Hi,
Last weekend, I travelled for about 30 hours to get from my birth family that was reunited in Trento, Italy, to the family I married into that lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Some 25 hours into the journey, on the plane, I suddenly felt a gush in between my legs. Had I peed myself? I am aware of postpartum incontinence, but I had not experienced anything like this before.
As I figured out a way to disentangle myself from the safety belt while not waking up my son (he was sleeping on me), I suddenly realised: my period had made a comeback!
In any other moment of my life, I would have immediately known that whatever was going on down there was my period. After all, my period had always been a nuisance. Once it came extra early as I was reporting on floods in El Salvador and had no way to access any sanitary products … plus, I was knee-high in water.
But between my pregnancy and breastfeeding, I’d just forgotten. I basically went period-free for almost a year and a half. I was even thinking that maybe I was done with my periods: that at age 38, after 28 years of bleeding, my body could finally take a break.
And I didn’t just get my period. It was also really painful. Throughout my life, I had always heard that period pain would get better after having a baby. My mum told me so from her own experience, and so did several other women around me and some gynecologists. Now I know that “the end of period pain after childbirth” is yet another patriarchal fairytale.
Guille, a friend who came to pick us up at the airport and was immediately informed about my bleeding status, told me to look at it differently: at least I knew that my body was doing OK after giving birth. It was a good reminder of how skewed my view on periods is. And the comment made me think of The Flow Down, a podcast about periods. In the first episode, health coach Stefanie Kleinburd makes a similar point: “Periods are a vital sign of the body,” she says. She explains that periods can reveal a lot about a woman’s health.
Despite all this information, I hate periods. And it is not hard to understand why. When I started menstruating, I was 10 years old, and nobody had told me what to expect. I didn’t have an older sister or cousin to talk to, and I was ahead of schedule in my class. One day I bled through a skirt in school and it was mortifying. Plus, my great-aunt would tell me that I could not touch or water plants during my period because they would die.
But I was lucky. Worldwide, girls miss out on school and get locked up in sheds because of their period.
Interestingly, just two years ago, my perception changed a little when I started using a menstrual cup instead of pads.
I had always found tampons uncomfortable, and pads were awful. But the cup was amazing: it was practical, and it obliged me to face my own blood. Even in rural The Gambia, with little clean water at hand, I managed to feel cleaner by wearing a cup than I would have with pads.
How much of all the pain that I feel during my period has to do with my problematic view of femininity? And how much is it a result of the amount of misunderstanding there is around periods in the world?
After all, isn’t my friend Guille right? Shouldn’t I feel relieved that my body is going back to normal, and that my pregnancy and postpartum days are over?
Whatever the answers, I know that we need to be more open about periods, and that is why I love what Jessica Weiss and Stefanie Kleinburd do in The Flow Down podcast. I know there are people who want to bleed and can’t, and those who just don’t want to bleed. But regardless of how personal menstruations can be, I think we should all be more open about it – starting from childhood.
I am curious to know: when did you first hear about periods? Do you and those around you talk about it openly – including men?
Making my journalism more memberful
Last week, I published a piece about childhood trauma, or Adverse Childhood Experiences, and for the first time I asked a member to help me proofread it. I think the result was much better because of this collaboration.
So, do you have an expertise in some aspect of the first 1,000 days – including breastfeeding, parenting, child-friendly cities, reproduction rights, early readings, neuroscience – and are you interested in being more involved in my journalistic process? You can proofread pieces I write in the future, or suggest topics I should cover. If so, please send me an email: I would love to find new ways to make my journalism more memberful.
This is my last newsletter for the year, so I wish you a great end of 2019 – even if you don’t celebrate the end of the year where you are. I surely will be celebrating, and this space will be one of the elements of 2019 I’ll cherish.
See you back here in 2020!
Until then,
Irene
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