Menstruation, lactation and toe pads

Diva Cup, a silicone menstrual cup

The photo: The photo is of a silicone Diva cup used to collect menstrual flow. It can be left in for up to 12 hours according to the manufacturer’s guidelines– depending on the woman’s rate of flow - though I have worn one continuously for 24 hours on my light days with no problem. I haven’t written much about wearing a Diva because for me it is a special use device. Returning readers know that I use a diaphragm for flow control and that works well for me even when I’m diving because I can have sex while it’s inserted. However, there are special circumstances, such as when I’m wearing a drysuit continuously for hours and hours during which using a Diva cup works extremely well since I can wear it all day w/o needing to empty it even though my flow is heavier when I dive.

While the manufacturer recommends a Model #2 for women my age I find wearing the smaller model 1 cup fits me better because my continuous training with Ben Wa balls and Kegel exercises keeps the grip of my ‘vaginal vice’ very strong. I always carry a Diva cup in my dive bag in case I find I need to wear a drysuit when I’m menstrual. Then it’s standard procedure to insert the Diva just after empting my bowels and bladder and before putting on an adult diaper and pulling on the thermal underwear worn under a drysuit. The adult diaper doesn’t allow the same form fitting look as when a wetsuit is worn, but the pants of a drysuit are baggy anyway and I’m not on the runway at Lincoln Center during Fashion Week in a drysuit so the extra bulk of the diaper for when I have to urinate isn’t that noticeable. And besides everyone I know wears a diaper when diving a drysuit.

The dimensions of the Diva cup: For anyone interested the Model 1 cup is 1 11/16" (~4.3 cm) in diameter and the Model 2 cup is 1 13/16" (~4.6 cm) in diameter. Both cups are approximately 2 1/4" (~5.7 cm) in length in the body of the cup, with another 3/8" (~1 cm) stem (2 5/8" total length). The stem may be trimmed to adjust for comfort. There is a small difference between the two sizes (Model 1 is 1/8" (~0.3 cm) smaller), but it is important to use the recommended sizing to prevent leakage. The manufacturer recommends Model 2 if the user is 30 or over 30 years old. As with a diaphragm once the Diva cup is properly inserted and positioned at the lower end of the vaginal vault it can’t be felt by the wearer. I’ve worn a Diva for 8 hours in a drysuit on one of my heaviest days and filled it with 20 ml of flow. It will hold up to 30 ml. Another nice thing about wearing a Diva cup is if a man is into drinking menstrual flow drinking it out of a Diva is easier than drinking it from a diaphragm since it fits his mouth better and is easier to compress to squeeze out the last few drops.

Diving and lactation: As I’ve mentioned when writing about lactating before, lactating is a high maintenance function. Extra pressure from wetsuits and/or tight bathing suits puts a lactating woman at greater risk for plugged milk ducts so there is breast maintenance, keeping my nipples and milk glands soft with a lanolin base cream to prevent clogging and the need to wear a front closure wet or dry suit so I can breastfeed or pump my breasts w/o taking the suit off. When diving, in addition to losing fluid when I’m menstrual and due to my milk production I also lose fluid from immersion dieresis - a type of increased urine production caused by immersion of the body in water (or equivalent liquid) which is mainly caused by lower temperature and by pressure - so I have to be very careful to stay well hydrated. And of course I need to breast feed or pump prior to diving and then every 4 to 6 hours to prevent considerable discomfort from engorged breasts, so I take my portable battery powered Medela breast pump when I go on diving day trips.

Toe pads as an aphrodisiac: In my AST (advanced sexual techniques) class I’m teaching tricks to keep a man fascinated. It’s the little unexpected things like letting him suck on your sweaty, smelly and sometimes bloody, toe pads that keeps a man coming back for more. We all frequently change toe pads when changing shoes so with a bit of planning we can take along several pairs of well used, stained and musky smelling pads that are ready to be trashed so when we give them to a lover to suck the sweat, tape residue, skin particles and blood out of them it’s a bonding experience with the guy at no cost to the woman.

I’ve switched to toe pads too when I want to feel semen squishing between my toes. I used to have the guy(s) jack-off in the blocks of my pointes but now that I’m wearing Gaynors when I’m planning to have sex en pointe it’s more convenient and – because Gaynors last so long - it leaves less mess in the blocks after the semen dries if I have the guy cum in my toe pads. That way I can slip my toes into them and get the full effect of the thick slippery fluid oozing between my toes before I force my toes and pads into the blocks of the Gaynors. Another nice thing about using the pads as semen containers is that when I give the cum pads to a lover to suck on he gets a more complete olfactory and gustatory experience. In addition to their feted scent there is the musky taste of semen along with the salty taste of estrogenic sweat, blood and skin particles… a sort of balanced meal as it were, with the trace nutrients and minerals from sperm.

Gigi has a client at Splash who is a ballet teacher at one of the local schools and he has her take his ‘class’ while wearing Freed Classics - which he paid for as a premium item - in one of the small studios at Splash. He requires her to wear old toe pads and sweat in them during their 45 minute pointe class. Then when she changes into Gaynors for ballet-sex he takes her sweat soaked pads to put in his gasmask so he can fuck her with the scent of her estrogenic sweat intermingled with the rubber scent of his mask. She says that for a German he is a considerate lover and gives her her pleasure first. She says he sounds like Darth Vader with his heavy breathing and muffled voice through his mask while much of the air flow is blocked by her sweat soaked pads.

I’ve had several severely sexually repressed men chew on my filthy toe pads when I peel them off when changing shoes. One of them is a high ranking business associate who I successfully negotiate with in the gaming industry. These men have socialized fairly well and are successful in the business world and in public with women they appear on the surface to be masculine and almost misogynistic. When with a woman in private however, they are extremely submissive though highly virile and potent and they need the scent and taste of a smelly sweat soaked toe pad to perform sexually. I always wear convertible tights over a thong bottom leo and take a pair of Gaynors and several pairs of well used toe pads when I’m dealing with one of them. It’s important to know an opponent’s weaknesses when you are in the business world.

Punctured diaphragms and Prince Albert piercings

A style of Prince Albert penis jewelry

Punctured diaphragms: Our clinic has seen one pregnancy and several dive-sex gas guard failures that resulted from punctured diaphragms. All have holes from the latex appearing to have been scratched repeatedly until small tears appear in the dome. Fortunately none of the women in escort training or students at St Lucy’s were involved. If a diaphragm is properly taken care of it should last 1 to2 years but with heavy usage with petroleum based lube a cervical barrier can deteriorate very quickly, especially ones made of latex. The oil makes the soft stretchy rubber dome harden and crack, but that’s not what seems to have happened in these cases. The newer Ortho and Milex diaphragms are now made of silicone which is less reactive to oils than latex but silicone diaphragms can still be destroyed, especially the Semina which has the thinnest dome.

Prince Albert piercings: The only thing common to the women with the punctured diaphragms is that they had had penetrative sex with an unprotected partner who had a Prince Albert piercing. There aren’t that many men in the area who have PAs and the ones who do wear condoms to protect themselves against a tightly contracting vagina pulling on the PA causing the man to tear himself during his thrusts so we think our PA bareback rider is probably new in town. Our clinic’s experience with men who have PAs is that they are prone to tear and get infections at the piercing site and UTIs and have urine leakage around the piercing. Recovery from piercing site infections require long recovery intervals and tears even longer when even light pressure and slight movement within a condom can aggravate the wound so abstinence is a large part of successful treatment.

The Shredder: Prince Albert piercings were popular with Doms in the BDSM community from the 1930s to the 1960s when latex diaphragms were the primary female contraceptive barrier in the U. S. and the style worn was called the Shredder. It was a 3 mm thick stainless steel PA ring with a bead closure, similar to the one shown at the top of this entry. Parts of the beads surface was textured so that there were rough edges – similar to the texture of a metal fingernail file - on the parts of the bead that face away from the penis when the closure was screwed down tight. It was used to puncture the diaphragm of a partner during a D/S sexual encounter. That type device is particularly destructive when the woman is penetrated from the rear where the ball comes in direct contact with the dome of her diaphragm. I’m told that during that time it was common for a woman who allowed herself to be penetrated doggie style during a casual encounter in a club to find that her diaphragm had been punctured. That was why it was doubly important back then that a good spermicide be used in the dome of a diaphragm. In those days abortion was illegal in the U.S. but could be obtained clandestinely from a few doctors who risked their practices to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

A cervical cap like the Prentif cavity rim cap was less likely to be punctured by a Shredder because the dome was much smaller and thicker than a diaphragm and was deeper in the vagina so was a more difficult target to hit but the cap while popular in Europe was worn by few women in the U.S. To avoid injuring himself most Shredder wearers were circumcised to prevent the possibility of abrading the inside of his foreskin. An additional caution for PA piercing wearers was and still is that they usually stay away from escorts and other professional women in the adult recreational field because professional girls pride themselves on the strength of their vaginal grip and a man with a PA can be badly torn or in some cases have his PA torn out - even when he is wearing a condom to minimize the possibility of injury - during an encounter with a girl who has a well developed vaginal vice. The fad for ‘Bad Boys’ to wear A Shredder dropped out of fashion after birth control pills came into general use in the mid 60s and all but a few women stopped using diaphragms for contraception.

A niche market: It appears that one or more men have begun wearing Shredders again and are active in this area, probably because of the popularity of dive-sex and the need for women to wear diaphragms as gas guards. To guard against abraded gas guard dome failures a woman’s first line of defense is not to play with men wearing a PA piercing. Next would be to closely examine the ball and even the bar of the piercing for any indication of rough surfaces that could damage the rubber and thereby lessen the reliability of the dome. A third precaution is to insist a partner with a PA wear a condom or use an FC2. For those women for whom none of those are a possibility and who therefore needs a reinforced gas guard Gepetto is developing a diaphragm with a scratch and puncture resistant nanofilament mesh outer surface on dome to protect against some direct and most abraded punctures. The nanofilament technology is another product of Jeff’s labs. The prototypes have domes no thicker than regular diaphragms but aren’t as stretchy as latex with about the same feel as a silicone dome. The project name for the armored gas guard is gg+. Gigi is wearing one at her new job as a volunteer Towel-Girl in a private pool club that just opened outside of town.