Patience! The first time I tried inserting a cup, I was met with my vagina’s version of Gandolf yelling, “You shall not pass!” Many other women have similar hard times on the first try. “You have to fold it in on itself in order to insert it and then it pops open,” says Amber Buchanan, who tried the cup for one cycle and hated it. “It’s just supposed to sit there and collect everything but honestly it felt like I was just rifling around in my bloody vagina trying to get this thing situated, and it just wasn’t comfortable.” Inserting the menstrual cup does require you to get up close with your personal bits but like tampons, it’s supposed to get easier the more you try. Jennifer Barnes has been using menstrual cups since 1996. “The first time I put it in, I was like, ‘What the holy hell is this?' It felt crazy,” says Barnes. “But I continued and now I would hate to use tampons and pads.” Most people I talked to said they were pros at insertion by the third cycle they tried the cup.