I'm the same as you Fi and I was not too keen on the idea of using pads. However, I bought heaps of them during PG to stockpile everything and wound up using all of them! Like Ambah I only needed the chunky ones for the first week or so because I had a caeser in the end & didn't bleed as much. And I didn't even notice them after the first day... in fact I was glad they were there....