Mentrual cup is causing my cervix to prolapse. Can a different shape or size prevent this from happening?
hi, I know my body very well and I’m also a health professional. I started using a mentrual cup 1 month ago and immediately had problems. It was trickier to insert than I imagined and even trickier to remove. I’m 46 years old, had two children in my late teens, early twenties so over 24 years ago. I regularly do pelvic floor exercises but still have a low cervix at times. I wear an IUD.
What is happening is that the cup is moving high up and suctioning around my cervix and then pulling it down. As the cervix and part of my vagina wall is drawn right down into the cup it is really hard to break the seal and causing cramps when I wear it. This does not feel healthy and the cervix is sitting unusually low when I eventually get the cup off. I’ve read plenty of blogs where advice says the cup can’t possibly cause so much suction to cause problems but this is my experience. I checked my cup and it only had two holes for breaking the seal, I have now added a further 4 so have 6, the four I added are slightly larger too, I used a leather hole puncher so they are true holes, but the same problems occurred this month even more so. I turned the cup 360 once inserted and ensured it was comfortable and well placed but it still travelled up and attached itself to my cervix and drew it in ( my cervix and vaginal walls are a little loose from childbirth so allow this movement. Sometimes certain activity can cause a temporary prolapse of my cervix which causes cramping until it settles down and moves back into position. This is the pain I am experiencing when wearing the cup). My question is will a different size or shape help? I think my pelvic floor muscles are in quite good shape for my age. I really want to wear a cup but don’t want to cause myself internal damage or stress to my connective and support tissue.
the cup I bought was a daisy cup size 2 off amazon. I now know this is a copy not a branded cup and wondred whether a different shape would work better for me.
I am so glad to know that I am not the only person with this issue. After using a cup a few times, my cervix would be suctioned all the way into it, sometimes as soon as the cup opened upon insertion. Has anyone actually asked a doctor about it? Money is a bit tight and my insurance is basically in case of major emergency only… I wasn’t in any pain, and did figure out how to get the dang thing out, but I’m not sure if it’s safe to continue using a cup of any sort. Maybe a cup meant for a low cervix? Just really hoping someone has some idea if this is actually dangerous, when I asked the manufacturer of my cup they seemed to have no idea what I was talking about and just suggested a softer cup. I have a Lena cup, pretty standard, and am a virgin in my twenties so no pre-existing anything to speak of.
Hi There!
I talked to a doctor about it a couple of years back. I was worried that I damaged myself from all of my pulling while removing a particular cup with no air holes. The doctor said that for the most part, we wouldn’t do any major damage as we tend to stop causing ourselves pain long before anything irreversible or anything that would need medical correction would happen.
Stop using the cup until your cervix corrects itself. By the time I was able to see the doctor (about a week later) they saw nothing out of the ordinary and I also felt like my cervix had moved back up.
If the cup you’re using is still causing issues, I would suggest trying a different shape. Bell-shaped cups, especially with flared rims, tend to get “sucked” in and up more than some other shapes. Sometimes this can cause the air holes to get block off more than normal.
Do you know if you have a low or high cervix?
If you have a medium to a high cervix, a longer cup might be easier to reach to release the seal/suction – cups that are more “V”-shaped with a regular rim as opposed to a bell-shaped cup with a flared rim like the Lena Cup.
If you have a medium to a low cervix you can still find low cervix cups that are bell-shaped but with a regular rim (like the Mermaid Cup Guppy) that will still be comfortable but don’t get sucked in/up as much into the vagina fornix (space around your cervix). You can also check out menstrual discs that are not supposed to create a suction at all.
Good Luck <3
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