Reusable Menstrual Pads

Little warning: this is about menstrual products. If that freaks you out you may want to stop reading now.

Okay, so my story begins pretty much like every every blogger out there. I heard about reusable panty liners and maxi pads about a year and a half ago and my initial reaction was: Thaaat's Naaasty. But, given that we already do cloth diapers I got over my ick feeling pretty quickly and soon became curious about them.

It wasn't until I ran out of my mega pack of panty liners two months before my second child was born that I decided to grab a pattern online and make a couple to save me having to make a run to the store. Anyone who has never experienced the late stages of pregnancy should know that a pantyliner is worn pretty much every day just in case. Not just in case your mucus plug drops or your water breaks (like anything could contain that gush), no, it is for when you cough or sneeze and you realize you have peed a little. Pregnancy is very glamorous.

Anyway, I started using some homemade washable liners and found that though they were not as thin as disposables they were surprisingly comfortable. And I also found they were much more comfortable and absorbent to wear after sex. Cloth pads seem to absorb goopy body fluids a bit better than their paper/plastic counterparts. I realized I like the feel so much better than plastic and I also like that I'm not exposing my body to unneeded chemicals.

There were lots of questions I had. Will it smell? What does cleaning them look like? How many do I even need? Well, I did a little Google research through blogs and videos and decided when my period came back I would switch to reusable pads.

Fast Forward to a couple months ago. Yes it took nearly a year for me to begin menstruating again, exclusive breastfeeding has that effect on my body. I decided to do a combination of buying and making pads and I would love to share my experience with these products and patterns.

First let me start with the products I purchased:

BubuBibi Bamboo Mama Cloth  

These came in a pack of 4 for $16.48 and aside from my homemade pads they are the cheapest I could find at just over $4 each. They come in 5 different print options and are pretty well made. I used these during my moderate/heavy days and had no complaints. The thing that worries me about them though is there is stitching all the way through to the leak proof cover which could possibly result in leaks. I haven't had a problem with that though. They clean pretty well, I did get a little staining on some but it is faint and would probably sun out easily. With that said, I'm not a huge fan of an all white pad but the bamboo is very soft and absorbent.

Heart Felt Bamboo-Charcoal XL Pads

These came in a back of 5 for $36 so they were around $7 each. There was no color/print option, but I think they are pretty. I love the charcoal layer on top. It is stain resistant AND soooo soft. We have some cloth diapers made of this stuff and love it so it's no surprise I like it for myself too. These are my nighttime and very heavy flow option. They are around 12" long and provide nice coverage. Once again though the pad is sewn clear through to the back of the pad and since I wear these all night long I have had blood leak through those stitches to my underwear but not onto my pants or sheets. They are actually a bit of a steal for this coverage at this price so even though I had light leaking through those stitches after 9 hours of wear I would still recommend them if you want a soft and very affordable night pad. Side note, it is better coverage than I ever had using my disposables. 

Lupy4You

There are many wonderful shops on Etsy that sell pads and they range anywhere from $5 each to $12 each depending on the size and shop you are using. These particular pads are regular absorbency and about 10" and each cost me around $7. These are backed with PUL which is a breathable water resistant fabric. The good thing about these is the pad part is not sewn to the backing which makes these great for leak protection. They are flannel topped which makes them very soft and cozy. My only problem with them is that flannel tends to wear rather quickly so they won't look 'new' for long. Flannel can also get a bit warm as well. But these are very nicely made and she has lots of cute pattern options.

Party In My Pants

This is a very popular brand which you can find many reviews on throughout the interwebs. They have a promotion where they will send you a free liner and all you have to do is pay shipping. So I ordered a liner. They have a lot of different options, this is their demi liner. It is normally priced at $7. These are very trim thin pads and are the most like disposable I have in terms of thinness. But it gets the job done just fine. My only problem is that it bunches which makes it my least comfortable pad despite it being so thin. I do like that the brand offers both flannel top or cotton top in a variety of prints. Using this pad made me aware of how much I like cotton topped pads: they don't pill like flannel, feel the most like my underwear, and they are an easy fabric to remove stains from. However, this brand is soooo expensive. One regular size pad is $13! So this just isn't in my price range.

I have also made some pads based on patterns I have found online. Some of them were free and the other was purchased. One thing I love about making my own pads is that the cost is much more reasonable. You also get to choose exactly what prints fit your personality the best. Raid your fabric stash, hit up the thrift store and cut up old shirts, or find some cute fabrics on sale at your local store for the tops. For the bottoms you can purchase PUL or other water resistant fabrics or you can use fleece which is very breathable and said to be moisture resistant. Then you just have to choose an absorbent core. I cut up old towels and flannel but you can also use ZORB, microfiber or even old cloth diapers.

Panty Liner Pattern/Tutorial

This was my first pattern that I used. It was free and it came with a lovely tutorial. It is made with 2 components: the pad part and the wing part. I used PUL on the back of the wings and sewed the pad onto the wings. The tutorial has you cutting a hole in each part to turn it right side out which I think may effect the life of the pad. I did find these comfortable though and they were my very first experience with cloth. Since the pad is sewn to the wings there is leak potential as mentioned for some pads above. They also look really homemade. I made these with flannel and terrycloth which makes them very absorbent for liners. The pattern itself is nice, but I found sewing all those curves to be a bit of a pain. One thing I learned while making these is that though white and pale colors may be pretty, it is a bit of work to manage staining on them.

Regular and Overnight Pattern 

This was also a free pattern I found. I'm not sure why, but the overnight pattern wasn't very big. The pattern said it was 10" but when I measured it I found it to be much shorter. This was an okay pattern. I decided to sew the pad to top fabric then sew the tops and bottoms together to avoid having to sew into my backing. It is a very curvy pattern which, being a novice seamstress, I found tricky. I also feel it is a bit narrow for me. Maybe my pattern was off, and that is why it is short and narrow, but this just didn't take care of my needs for a heavy flow pad. All in all it is okay for being free but it left me looking for a pattern that would be more simple to sew (straighter lines) and give me a little more length for coverage.

SaraanddippaDee

I kind of adore this pattern. I purchased it off of Etsy for around $7 and it included 7 different sizes ranging from 6" panty liners to 12" overnight pads. I like how the wings are straight lines which makes for fast easy sewing but it also keeps the pad from bunching like more circular pad's wings do. It folds up neatly and the shape of the pad part is also adequate to my needs. I made both flannel and cotton topped 10" pads with terrycloth and flannel cores and found them to work great for regular/heavier days. I really like how they turned out and how comfortable they are to wear. I saw as I was writing this that the seller has shut down her shop but you can still find patterns like this on Etsy from other sellers. I also made some 8" liners for a friend (I meant to make 7" but messed up, surely two little boys had NOTHING to do with that.) Anyway, I like this pattern and will probably end up making and selling some more pads with this pattern.

My Own

Finally, I decided to make my own liners using the Party In my Pants liner as a template. I will probably end up selling some of these as well, I still find the liner bunches a bit but not nearly so much as PIMPs do. It does have a nice shape though and gives good coverage. I just couldn't justify spending more money last month on pads (aka my husband knows I could sew some just as good for less money). 

If you have questions about cleaning and other logistical questions about reusable menstrual products I would encourage you do do your own Google research. There are some very interesting options out there (namely menstrual cups, sponges and reusable pads). Cleaning isn't nearly so big a deal as you would think; some of the pads in the pictures of this post have been used and you would never have known. 

So there you have it folks, far more than you ever wanted to know about my menstrual pads. But hopefully this can give you a starting point if you are looking to start your own stash. Even if you don't switch to pads full time, I highly recommend at least trying cloth panty liners for non menstrual reasons. I really do find them so much more comfortable and no one can argue how much prettier they are than the disposables.

Preschool: The letter T and what's on our shelves

I'm writing this post a touch late, so I'm not sure if I will be able to remember what we did on a day by day for the letter T. It was an odd week for us that was interrupted by a doctor appointment and colds. Such as it is, this is what we did for the letter T

Monday: We had a doctor appointment right in the middle of school time this day so we kept things pretty short this day. We had some devotion time with our memory verse and a song. I just introduced our new letter and did a sort/review of all the letters we have done so far. Then the kids spent some time doing shelf work until we had to go to our appointment.

Tuesday: We started with devotions and reinforced the letter T with sandpaper letters. We then spent a great deal of time reading books from our T book basket.

Wednesday: I don't typically let the kids watch much TV, but I had a cold this day and was feeling pretty under the weather. My Preschooler slept in late and I let my tot Watched Daniel Tiger to keep him quite. So we ended up watching a couple episodes in the morning before I gathered them to the table to make a T tiger. Our Daniel Tiger toy even joined us.

Thursday: We got to our science lesson Thursday. I used the Bernstein Bears Science and nature book to learn about Trees and we talked a bit about the parts of a tree.

I feel like my shelves fell flat this week. Most activities were done only once, but this may be more due to everyone not feeling well more than anything else. Anyway, here is what we had on our shelves for the letter T:

Scissor Practice: This week I cut out 1" strips of construction paper and drew a line every inch for him to cut. He loved this so much that I had to make more strips for him.

Book Basket: In our basket we had: Little Blue Truck, Bernstein Bears Blaze a Trail, Tiddler, The Tortoise and the Hare, A Tractor book, and Book all about Trucks. At one point this week I found the boys in their room bent over the truck book with the older child telling the younger what each truck was called. (What boy doesn't love trucks?) 

Color Basket: Green. Our color focus this week was Green. I have found the older boys just aren't very interested in this basket most of the time, but when I got it down and specifically spent time with the baby the older boys got involved. I think they just need someone to get them interested. They loved playing with baby brother with these. In the basket I included a texture ball, wooden nut and bolt, velcro pepper toy, egg shaker and the triangle from the shape sorter puzzle I have had on the shelves the last two weeks.

Lacing card (not pictured) I had a little turtle lacing card from Melissa and Doug

Tool Shadow Matching: In the future I will do many more items for matching, this was easy even for my two year old. I basically just outlined each tool with a pen, nothing fancy.

Train Book Basket: My son LOVES Thomas the Train so, as part of our color study I put together a little basket with Thomas and Percy with a couple other little trains and the book Blue Train, Green Train. It's a simple beginning to story baskets I want to eventually do for the kids for them to reenact stories which is a great reading comprehension activity for little ones.

Playdoh Mat: my 2 yo actually used this for playdoh, My preschooler used as a coloring page with a dry erase marker.

'Salt' Tray. I have some shapes and our sandpaper letters for writing in the tray. This actually is cornmeal though since I'm low on salt.

Worksheets: Still a favorite with the big one.

Tree Stacking game. I thought this would be a big hit with the boys. It wasn't really. I will have to try it again some time because it is a great fine motor activity.

Letter item Sort: This is the same as it was last week, just with the addition of the letter T. I have Upper and Lowercase letters and 2 items with the initial letter sounds for the letters we have learned.

Parts of a tree diagram: This is a little diagram I simply cut out of felt. I have roots, trunk, branches and leaves on a frame with a felt back. It was liked, but very easy and didn't hold anyone's attention for very long. I'm glad I didn't purchase one of those expensive puzzles for this lesson. 

Puzzle: I borrowed a puzzle from my parent's house. It wasn't touched by the kids once.

Bead Bars: For this exercise he had to place a rock to indicate the right numeral to go with the amount indicated on each card. Printable is found here

Circle Basket: Still trying to learn circles, I put some circular items in a little basket: a toy cookie, top, coin and canasta.

Build a Truck with Shapes: I don't remember where I found the printable for this one. It was a basic shape matching activity.

Preschool Cirriculum, Letter of the Week A and What's on our shelves

This past week we spent learning the letter A here's what we did

Monday: We began with our usual prayer, verse of the week, and then sang Father Abraham to start off. This is our devotion time which we do every day. I had every intention of doing a craft, however the boys were just too excited about the new stuff on the shelves so we just spent circle time introducing the new letter and going through our initial letter sound sorting basket. After individual time I read them The Ants go marching book as well as a reader book called Amanda Pig on her Own

Tuesday: We did our usual devotion time, reviewed our letter with sandpaper letters. We sat together and read 10 apples up on top and then did an Apple letter craft. For the craft I just printed out a large A and made a little leaf and some seeds for them to glue on. It's neat to see how much more independence my preschooler has gained with a glue stick in just a week. We then proudly put them on the fridge to look at for the rest of the week. The kids are always excited to show Daddy what they worked on during school.

 

Wednesday: This day was our little science lesson. I used the Bernstein Bears Big book of Science to talk about animals and what characteristics they have. We then played Spot It jr. Animals. Now, my 4 and 2 year olds aren't ready to play this game in the suggested way so, I have modified it a bit for each of them until they can play it for real. I have my 4 year old simply find the matching animals on 2 cards, he isnt competing with anyone, just honing his observation skills. With my tot I take out one card at a time and ask him if he can find the pink flamingo, green frog, orange cat, yellow sea star etc. This way I'm teaching colors and playing a little I Spy at the same time.

Thursday: I used this day to review our letter sound sorting basket to review what we had learned. I also made a little animal movement game for them to play. Since both kids do not yet read I just gathered up some plastic animals and placed them in a bowl. I then had each child close his eyes and take turns reaching in the bowl to choose the animal we would pretend to be. They loved this game. The animals I included were a snake, frog, whale, wolf, scorpion, seal, parrot, and penguin. My penguin looks radioactive but the kids didn't mind.

The real action happens during individual time when the kids get to choose whatever they want to do that is on the shelves for them.

I had a bucket of 10 blocks to stack. I put red circle stickers on them to pretend they were apples to stack just like in the 10 apples up on top book. This is a great counting and fine motor skill activity. I only wish I had had apple stickers...

Apple seed game: this one was pretty simple and it wasn't much of a hit with the preschooler. It didn't seem to hold his attention for very long. You roll the die and place the same number of  seeds in the apple. (I used black beans).

Red basket: I didn't have very many interactive objects in this basket so it wasn't used much this week. I included a ball, Elmo stuffed animal, Velcro pepper, ribbon and car. I think this basket would be perfect for a baby to explore and plan to put this one together again once the baby is able to better interact with things.

Bean Spooning: This one was very simple. Just 2 jars, a tablespoon and some dried black beans. I gotta say, I just hate these messy practical life/sensory trays. I have to watch the two year old like a hawk to make sure we get any fallen beans especially since we have an infant in our home. BUT the kids LOVE this. There is something very satisfying about transferring items for little ones and both my preschooler and tot really enjoyed spending time doing this one. It is a great fine motor skill builder.

Coloring page and worksheets: these were still a very popular choice again this week with my preschooler. My tot really wanted to color on our white board instead of using a coloring page.

 Spot It game: we played this as a group as well as individually. It's great for building observational skills and building vocabulary and even working on colors.

Letter A pattern blocks: These were fun for the kids. I laminated the printable I found from here and set out a bowl with the blocks they would need.

 Salt tray with sandpaper letter and shape,

Animal Sort basket: This was a simple basket I put together to correspond with our science lesson. I simply cut out and laminated some pictures of some of our safari toob animals. My tot loved this activity and did it MANY times.

Book Basket: I don't have a ton of 'A' Books and wanted to grab a couple from the library however time just didn't permit a trip to the library so I grabbed what we have off the shelves to put into our basket for the week. We had 10 Apples up on Top, The Ants go Marching, Amelia Badelia, Animals Should Definitely not Wear Clothing, and Amanda Pig on her Own.

Letter Sound Sorting basket: this week instead of having a basket with just the sound we were learning, I included a couple 'M' items from last week to go with our 'A' items this week. This way we are naturally reviewing our letters. The problem with using a real apple is that it was stolen as a snack for a little guy at some point during the week. I found my tot hiding in his closet eating it. I would recommend using non-food items if you want them to stay on the shelf.

Lacing card

Bead Bar number book: Oh. My. Word. This activity was so beloved by my preschooler. I decided to laminate the cards to the book and have him color with dry erase markers so that we could use it again.

Scissor practice: I provided paint chips and scissors and the idea was to cut along each color. I realized very quickly that my child needs a lot of practice with using scissors before trying this one again. He had a very hard time with such thick paper. I will have to come back to the paint chips once we get stronger scissor skills. I also included a shape sort puzzle again.

Apple Tree Playdoh counting: for whatever reason it was kind of hard to keep my preschooler on task with this one. He got tired of making apples pretty early on. I think that when I get this activity out another time I won't have all 10 cards out for him. It didn't help that there was a giant Playdoh ball that went around eating all the apples till there were none left. However, this was a lovely concept. I appreciate how there were apples pictured to correspond to the numeral. I can see us using this again in an "apple picking" scenario where I have playdoh apples already made, or maybe a different red manipulative for counting.

So that was it for this week.

Preschool Cirriculum, Letter of the Week M and What's on our shelves

The time has come for my 'baby' to finally start a more structured and consistent learning program. So, now that my oldest has turned 4 its time to start preschool. My home school preschool plan is very much inspired by Montessori methods. Unfortunately due to the cost of many of the Montessori materials, I simply cannot afford to do official curriculum or the official materials. But I am trying to maintain the ideals of simplicity, beauty, and a prepared environment.

With that in mind I set to prepare a 'weekly curriculum' for my preschool kiddo. My goals are to teach upper and lowercase letter identification and initial letter sounds. We will also focus on counting, numeral identification and eventually, beginning addition. I also want to foster a love for science, so I have one science lesson planned for each week. Since I also have a two year old who insists on being involved in everything his big brother does, I have planned on a couple activities geared towards him as well. This includes developing motor skills, color and shape identification, and holding writing utensils. So, without further ado, let me show you what we did our first week with the letter M.

I begin each day with 'circle time' with the two boys. During this time we pray, sing a worship song, and review our alphabet memory verse for the week. We then move to our letter of the week singing a little song about the letter's sound, tracing the sandpaper letter, and then doing a little craft or lesson that pertains to our letter of the week. I try to keep it pretty short since the attention span of the guys is pretty short.

Monday we did a letter mouse craft

Tuesday we talked about the states of matter. I'm using the Berenstain Bear's Big Book of Science for some simple science lessons. I read the section on matter to them and then demonstrated them with water. Liquid in a measuring cup, an ice cube and steam. I'm not sure he really got the concept of solid liquid gas, but he did get the idea that everything is made of 'stuff" and we call that stuff matter.

Wednesday we made monsters. I got the idea from here but I made it a little more educational. First, we read The Monster at the End of this Book featuring THE Grover monster. This book is a favorite of my children. And then I provided numerous shapes for the kids: rectangles, triangles, squares, circles and semicircles. I made a sample monster to give them an idea of what a monster could look like. As I helped my tot with his, I named the shapes we were gluing. Once my preschooler was done we counted each type of shape he used and I wrote the number down for him to see.

Thursday we reviewed what we had learned that week. I had planned on reading Moongame and playing hide and seek having the boys find little ms everywhere, but I ran out of time. So I just reviewed with him with the letter sort basket I made. I was happy to see he had really improved on this from the beginning of the week.

The bulk of our school time is spent during "free time" where they get to chose what activities to do from the shelves I have set up for them. I changed up a couple things after I took these pictures but for the most part here are our shelves for this week: I made a video of them at the end of the week if you would rather see it instead of read its here.

Melissa and Doug letter/item lacing card

fine motor skill of placing marbles on a bathmat. This was a big hit with my tot. He made a game of putting the marbles on having me take a turn then taking a turn.

music basket. I included a harmonica, rhythm sticks, egg shakers, jingle bells and a canasta, We had to go outside to play with this one because the baby was napping.

Playdoh with golf tees and marbles to balance on top. I included 10 tees and marbles so my son could count them too if he wanted. I think the marbles I chose were too big though, or maybe I should have used modeling clay instead of Plyadoh because the tees kept falling over and the kids got frustrated with it. Good concept, just needs a bit of tweaking.

basket with bags to open and close. This was completely ignored by both boys. I thought the snap on one bag and zipper on the other would be fun or at least interesting for my tot but I guess not. I will try something like it again and present it better.

a coloring page featuring the color blue (not pictured)

a color basket focused on the color blue. I tried to fill this with items that my kids could interact with. So I made a lego truck, included a ball and bean bag for tossing, and a bag that my tot loved filling up and playing with. I also tried to make the items baby proof so that the baby could explore them too.
I put a monkey with a fabric letter in a little basket for baby to play with too.

Our letter shelf featured:
A letter Playdoh mat with a tracing sheet on the other side that he can use with a dry erase marker. This is laminated so that it can be used over and over. My 4yo did it once, but wasn't super interested in either side.

letter sort basket. I put upper and lowercase magnetic letters, fisher price little man, moose, knit mushroom, and a mouse for my m items. Then I just grabbed 4 random non-m items that fit in the basket too: a fork, seashell, car and a lego.

sandpaper letters with 'salt tray' I didn't have much salt when I put this together so I used cornmeal instead

basket with our 'm' books. I just put out the books in our personal library that have M letters: Are you my Mother?, Moongame, The Monster at the end of this Book, Mouse paint, and the Mitten

Mouse Paint color sort Printable found here

clipboard with worksheets from a preschool workbook. I know it's not Montessori, but I thought I would put it out anyway and 4yo absolutely loved this and spent much of his free time coloring these.

The math shelf featured
build a monster tray

I found the printable and directions for this activity here I then laminated the cards so that they could be used over and over. Its a really simple matching exercise where you match the card with the right bead bar. He would count the number on the card then find which bar matched it. He is all about counting these days so this was a hit.

circle stamps my brother saved from the trash and the boys have converted into building blocks
Melissa and Doug shape sorter/size sequencing puzzle.

After the kids start to be a bit squirrely I try to round them up to finish up school with reading a book from our book basket. As I read I try to occasionally point out or emphasize the letter we are studying. Two days this week the boys asked for a 'coffee break' which consisted of a small amount of decaf coffee with a considerable amount of milk. We read our books at the kitchen table while drinking coffee which is a variation of poetry tea time that my kids ADORE.