If I was on
Typepad, this would definitely be filed in the TMI section, so if you're squeamish, you might want to look away now.
I first got my period when I was 12.... no wait... I think I was 11....
For an 11 year old, it was the worst day of my life. Though my mother tried reassuring me that it was natural and I was a woman now, handed me a Stayfree Maxi Pad and a book and sent me to my room to read up on what weird and wonderful things were happening to my body. I screamed and I cried. I didn't WANT to become a woman, not at freakin 11 years of age.
These were the days when maxi pads were truly MAXI, long before the words "ultraslim" and "anti-leak" came into existence. Wearing a maxi pad was akin to having a rolled up Saturday's addition of the Courier Mail in your underwear. Leakage was a given, so was having to wash your knickers out in the hand basin each night.
It was something that wasn't spoken about. Secret women's business. Not so much of a secret when you walked around looking like you had a load in your pants. Then there was the stress of positioning it "just right" on your underpants. Too far forward and it looked like you had a penis, too far back and it looked like you taken a dump in your dacks.
It wasn't until I was 13 that I discovered tampons. I was finally free from those cumbersome maxis and people could no longer tell when I had my periods.....(except for that one time with a very embarrassing "string incident", but we won't go into that).
In my late teens, God invented ultraslim pads with WINGS! Though I still had an aversion to using them, cause....well.... who wants to look at that mess every time you go to the loo??
I was in my mid 20's when I'd mentioned I'd been getting headaches (while having my period and using tampons) to a friend. She sent me that
email (which has since been found to be a hoax) and I quickly switched to all cotton tampons. My headaches disappeared and I continued on my merry way.
During this whole time, my periods had been "regular". I used regular tampons, regular pads, I was a regular girl. I felt sorry for those women I saw with SUPER tampons in their shopping baskets and wondered why companies would make duel packets that contained both super and regular pads.
My miscarriage with AJ in 2004 was caused by an infection, which caused a blood clot to form on his placenta. From that day on I decided that I wasn't going to be putting anything up my cooter, save the occasional sterilized speculum and dear Chad's ......... uumm..... (do I have to write penis??)
Out went the tampons, the vibrators, the dildo and the like. So my "special draw" lays empty, and my self in the bathroom contains only pads.....of the ultraslim kind...with wings....... regular......of course.... cause I'm a regular kind of gal.
After losing Jesse earlier this year, I was still a "regular", though a little heavier than usual. I boiled it down to what so many people had told me about your periods getting heavier after having kids.
But...... after the hysteroscopy in June, things have changed. Oh how they've changed. Last month I just barely hung on to being "regular".... this month.... no chance.
I'm now the girl you find wondering down the health and beauty isle at Coles with the dual "super/regular" pack of pads in my basket.
Gone is the penis/load dilemma, because they are, after all, ultraslim, but has me stumped is why do these supers have to be so damn long??? They cover every conceivable inch between my pubic hair and half way up my butt crack.
So now I'm back to worrying that if someone goes to pinch my arse they'll pinch an inch of pad instead.
