Nishmat's Women’s Health and HalachaIn memory of Chaya Mirel bat R' Avraham

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Checking whether period has started

29 February, 2016
Question:

What do you do if you think your period has started but it isn’t a veset (bedikah) day? I learned that you aren’t supposed to look at your underwear, the toilet or toilet paper (except for underwear in the seven clean days), so what are you supposed to do? Assume you’re ok or check one of the three mentioned above to make sure?


Answer:

The advice not to look is not a halachic requirement, but a recommendation to help women avoid sometimes complicated niddah questions.

Stains found on colored undergarments do not make a woman niddah, whether she sees them or not.  Blood found in the toilet bowl also may be treated as a stain that does not make a woman niddah.  So too, we follow the halachic position that blood found on toilet paper may be disregarded if there was an interval of at least a few seconds between urinating and wiping.  (For more information, please see our articles on “Stains” and “Toilet Paper“.)  Any of these can help you check whether your period has started, without risking becoming niddah unnecessarily from staining.

Please note that when a woman has staining that does not make her niddah, we usually recommend that she refrain from relations for a day, as a precuation against a flow beginning during relations. This is a precaution and not a strict halachic requirement.

Please write back with any further questions.

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