This is what female soldiers do when they get their periods on the front lines

This is what female soldiers do when they get their periods on the front lines

Many of us get hormonal IUD’s (intrauterine devices). It is a form of birth control that releases progestogen from a small device inside the uterus. It is inserted by a doctor and provides birth control for 5 years. One of the common “side effects” is that one will not menstruate during this time. If one wishes to have children, the IUD can be removed by a doctor at any time.

Having said that, I spent several years in the military before having this miraculous little device and having my period in the field was really not as big a deal as many people assume. Everyone goes to the bathroom. I would just also change my tampon when going to the washroom. If no bathrooms were available, I would either bury my feminine waste, in the same fashion that I would for a poop, or I would put it in a zip-lock that comes in our ration packs and dispose of it with the garbage from my ration at the next opportunity.

At the end of the day, WAY easier than having to shave my face every morning and get haircuts every couple of weeks. Male soldiers are so high-maintenance ;)

The first thing you need to understand is that bleeding is a common problem on the front lines, for everyone there. Bad things happen on battlefields and most of those bad things cause bleeding. A lot of effort goes into preventing and stopping bleeding of combatants. We have medics and wound dressings and tourniquets and intravenous fluid kits and all sorts of other methods and tools to treat combat-induced bleeding and to prevent death therefrom.

Menstrual blood, which can be dealt with via the same sanitary products that civilian women use, or avoided altogether by various contraceptive interventions, is by far the least worrisome kind of bleeding a combat unit can possibly experience. Seriously. It’s not a problem