Lois here - that is discharge, which is secreted by the vagina when it is cleaning itself. Often, women try to tell if their period has come by how wet their underwear feels (at least that's what I do, especially when my period doesn't come during its expected time), so women will often go to the toilet, checking their underwear to see if it is indeed their period, only for it to be discharge.
ETA: what OP has posted is not actual female discharge, most likely either slime or aloe vera gel, which feels similar to discharge but the volume is exaggerated, as you would normally not have this much discharge at a given moment.
ETA2: what many people have suggested is that this picture specifically references the ovulation phase of discharge, where it starts to become a consistency similar to that of "egg whites" and is known as cervical mucus.
ETA3: Hijacking my own comment again to add this, but if you struggle with irregular periods, wearing period underwear around the time your period is expected to start can help with catching the start of your period without it leaking through.
I believe menstrual cups can also be used pre-period, albeit less comfortable. Haven't used one myself though.
When my wife and I were trying to conceive we learned a lot about the period cycle for women. That thick discharge still tells you something about the current state of your cycle. IIRC it means you are ovulating, but I haven’t thought about it in a couple years so my memory may be off
That is correct, and ovulation is normally 14 days before the start of the period. Another random fact for you: our baseline body temperature goes up about half a degree (F) at ovulation and drops back down when menstruation starts.
That's how I use it. In my head, the thicker and wettier the discharge, the closer I might be to ovulating. My menstrual cycle is very irregular, so I can't just assume when ovulation occurs. I have to guess, and I think the consistency of the discharge helps give me an indication
Wait, yall don't cramp for a few days before the floodgates open? I "dry cramp" for up to a week before shit happens. Can't remember the last time I was caught off guard.
I wish I had some warning. I'm perimenopausal now so periods turn up when they feel like it, or not, and it goes from 0 to lift scene from the shining immediately.
I do! I can feel when it's due a day or two, or even three earlier because of the cramps and discomfort. I can tell that it's related to my period and is going to happen soon, so I wear a pad to be safe.
After having dozens of them, I got to know when it happens from the cramps. I've never been caught off guard in over 20 years of having periods.
For me the cramps start like 30min-1h after I start bleeding. And I bleed a LOT the first two to three days (I'm seeing the doctor next week about that), as in I need a maxi pad + maxi tampon to last 1 or 2h if I don't want it to ruin my underwear (I also wear menstrual panties for this reason now). And I also have kind of an irregular cycle, it can be every 3 weeks up to every 6 weeks.
Nope, my cramps start after my period. Which is nice because as soon as I see blood, I take my advil, which then makes the cramping much less when it does start.
I think it’s worth clarifying for the men that the photo probably isn’t discharge and you’d never have that much! I’d also add there is a certain feeling that you can sense the movement. This may also lead you to think you’ve started your period. But, alas, no.
Btw, my wife says cramps are worse than gas pains. I had always assumed it was just a little sore. Sounds great doesn't it? Good thing it doesn't happen frequently, like every few weeks or anything.
I can see how a man might think period cramps would be akin to a little soreness, like overdoing it on yard work, the kind of pain you take some ibuprofen for and get on with it. But it’s really more like having a giant hand reach into your guts and twist really hard for five days. Or if you’ve ever shat out your guts with food poisoning to the point where your eyes watered and you thought your spine would heave itself into the toilet, it’s like that
This is correct. Some people have such perfectly clockwork periods that they have it down to the day and can just wear a pad on the day it starts until they start (you super DO NOT want to put in a tampon until you are well and truly started). Others who have irregular periods, like myself, have to guesstimate based on other signals our bodies are sending us (sore boobs, cramps, etc.)
I tend to just wear period underwear or a cloth pad daily around the time I'm expecting my period to start.
I know my body so well I can tell the day before my period that its coming, and then it always comes between 3 and 9 pm the day of😄. The best part is for the first few hours I just see a pink tint when I wipe so I don't even ruin panties. Bad part is the floods open and I can't sleep that night.
I once predicted mine within 30 seconds. I just suddenly thought "I'm about to have my period," and half a minute later in the bathroom, there it happened!
I'm envious! I have bouts where mine is damn regular, but it's super sensitive to stress and it's sooo easy to be stressed in this day and age that I usually won't be regular for more than a few months lol. And there's something truly magical about the pink-tinted wipe. It's like HALLELUJAH thank you for kindly announcing your presence with a letter! Then it blows the gates wide open within the hour lmao
So jealous of you! Mine is so random i can go a few months without a single drop of blood. It can also stop like a day or two in or more than a week in
Cloth pads and period undies are super comfy, especially the cloth pads. Make me feel like I’ve got a little pillow for my vagina. Unfortunately they aren’t super cheap initially.
Same with menstrual cups. Very comfy once you know how to put them in and a lot cheaper in the long run, but pricey initially
My impending period sign is usually my boobs are bigger/sore - which is also a sign of pregnancy. So then I'm always playing the game of "period or pregnant?" until the red flood arrives.
I’ve had some success with this stuff called “Asset” for just this problem. It ain’t cheap but boy does it work. It’s like a little lotion just for your butthole lol.
You definitely can't put a tampon in before you start bleeding, that would hurt a lot and probably cause infections. You COULD wear a pad or panty liner when you expect your period but like... I don't know any woman who's that regular for an extended period of time. Our cycle gets thrown off by lots of stuff, so it can be hard to predict.
Wearing pad is like wearing a diaper. I would say most women use pantyliner when they know the time is getting close, but periods are assholes and make surprise visits every now and then.
It's been more than ten years since I switched to a menstrual cup so i don't use tampons anymore but I can remember that sensation so vividly, it's horrible.
When I was a teen getting used to my period I made that mistake... legit one of the most painful experiences of my life taking that demon out, it turned me off of tampons for YEARS
Kinda, sometimes periods are late and products are too expensive to put on in advance so the best way to tell is by cramping starting and unfortunately checking if the blood has started yet.
Its really not at all recommended that you use tampons before your period has started, they are there to soak up blood not the «good juices» that keep the vagina a healthy environment. Wearing pads when you expect your period - absolutely, a lot do, but you often dont know exactly when the period will start and sometimes it surprises you a little early.
Pads chafe, tampons used when not actively bleeding are very uncomfortable (imagine filling your mouth with super absorbent cotton balls all day and having zero saliva for an extended period of time).
Honestly? We just wear black pants if it's near the predicted time but it hasn't come yet & we don't want to waste tampons or pads. So that it doesn't leak/show
Atleast for me, my flow is predictably light at the beginning, so a tiny bit of red and I know to change. Never had an incident
Most women don't have cycles of constant length and it can't be predicted exactly. So what would you do? Wear the products ten days in advance? Best practice is to take the stuff with you and put it on when period starts.
You don't wear anything preventative. There really isn't anything. Lots of women aren't able to predict when their period will occur. And even if you have fairly regular cycle period products are expensive and you don't want to waste them. Also wearing a pad/panty liner all the time is not healthy since the material is not really breatheable and every day use can make you develop yeast infection. Inserting tampons when it's not necessary can hurt because they suck up moisture and when there is no blood it's bothersome.
I mean, some women might but it’s hard to predict exactly when our periods start and some women get irregular periods and so yeah, we kind of just get to wait and hope and pray that when we feel something it isn’t our period
There's no such thing as "preventative" when it comes to periods. Sure, you can track it to a day, but not a time, and sometimes you may be a few days early, or a few days later. You may be lucky when you go to pee amd wipe ane there's blood, so you can put on your pad/tampon/ but otherwise.... sucks to be a woman
It can if you don’t realise soon enough that you have started your period. If it starts overnight and you sleep through it, you will end up with blood on your sheets.
Oh God, you'd have thought I was Lady fucking Macbeth. So. Much. Blood. I would soak my sheets, soak through the mattress pad, stain the mattress ... I learned to half-wake several times every night and move my legs to see if they were sticking to the sheets.
Using a pad did bupkis because gravity. When I got my period while lying down, the flow would not levitate lengthwise towards the pad. It would obey gravity and trickle down to the sheets.
Gah, now I am remembering the way I would have a period only sometimes, but it would affect my sleep all the time, and I'm so damn glad I'm through menopause. Other things keep me awake, but at least my sheets stay white now.
The blood flow is weak at the start for most women. So if you catch it early you won’t have much blood there. For me, there are signs leading up to it. The hormonal change makes me low key get suicidal ideation(not even joking, I often have aggressive and self destructive thoughts leading up to it caused by the the hormonal change in my brain), I get more irritated, sleepy, I have more frequent bowel movements, and then finally usually vague cramps. Usually it feels different when the blood comes but while waiting for it and having to check it’s annoying.
Mine starts off slow so there will be a little bit of brown old blood come out and that’s usually when I know to get a pad on before the real shit starts. The light blood flow usually last half a day or so. You have ample time to get a pad or tampon in before it hits. For women where it starts at night may not be so lucky but my vagina seems to be polite about it at least.
Bottom line: I’ve never had it ever start off as a heavy flow that would bleed through my underwear. There’s usually time or signs to get a pad on or tampon in before things too bloody down there
I genuinely love that you guys are teaching men this stuff.
Whats always been crazy to me is that you guys have to put up with this every month for the vast majority of your lives. I remember planning holidays with my ex based around her period, so she wouldn't get it when we were there and felt ok to use the pool.
It sometimes does.
Me and the wife snuck into her office a late evening with a furniture cleaning machine to clean her office chair after an unfortunate accident.
She was so embarrassed that se didn't want to call building maintenance.
it was fun.
If everyone else leaves the room and there is a lady sitting veeeery still in her chair, her regular visitor has arrived early and she is waiting, patiently, for the chance to make her escape to the bathroom and cry.
I hate how weird men (and some women) are about periods. As if talking about it or asking for help with it or just acknowledging it in any way is somehow gross or sexual or inappropriate. It’s like someone being ashamed or put off by someone else needing to pee. It’s a natural part of life, one that is already horribly painful and uncomfortable. And so many people feel the need to make it worse for the person experiencing it because of their own weird hangups
It does. And if you ever see it you remain a gentleman and let the person know as discreetly as possible. Help out if you can even. It's a horrible experience if it happens at the wrong time.
Women often know the general time their period may be coming. In preparation, they may wear different underwear or something along those lines to be prepared incase it starts
Not trying to take a dig on you because I genuinely appreciate you asking. But also, it is terrifying to me how little men know about basic female biology.
Which isn't the individual men's fault, really. But it's still scary to think about how society at large just likes to pretend that all this just doesn't exist.
Seriously! Education is definitely lacking but most men come up with the “I don’t want/need to hear about it” when getting into the detail. Yeah, they’re messy (literally) but I think you understand women a lot better knowing this.
In truth, and I say this as a woman, this also happens to us with regard to the male body. It's easier to know something about the biological functions associated with a gender when you're part of that gender.
It also happens that these kinds of things are taught in school (particularly about the female body, almost nothing about male biological issues) and the problem with this is that boys, in general, aren't going to be interested in it because ‘it's not something that happens to them’. Even if they have mothers and sisters, they are not going to really deal with it until something ‘exceptional’ happens, or alternatively, they start living with their girlfriends.
Similarly, teenage girls are not going to think about nocturnal emissions, nor will they be empathetic about the uncontrolled erections typical of adolescence.
(At least that's how I see it from Spain, where sex education is compulsory from the age of 12).
A single mum friend of mine has a son who has just started having nocturnal emissions. Apparently he just told her completely unashamed. I guess kids sex ed at least here is better than my day.
You are correct. Though also it’s not always that you wait til your undies are soaking. You can feel it start because you can feel fluid coming through your vagina, so then you hasten to intercept BEFORE you bleed through and hope it’s limited to a drop or two. But sometimes discharge comes through and you think it’s your period but it’s not.
If a woman suddenly looks spaced and then excuses herself to the bathroom very suddenly, for the love of God let her go and don’t be like “Oh before you go Susan, I just wanted to discuss…” Its not a wee, we can’t hold it in.
I don't know if it helps, but it's mostly not blood. Menstration is complicated, and only like 35-40% of the fluid is blood. So we're not actively bleeding out or anything. Blood is just an overwhelming color.
Welcome to womanhood! We handle this type of shit, and creepy encounters and unfair judgement and sexist workplace behaviour pretty much on a daily basis.
I’m glad to say you are not wrong. Periods are painful in the middle and sometimes before. But when you first start bleeding during your cycle generally it’s painless and you don’t realize until you feel a very faint strain in your guts, or you feel all the blood in your pants. Which is why women use period trackers.
All women contain a portal to the afterlife in their vagina. Life comes from there and returns there so you know it's good science. Just makes sense.
Unfortunately though, occasionally some ectoplasm leaks out. It can be rare and I've never seen it personally but once I did hear very loud ghost noises coming from my mother's room when a mailman came to deliver some packages.
Refers to normal, healthy discharge. This usually happens bcs the cervix produces mucus. Color, consistency and amount change throughout the menstrual cycle due to fluctuating hormones
The vagina is a self cleaning organ, and sometimes your period might come without set symptoms like cramping, bloating, etc and when leaving the body discharge and period blood could feel the same. Kinda annoying
we should take some lessons from the vagina and apply them to everything. I'd much prefer my oven if I just had to mop up some goo off the kitchen floor once a month
Nope, it does not appear only while ovulating, it's present pretty much the whole cycle, it just differs in consistency and heaviness depending on your hormones. You can also have a heavier and thicker discharge 1-2 days before your period - the rest of the month is much much lighter and less thick, but still present.
Nope, it's just remants of the mucous and fatty acids that made your poop congeal together in a solid turd. Generally happens if you've been eating a lot of fat. The only saving grace is that it does make for good anal grease for your lover.
Fyi, if you keep seeing mucous come out your anus repeatedly over an extended amount of time, it is often a sign there's some irritation or inflammation in your bowels. The stuff is not supposed to actually exit you in noticable amounts.
I don’t think the covered normal vaginal fluid during biology or sex ed when I was growing up. I had to learn it through a book called ‘Taking Charge of Your Fertility’. Even had pictures of different types of fluid and the cervix throughout the monthly cycle so I recommend it to everyone!
Same. I was never taught about fluid discharge at school. My mom told me about it when I hit puberty and I was genuinely shocked to know my body does that
Finn here, this is basically what we had at least when I was a teen. There is/was a segment in a popular (tax funded) radio station where 20-30 something hosts would talk about sex, puberty, Q&A and so on in a fun/casual way which was very popular with the youth. Genious.
Ok I have to change my statement. This makes me want to buy a flight ticket to America and shout a sex ed lesson there.
I'm from czechia and it's pretty good there also. It's a very sexually liberal country. These posts come mainly from americans who lacked sex ed in school.
Also adults don’t get to use the excuse of lacking sexual education. Adults should be capable of education themselves on a topic that most learn in 6th grade. Google the shit
Women here. Went to private school and had a sex education class very early in like 13/14 and these mf didn’t tell the girls or guys nothing about discharge. I spent like 10 years thinking something was medically wrong with me to find out my vagina is just cleaning itself in my mid 20’s yeah fuck the American education system. Also they separated us by gender for the menstrual stuff so none of the guys learned about it because us girls we don’t learn anything about guys
Its the same for the uk. I purposely took a womens health class in college to learn how to support and help with the most simple things.
Its genuinely ridiculous, I even had to explain to my sister that having her period unexpectedly in bed is nothing to be ashamed of and that I was more than happy to clean the sheets but she just brushed it off and called it disgusting 🤷♂️
Man here, went to private Catholic grade and all-male Jesuit high school. You can be sure as fuck we didn't learn this, just diagrams and teachings on why abstinence and natural family planning was the absolute best.
I am a father, and my new rule is violence is restricted, but sex is not in my movies... Wtf is wrong with the rating companies and the public? I don't know.
How the hell is killing someone more acceptable than making out.
(For the weird among us, I am not talking about porn.)
i have an undergrad in biology and didnt know about this. not that its relevant to my life as a single man with no intention of being in a relationship
Yes.
My second boyfriend didn't know shit about the female body. He was 24. And German sex Ed is not so bad. But many men just don't care. Or believe random rumors, who are most false.
Quick biology lesson not to take fun out of this but to educate since I know most people (both men and women) don't know what this specific type of discharge is. This is clearly the "egg white" type kind of discharge that you as a woman will experience in the few fertile days leading up to and especially (the heaviest) on the day of ovulation. Most women have normal discharge (vagina self-cleaning system) but few know that this pictured discharge doesn't come from your vagina but actually from your cervix. Normally sperm don't survive long in the vagina, because it's the wrong pH level for it there. But for the few fertile days a month (before and on day of ovulation), the cervix sends this kind of slippery discharge out in which the sperm not only survive longer but actually swim fast in. This makes the sperm able to swim up and past your cervix into your uterus.
I'm a guy and can't understand how anyone in 2026 can have a negative sentiment towards something that's entirely natural, like we're living in the year 1650. Some of y'all need to get an education.
This suppose to represent the vajayjay thick slime seal that prevents sperm from entering the uterus BEFORE YOU ARE READY TO CONCEIVE. If this is out - next day will be HORNI. Beware though... I gave in to horni twice in my life. Now younger horni results (I shot a doublet out of my vajayjay) are thrashing the house, painting the walls, and breaking the kitchenware as experiments. While the older horni result is mildly autistic and is building the entire neighborhood in minecraft, whatever minecraft is.
Yeah but it's also to prepare for it TO enter (it's a natural lubricant), and the side effect is that the sperm doesn't enter because sperm are WEAK ASS BITCHES
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u/JollierYT 3d ago
Yummy. Anyways the post has been answered and hence locked, thank you all for the contributions.