a kit through my local health food store. I was in a time crunch because our family had planned a backpacking trip through Central America that would last 19 months. Some of our planned excursions took place in remote areas where I knew I would be lucky to find a corner store.

I was right. The turtle conservation project we volunteered with was set on an island in the Caribbean very close to the mainland but hours away from major shopping. Because of my stash of Lunapads, I never worried about stopping to stock up for supplies or worse, running out at any given moment.

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I discovered cloth pads back in 1992, while in my early twenties. I thought it was a great idea and environmentally friendly and I actually found some for sale in a local health food store. They were an early version of a different cloth pad company, and had an uncomfortable nylon bottom, velcro which scratched, and were the kind you stuffed a rolled up cloth into.

Unlike Lunapads, you couldn’t simply change the liner. You had to change the whole pad. Quite frankly, I used them for only two cycles before ditching them completely. Disappointed both in the product and myself, I reluctantly went back to disposables.

Fast forward ten years. After having tried nearly every brand of disposable pads and tampons, I decided right after having my daughter in 2002 that I would go back to trying a washable pad. My postpartum flow had gone on and on, and I was very uncomfortable using disposables after my natural birth. I did a quick search online and found Lunapads. I immediately ordered a bunch of different sizes and colours and I’ve never looked back. They were so soft, so absorbent and so easy. What a difference! My poor perineum healed so much better after I made the switch. And the liners made the difference. It was fantastic to find a pad that you could just change the top layer, if you wanted to.

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I had to give a persuasive speech for my speech communication class, and I decided that I was going to single-handedly convince seven women and two men to switch to alternative menstrual products!

I e-mailed Lunapads asking if there were any cloth pad samples or literature that they could send me. To my delight, Sandra promptly e-mailed me back and agreed.

I received two cloth pads, two liners, pamphlets, and even coupons. The customer service was excellent. Sandra even said that once I was done showing them around, I was free to keep the sample pads and use them for myself! While I’m tempted (they’re absolutely adorable), I think I’m going to keep them as “for-show” only, so I can introduce more women to the wonders of cloth pads.

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Sometimes it’s hard for me to explain what exactly I study at school.

My family members, proud of me but unsure of what it is that I do at this fancy college, are constantly asking for details. “What are you taking up at school?” my aunt Eleanor asks. “Um, Sociology…” I reply, nervously, “…and Biology, and Women’s Studies, I guess.”

That’s quite a range, but it’s actually pretty simple – I study periods. No, not grammatical periods or time periods. I study capital P, bleeding-out-of-your-vagina Periods.

It all started when I stumbled across a livejournal community about menstrual cups two years ago. I found this huge collection of personal stories and technical information all about exotic-sounding alternative menstrual products that I’d never heard of before. I’d never been too fond of the limiting and monopolized “feminine hygiene” options in my local pharmacy, so I gathered some money from my savings and ordered a DivaCup online. After a long, anxious wait for the package to come in the mail, then another wait for my period to start, I finally got to use my cup for the first time. It was wonderful and I was hooked! I had never been so happy about being a woman or getting my period before, so I made it my mission to spread the word about menstrual cups.

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