Aunt Flo

If you don’t want to read specifics about menstrual cycles, and specifically MY menstrual cycle, well, STOP NOW.

You’ve been warned. You know I am a big pot of TMI, and I know that some TMI is more palatable to people than others.

I was what you call a “late bloomer”. I got my period when I was 16, I think, after years of wishing and hoping and wondering and feeling incredibly left out and behind and freakish compared to my peers.  Once I got my period, of course, I realized that my friend who’d had her period since 4th grade was right: better to start years of regularly scheduled hemorrhaging later rather than earlier.

For more than a decade, my menstrual cycle was characterized by extreme weepiness the week before and abdominal cramps during the bleeding that were occasionally severe but manageable with OTC anti-inflammatories.  My husband learned early on not to be too nice to me during that fragile period or I would dissolve into tears.  Of course, he is such a sweet man he couldn’t always help it and usually ended up with snot and tears smeared all over the front of his shirt for his efforts. ROMANCE!

Unsuccessfully attempting to get knocked up the first time around brilliantly illustrated the intensity of the mind-body connection. Through sheer psychosis I managed to make a highly regularly 29 day cycle almost TWO WEEKS LATE (without accompanying fertilization and implantation and corpus luteum action), which was interesting from a research perspective, but maddening from an I-want-to-start-a-family perspective. One dingy fertility doctor, subsequent adoption of Taking Charge Of Your Fertility techniques and four children later, I have overcome psychosis with knowledge and reason and made good use of my ovaries, uterus and various cyclical reproductive hormones.

WEIRD THING, though: After every single baby the defining features of my menstrual cycle have reset. Who know THAT would change too?

BABY ONE: When I got my period back, I still had minor abdominal cramping and a normal lighter flow, but no weepy. In fact, about 24 hours before my period would start I would have a day of RAGE where I pretty much just wanted to rip everyone’s face off, including and especially my hapless husband’s.  This was a bit of an adjustment for him, as no amount of “kind” or “nice” on his part could make me cry because the only emotions I seemed to be capable of for that short period were OUT AND OUT RAGE and BARELY SUPPRESSED RAGE. At least his shirts remained snot-free (he only had to deal with puke from the baby).

Luckily for Joel (and me – I do not like anger or conflict or simmering rage AT ALL) that only lasted a few months until I got pregnant again (purposefully and without insanely screwed up menstrual cycles or consulting with the fertility doctor).

BABY TWO: My period returned without rage and seemingly without weepiness either, which was a nice treat! It was very regular, which helped quite a bit conceiving…

BABY THREE: My period returned quietly, sans rage and weepiness (hooray again!), but instead of the abdominal cramps that seemed far more normal to me, I felt menstrual pain in what the weird hippy guy in our old yoga videos referred to as my “sit bone” (aka my ischial tuberosities, aka the part of the pelvis you sit on). Which was weird and more mentally uncomfortable than abdominal cramps, although less painful overall.

BABY FOUR: I awaited the return of my period with some trepidation this time, as THIS IS IT FOR BABIES FOR ME and this is the last roll of this particular die. After three cycles this is apparently what I am stuck with for the rest of my menstruating days (which actually sound more pleasant than menopause – OH THE JOY OF BEING FEMALE):

1. regular cycles like usual
2. very mild referred cramping pain in my “sit bones”
3. very mild irritation before the bleeding starts (although that could be circumstantial as my life has been ridiculously stressful the last few months)
4. very mild weepiness – I decided I can’t read the National Geographic magazine before my period starts because all the Last Frog Alive and We Are Destroying The Planet Through Sheer Maliciousness And Stupidity is just too much to bear on a background of female hormones.
5. RIDICULOUSLY HEAVY FLOW for about a day and a half. Like soaking and overflowing a super sized tampon every two hours for a little more than a day.

WHAT DA HECK. (As we say in North Dakota – or did say before the more experience profanity of oil field workers infiltrated the state).

#5 is REEDICULOUS and I am having all sorts of issues making the mental adjustment so I don’t BLEED ALL OVER EVERYTHING.  I would think I would feel weak with the amount of blood I am losing. I got up three times the night before last to change absorbent devices because otherwise I would have left a nice pool of blood in the hotel bed I was using (I’m sure housekeeping really enjoys cleaning up things like that).

Trying to focus on the positive: no weepiness, no rage, no bad cramps, but GEEZ LOUISE the excessive hemorrhaging is, well, EXCESSIVE.

Yes, yet another reason reproduction is not a zero-sum game for us women, guys. My body will never ever EVER be the same. Trampolines are now a peeing hazard, the front of my torso just generally sags in a less-than-it-used-to-be attractive way, my internal hormonal cycle is forever changed.  My children, of course, are worth it, but the vessel overflowing with life does suffer some permanent dings and cracks in the life-ing process.

Which underlies my theory for why men are more drawn to things that might kill them, like extreme sports and war.

A woman lives in a battlefield: our bodies bring pain to us regularly; we don’t have to go out seeking anything death-defying or difficult because if we wait long enough it will inevitably come to us and, just because that’s the way it is, it may just permanently disable or kill us without us ever even walking out our front door.

Men, on the other hand, have these testosterone-riddled, uterus-free bodies that have to seek out pain to experience its myriad facets. To prove they’re tough, I guess? As tough as women? Okay, I don’t really know why men do this, but I definitely know why women do NOT do this as frequently as men.

This difference, though, is why my husband gleefully chose to spent all last weekend wilderness survival hiking to the edge of his physical abilities, eating bugs and sleeping outside on a pile of grass while I stayed home with the children and ate chocolate, knowing that with no special effort on my part that the pain and bleeding would come to me.