Prep School: Prepping For Your Period

By Ash Bauer

Copyright 2012 Ash Bauer

Kindle Edition

Kindle Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Welcome to this special Prep School lesson for ladies!

It’s easy to be intimidated by a hardcore prepper with 30 years of food stores, multiple bug-out locations, and an off-the-grid power system. Prep School exists to let you in on three big prepping secrets.

SECRET ONE: Nobody starts perfect.

When those prepping powerhouses first started they were just as clueless as you are. Even Navy Seals had things to learn.

Nobody expects you to become a prepping expert overnight. Prep School is for people who are interested in prepping for a crisis or disaster but aren’t really sure where to start. Each article tackles a specific topic such as urban ranching, post-crisis professions, and in this book, the special survival needs of women.

If you’re an advanced prepper who could use a quick refresher on a specific topic you can spend 99 cents on a single essay. There’s no need to waste your money or make you wade past information you could teach in search of the good stuff you need. If you’re just getting started, you can pick up individual 99 cent books or save a little cash and pick up our $2.99 Theme Packs where we bundle 4 related articles into a single book. Only buy what you need. Spend the rest on your preps.

SECRET TWO: Prepping is fun.

Stockpiling food and ammo may sound grim and intimidating, but you know what most preppers do in real life on a daily basis? Sports and crafting. It’s the same stuff millions of ordinary Americans do every day for fun. On the sport side you’ll find people who love archery, shooting, and martial arts - all things kids do at summer camp for the sheer joy of it. On the crafting side, you can find entire suburban stores dedicated to cranking out supplies for beer making, knitting, canning, soap making, and sewing. Etsy exists just to give crafters a way to get rid of all the fun stuff they make. People create things because it’s fun. Preppers are just like all those normal people - only we’re doing it for a purpose.

The difference between mainstream sports and crafting versus prepping is focus. Sure, the skills are fun, but they’ll also help keep you alive if the stuff hits the fan.

You’ll find people in prepper communities are thrilled to make friends (and future allies). The thing people forget about hardcore preppers who are ready to survive whatever the world throws at them is they got that way because they honestly enjoyed the process.

SECRET THREE: Prepping isn’t just for The End Of The World As We Know It.

Natural disasters happen. Hurricane Katrina is the most extreme example in recent American history, but there are countless smaller tornadoes, floods, blizzards, and locally relevant disasters which result in the power going out for anywhere from a day to a week. When that happens, a well prepared person doesn’t have to be afraid. Instead of hunger, fear, and violence a prepper has food, security and safety.

Getting started with prepping is all about baby steps that won’t interfere with your real life.

In this lesson of Prep School you’ll learn multiple ways to handle feminine hygiene issues. These tactics are equally useful during a short term bug out, a natural disaster, or the long term rebuilding of civilization.

INTRODUCTION

It doesn’t matter if you call it your period, a visit from Aunt Flo, your moon time, being on the rag, or plain old menstruation. Once a month female preppers will have very real needs not faced by their male counterparts.

Plenty of preppers advise stocking up on menstrual pads for the sake of staunching blood flow in case of a serious injury, but few of them acknowledge their more mundane use. It’s like the boys are all scared of admitting the basic realities about women’s bodies. When most preppers mention feminine hygiene products at all they only come up in a context of The Greater Good, reminding everyone how women’s menstrual pads can be used to save injured men’s lives. It’s true, but there’s another use for them. A basic monthly use no one talks about.

Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.

If The Shit Hits The Fan, men think ladies will instinctively know how to do all that mysterious woman stuff. Right?

Wrong.

Most women go to the drugstore once a month, pick up a convenient box, and take it home. End of story. In case of a crisis, disaster, or bug out situation there won’t be any convenient trips to the store for a box of tampons and some chocolate ice cream.

Luckily, there are plenty of ways to ensure that your period is no more inconvenient in a crisis than it is now.

Fair warning - this Prep School lesson is full of squicky bits known to make guys uncomfortable. There are a few graphic but necessary words. Not everything can be explained away using a euphemism.

Guys, if you’re serious about prepping but squeamish about lady parts you really need to buy  copy of this for the women in your life. Face it. This is one area where you probably won’t know how to help them when the shit hits the fan. You owe it to them to make sure they’re well prepared.

Ladies, now that the guys have run away, let’s be honest about your options. Your monthly cycle will be a real issue in your post-crisis life. You should prep for it the same way you do for food, water, and medicine. Luckily, you can save some serious cash and give yourself extra peace of mind by prepping for your period.

DIVA CUP

The Diva Cup is mostly marketed at environmentalists who are looking for a reusable menstrual period solution that won’t leave landfills full of used tampons. The end result is something small, portable, and built to last for years. That makes it perfect for preppers.

The Diva Cup is popular enough that you can find several competitors, such as the Moon Cup and the Keeper Cup. The cups range anywhere from $20 on Amazon to $40 at Walgreens. Regardless of your brand, a well maintained cup should last you years. If you compare that to a box of pads or tampons every month then the savings add up fast.

In essence, the Diva Cup is a small plastic pouch you squeeze up inside your vagina, as close to the cervix as possible, as soon as your period starts. The cup has room to contain several ounces of fluid. Depending on your flow, you can leave it in for up to 12 hours.

You can go to a bathroom and discretely dump the blood in the toilet, clean yourself up, and stick it back in. At least, in theory. To be honest, these things take some serious practice. The first few times you put it in, getting it out feels like an Olympic gymnastics event. Cleaning yourself up in a public restroom requires epic amounts of toilet paper, not to mention the awkwardness of leaving the stall, cleaning the cup in the sink, going back into the bathroom, and once more engaging in gymnastics to get it back in place.

If you stick with it, though, the gymnastics turn into a couple odd stretches and the mess nearly evaporates. Diva Cups last for years. Pro users recommend buying two. That way you can pour the used one into the toilet, put the clean one in place, rinse off the used one in the sink, and skip the whole dance of going back and forth between the stalls.

Not everyone can get the hang of a Diva Cup, but the people who do absolutely swear by it.

A Diva Cup can be a real advantage in a bug out situation. Knowing you don’t need to check on it for 12 hours means you can focus on getting to safety instead of changing out tampons or pads. If you’re out of supplies, you don’t have to worry about leaving a trail of leaking blood. You don’t have to worry about your clothing getting soaked or stained while you’re on the run, much less figuring out how to clean your underwear before potentially dangerous hygiene issues occur. Once you’ve practiced using them you’ll see they make great additions to your bug out bag.

TAMPONS

Not every woman can wear a Diva Cup. For a short term bug-in, tampons offer the most comfort and familiarity. Dealing with a crisis or disaster is hard enough. Dealing with it while trying to figure out how to handle strange things in your underwear can be miserable.

If you’re stocking up on tampons, the inexpensive OB brand are your best stockpile option. They don’t waste space with things like applicators or wasteful packaging. They’re designed to be small and discreet enough a college girl can tuck a couple into her jeans pocket without anyone noticing. A box large enough for 30 Tampax tampons with applicators can be filled with three times as many OB Tampons for the same cost.

Depending on your flow, you can make your own reusable tampons from old pillow cases. You want to find some that are made of cotton or linen. Artificial fabrics will only lead to infection. The thin fabric of a pillow case lends itself beautifully to being rolled, layered, and compacted in a way that absorbs your flow with minimal leakage.

Step One:

Rip out the seams of your old pillow case. Lay it vertically in front of you, so you’re looking at the narrow end.

Step Two:

Cut a three inch wide strip across the base. You should now have a strip of cloth about three inches wide by a foot and a half long. Repeat until you run out of pillow case. You should end up with about 20 strips of cloth. This should be enough to get a woman through one average period.

Step Three:

Take your first strip of cloth. You’re going to roll your tampon up like a cigar. First, in order to make a tab for pulling your tampon out after use, fold one end of the fabric diagonally so the corner point stretches past the bottom of the cloth. Starting at the pointy end, roll the cloth as tight as possible. When you run out of cloth, tie it twice, once at the top and once at the bottom, with a small spare scrap of cloth.

The multiple layers of fabric and the two knots will help capture the flow without too much leakage.

Step Four:

Clean the home made tampons by boiling them. You want to get out all the blood, plus anything else that might have taken up residence in the soiled cloth. Let them boil for at least 15 minutes then hang them up to air dry.

Women under 30 or women who haven’t had children might have difficulty wearing home made tampons. Therefore, homemade pads are an equally popular option.

REUSABLE CLOTH MENSTRUAL PADS

There are a lot of different ways to make menstrual pads. The basic goal is to wick blood away from your skin and absorb it into a lining, all while protecting your clothing.

In order to best accomplish this you’re going to want a pad with a removable interior liner. This is important for cleaning and long term maintenance. After you wash your pad, if that wonderfully absorbent inner liner takes too long to dry it will mildew. You don’t want that near your lady parts.

Both Amazon and Etsy are full of reusable cloth pads in a variety of whimsical fabrics. If you don’t like sewing, stock up there. They wear a little differently from commercial disposable pads, so you should break them in with real life use instead of stuffing them in your bug out bag and forgetting about them. While they are bulkier and a little less convenient, within three months reusable cloth menstrual pads pay for themselves.

If you prefer to make your own, the best thing to do is google “homemade sanitary napkin pattern.” You’ll discover an incredibly diverse variety of patterns. The best ones will be shaped like the hourglass shaped store bought pads with wings. The center should be easy to open in order to remove the lining. The wings should snap together under the bottom of your underwear. Honestly, you’ll probably want to add a safety pin to help anchor the cloth pads in place as they do have a tendency to slip.

If you’re caught unprepared in a crisis situation, you can still make emergency pads out of supplies at hand. Your best option is a terry cloth dish towel. If you can’t find that, washcloths or thin, worn out bath towels will do.

Simply fold the terry cloth dish towel until you have a rectangle about 3 inches across by 8-10 inches long. Use safety pins to attach the rectangle to your underwear. This will be a lot bulkier than the sewn, reusable pads, but it’ll get the job done.

Regardless of whether you’re using sewn pads or a repurposed dish cloth, when it comes time to clean your cloth sanitary napkins you need to boil them for at least 15 minutes. Once they’re done boiling, unfold everything. Hang your cloth up to air dry, preferably in the sun. The UV rays will help with a final step of disinfecting. (UV disinfection is why sun dried clothes always smell better than clothes left on an indoor drying rack.)

If you’re separated from your bug-out location and you’ve used all the supplies in your 72 hour kit, there are still solutions.

MOSS AND OTHER FOUND OBJECTS

If you’re in the wild and out of supplies you can always rely on moss. Moss is natural, moisture absorbent, and grows in most wooded areas.

If you have two pair of underwear, put them both on. Whichever pair is tighter should go on the outside. First, squeeze all the moisture out of your moss. If you’re running low on water, drink everything you squeeze from the moss. Carefully pack the drier, squeezed moss between the two layers of underwear. You’re essentially turning it into the absorbent lining and turning your two pair of underwear into one giant menstrual pad. If you happen to have any safety pins, use those to help seal the edges of your underwear in order to keep the moss in place.

Replace your moss every four hours. For overnight use, go nuts with a heavy moss filling in your underwear sandwich. Discard all the moss in the morning, turn the underwear inside out, and rotate the top pair so it’s now the bottom pair.

This is far from perfect, but it’s better than bleeding down your legs. In the autumn you can try substituting a thick layer of dry leaves, but honestly, they’re not as absorbent. Sadly, grass is mostly useless.

If you’re in an urban environment but can’t reach your bug out location go ahead and shred anything from cotton t-shirts to cardboard. The important thing here is to keep yourself clean and hygienic in order to avoid courting infection.

BIRTH CONTROL PILLS

If you have a cooperative doctor you can avoid all these problems. When birth control pills were first developed there was no three weeks on/one week off for menstruation. Women took pills every day, which meant they didn’t menstruate at all. Male legislators decided it was unnatural for women not to bleed. In order for the pill to pass the FDA the makers had to factor in a monthly period. It is absolutely not medically necessary.

These days there are a few pills approved for 3 months of continuous use followed by a single week long period. Many women who take the continuous pills don’t bother with the week long designated period. Stockpiling pills and ignoring the week off is hands down the best way to ensure you don’t have to deal with any feminine hygiene issues during a bug-out situation or during the first critical year or two of a crisis.

In the long run, you’ll eventually run out of pills and will need to fall back on one of the other methods above. Do it. The best way to make sure you’re still around in the long run is to take great care of yourself in the critical, emergency short run.

Stay tuned for upcoming Prep School lessons including:

How to pack a Bug-Out Bag

Self Defense for Prepper Women

Urban Ranching: From Bunnies to Bees

Everybody Poops

Meanwhile, check out Prep School: Cooking Without Electricity.

Table of Contents

Copyright

Prep School: Prepping For Your Period

INTRODUCTION

DIVA CUP

TAMPONS

REUSABLE CLOTH MENSTRUAL PADS

MOSS AND OTHER FOUND OBJECTS

BIRTH CONTROL PILLS

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