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Navigate: FAQ Home Page > Female -- Periods > What should a tampon look like?
Posted on: 04/15/2008
Question
Before I put in my tampon, I looked to see where the blood was coming from.
I simply used a mirror and saw that there was a lot of blood further than my actual vagina. How come that is? Is that normal? And what should the tampon look like when you take it out? I'm not sure if, by the looks of it, I'm taking it out too early or too late. Sometimes it's long and skinny and other times it's short and fat with blotches of blood. What's normal?
Answer
When blood comes out of your vagina, it tends to cover all of the skin around your vagina, but it gets wiped away with tissue paper. When you take the tampon out, it should be full of blood, which is the long and skinny one I think. If you are not bleeding very much, it will be "dry" inside your vagina, so the tampon will not have gone in far, so it will be fat, and just have blotches of blood. That might be a good sign that a pad would work better.