Suzanne Siemens & Madeleine Shaw
These entrepreneurs have been making period panties for more than 10 years—and now they’re turning their attention to postpartum underwear
fter giving birth to her daughter in 2005, Madeleine Shaw dreaded the idea of putting on the postpartum panties that her hospital provided. Resembling a giant mesh diaper with a slot for an extra-absorbent pad, “postpartum underwear is famously uncomfortable,” she says. And as the co-founder of Lunapads, a company that sells reusable menstrual products, Shaw particularly hated the idea of wearing something disposable. So she MacGyvered her own, sewing fleece inserts into a few pairs of panties, which carried her
Athrough the two weeks of recovery following her C-section.
When Shaw told her business partner, Suzanne Siemens, about the invention, Siemens saw it as a natural evolution of their menstrual product business, which Shaw had started in 1993, making reusable pads and liners. (Siemens came on in 1999, after the pair met at a business administration course.) But the timing wasn’t quite right. Lunapads already had a brand new product about to launch: its period panties, which are made from cotton or an organic cotton/ spandex blend and can absorb varying levels of menstrual flow.
This was several years before other period-panty makers, like Thinx and Dear Kate, entered the market. But Shaw and Siemens saw the early signs of what’s become a major trend: the desire for eco-friendly alternatives to disposable tampons and pads.
Now they see a similar demand growing for postpartum underwear. Last fall, their friend Wendy Armbruster, creator of the breast-pumping bra Snugabell, approached them about collaborating on the idea. The time was finally right to resurrect Shaw’s original design. The women brought together four moms who had, collectively, experienced seven births—from home births to C-sections to difficult hospital deliveries—in order to brainstorm a design that would work for all women. Tentatively called Leeto, after Leto, the Greek goddess of motherhood, the underwear should be available this fall. The panties are seamless, so they won’t rub against stitches, and hold reusable pads that can be easily changed without taking off the compression brief. The pads can also be refrigerated to provide cool relief or warmed in the microwave to deal with cramps.
“The [postpartum] underwear on the market is awful,” says Siemens. “After a mom gets home, she’s bleeding for another two weeks. She needs something that’s comfortable, not plastic and disposable. Women deserve better.”