‘Vile’: Mum slammed for breaking sacred swimming etiquette during period

“I go swimming every week with my kids and I never realised it was an issue,” the mum reveals.

Periods have got to be one of the most annoying things about being a woman.

You rage, you bloat, you cramp, you cry, you bleed, you get a couple of weeks reprieve and then you do it all over again.

Every month we do this, for something like 40 years.

That’s 480 periods for anyone keen to do the maths, and now that we have, we wished we didn’t know.

Periods stop us from doing a lot of things, like sport, going to the beach, going in the swimming pool.

But for Carla*, who swims in a public pool weekly with her kid, periods have never been a hindrance.

The mum-of-one hops in the water, tampon-free and enjoys her swimming session.

She never thought it was an issue until she shared her ritual with her sister and discovered that plenty of people think it’s disgusting for a menstruating woman to swim without a tampon.

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Carla thought it was fine to swim during her period and not wear a tampon. Photo: iStock

Mum slammed for swimming during period

“I swim every Friday evening with my other half and my child,” she wrote on the Mumsnet forum.

“My sister told me it was vile for me to swim whilst bleeding.”

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Carla was confused. She said it was towards the end of her cycle and her period was “pretty much over”.

“Would I swim whilst heavy? I would say no, I wouldn’t.

“My sister says it’s not fair on others swimming… are there actually any rules about it? Would a tampon be suitable if you did want to swim?"

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“I’m not sure about others, but if I bath whilst using a tampon, it will eventually fill up with water and expand rapidly.”

She asked the community for their opinions as her sister’s reaction had made her question whether she was breaking some kind of etiquette.

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Most people thought that Carla should wear a tampon if she was going to swim.

“Swimming on your period is fine, but I don’t know why you’d be doing it without a tampon,” one person wrote.

“Without a tampon, I’d be worried that strangers would be able to see me bleeding in the pool,” said another person.

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But not everyone thought it was a big deal.

“Going to a public pool is like having a very chlorinated bath with a heap of strangers,” said one person. “Bodily fluids are part of the deal.”

*Names have been changed

Originally published as ‘Vile’: Mum slammed for breaking sacred swimming etiquette during period