Tails of a Mermaid - Episode 2

Can you swim while menstruating? Do you need to wear a tampon in the sea? Does being underwater stop your period?

The sheer number and variation in quality of responses to these questions from a quick Google show just how confusing trying to live your normal life while on your period can be.

As someone who basically grew up in water, these were all questions I took for granted. Of course you can swim on your period. Wearing a tampon is fine in any body of water, but needs changing afterwards as it can absorb it. And sometimes, apparently water pressure reduces the flow of menstrual blood, but be warned, as soon as you're out of the water, the flow will return!

As young girls spending our early mornings, evenings and weekends together on various poolsides around the country, we learnt to deal with the occasional period drama. A leaky tampon in diving practice was explained to the younger kids as ‘a nose bleed’ while we hastily washed it away with our water bottles. There was always someone prepared with a spare tampon if you got caught short. Crippling period pains before training? Try telling coach Gary that... and there's always the delightful classic of realising your tampon string has been stuck outside of your swim suit for the ENTIRE session. Yay.

Periods became such a normalised part of our swimming lives, that we never considered all the other girls dreading swim class or PE because it was the wrong time of the month. I guess we took for granted that there were solutions at our disposal and it's shocking to read the current statistics indicating that a significant proportion of girls drop out of sport around the time that they start menstruating.

period products for swimmers

I can see now that having forward thinking parents, who encouraged me to continue training, was incredibly fortunate. And I'm really glad that my mum introduced me to menstrual cups. It took a while for me to come round to the idea, but once I realised the benefits, well, I've never gone back. If you haven't already discovered them I highly recommend considering this option. Menstrual cups are made of medical grade silicone and collect rather than absorb your period. This means that, unlike a tampon, there won't be any chance of soaking up any pool water - hurrah! I've recently been using KuuCup - check out my review.

I wanted to write this months article to share some of the not-so-fun but oh-so-normal experiences that can result from being determined to stay active on your period. For every sport I’m sure there’s a whole host of potential ‘nightmare’ situations you could face... but at the end of the day, it’s just a bit of blood. Life goes on, and staying active is more important!