Periods are a big thing in a woman’s life. Do you remember the first time you had yours? How you were dreading it (perhaps you were even looking forward to it) and the stress/fear/disappointment/anti-climax when it came? The embarrassment and eew! changing your pad – especially at school or when you were not home? The pain that made your hands sweaty and (if you were like me) too self-conscious to tell the teacher why you were feeling so awful! And then when your period is late – wearing an ‘in-case’ pad and checking ‘in-case’ you had started.
If you’re a mom with a budding ‘tween’, you may be worried about how you should go about telling her the facts of life. Don’t side-step this important milestone. Yes she will hear about it from her friends and possibly even her Life Science or Life Skills teacher at school, but it’s important that you tell her the truth i.e. periods are normal. They come in cycles calculated from the first day of one period to the first day of the next period. On average this is about 28 days. Periods don’t come on the same date every month because the number of days in a month are different and cycles are controlled by hormones influenced by stress, diet and health. It’s normal for a cycle to be as short as 3 weeks or as long as 3 months. Girls need to know this.
Speak to your daughter about coping with periods at school. Make sure she always has extra pads with her (even when she is not menstruating – pads are part of her kit). Show her how to use the pads – don’t assume she knows! Once she is confident using pads, she may want to try tampons – especially if she is doing sport, dancing, gymnastics, horse-riding etc. Tampons are helpful during the day, but she should stick to pads at night to prevent blood ‘pooling’ in the vagina while she is lying down.
How well do women understand periods? My mom bought me pads. That’s all. She didn’t tell me anything about periods simply because her mom had not told her anything! It was only when I studied Midwifery and subsequently specialised in women’s reproductive health that I began to understand and appreciate how truly amazing a woman’s body is! Periods shouldn’t only be about the bleeding. We should focus on understanding ‘ovulation’ – this is when the ovary releases the egg. Menstrual cycles are dependent on the ripening, release and non-fertilisation of the egg (ova).
If you would like to learn more about periods and get answers to your questions, go to www.Kotex.co.za. Join women worldwide on Saturday and go to menstrualhygieneday.org
