How were you told about the onset of periods

I came home from school at lunchtime and was bleeding. I knew a bit about it from school biology lessons and my sister two years older. My mum had just given birth to my brother - there’s a 12 year a gap.- she was bleeding and had one of the sanitary belts in the house, my sister was on her period so had the other belt so she made a sort of belt from coarse string it had two loops and went round my waist. I went back for afternoon school with the string belt cutting into me and what felt like a great big wodge of sanitary towel between my legs.

My mum. lost her mum when she was thirteen and her family were taken in by some childless relatives. So she knew nothing about sex or periods or childbirth, most of what she learnt was from work colleagues. She talks about waiting for the midwife to make a cut in her breast so she could feed her baby.

Yes, DanniRae it was, but even more distressing was when my Mum died of cancer a couple of years later and nobody talked about that either (August 1967).

My entire attitude towards periods was probably influenced by my mother, who refered to it as "being unwell" or being "bad". She told me all kinds of (working class) myths, such as it was dangerous to wash my hair when I was having a period.

I grew up loathing my periods and feeling that women had got, quite literally, the dirty end of the stick. In my 20s I used to scream and cry with the pain and my mother just told me it was "part of being a woman". Yeah, right.

Finaly I took myself off to a private gynachologist who operated and that was the end of painful periods. I still hated them. When the pill became freely available I took it for years without ever stopping to allow myself to have a period. When I ceased taking them my body clock has stopped and never had another one.

As I have never wanted children thats find by me.

I still consider the entire business of bleeding and periods to be loathsome and degrading.

When my mum gave me my first pack of sanitary towels, it was just that, one pack. Enough for one in the morning and one at night in order to get through the period - and that was pushing it, because mine lasted over a week (then started again a couple of weeks later).

That meant that to get through the day, I was going off to the loo between every lesson and packing a great rolled-up wodge of toilet paper into my pants, to try to contain my heavy periods. I did the same at home.

My mother never knew the problems I had, but she did wonder how we could possibly be getting through so much paper!

After a while, I started using both tampons and pads at the same time, but still used a lot of paper too.
Later still, I discovered via a classmate that it was possible to use more than one tampon at a time - we were on a school residential field trip, and she, apparently, actually used four at once, but had still leaked badly before we got back to the hostel after a day out on the moors.

I would not have dreamed of discussing any of this with my mother.

I wasn't.
I was home on school holidays when mine began and I phoned my friend down the road, as I was home alone with everyone else working, and I thought something was terribly wrong!
She said she'd be there in 5 minutes. She came with pads - there were none in the house and I'd never even seen any, or tampons, in the house - and explained everything.
I was just 10/11 and she was about 10.

I don't remember any formal talk. We all discussed it at school, I had an elder sister - and a hypochondriac mother who often took to her bed with 'terrible pains and flooding'. Us girls had to carry those bulky pads and awful belts in our satchels - for years, in case 'it' began - which we dreaded.

i love this thread. I can't remember if mum broached the subject with me or whether I started before that. I don't think dad was too interested. He referred to it as 'split her kipper', the mind boggles!
It would be so interesting to see what today's youngsters would think about these comments.

My gd began hers this week. She was fine as far as i know, but I still can’t get my head round it. To me she is still a little girl.

silverlining48 I know how you feel. Our builder came round last week with his new apprentice doing a familiarisation day before starting work at the end of the school year when he will be 16.

Suddenly realised he was only a year older than DGD who will be 15 this year, because she will be at school until she is 18, I had rather forgotten just how fast she is growing up.

Like others I was also given a book by my mother, when I was about 9 or 10 years old, (which I did not read). Sanitary towels were always in our home, as my Dad suffered from dreadful piles which often bled copiously and he used these when that happened.

Think my Mum must have talked more to me, as I was quite ready when it happened. My Mother was so embarrassed about anything like that, but I was given that belt, and those looped towels to wear. Started on a Saturday, remember that because I used to go all day Saturdays to dancing classes and can remember my Mum saying I did not have to go that day, but I wanted to.

Sadly I did not find tampons until many years later.

With my own daughters we talked about such things often when they were small and they played with tampons in their bath, watching them swell up when they got wet. They were encouraged, by me, to know all the parts of their bodies . All were very involved in sports mainly diving, swimming and gymnastics, so it was important they were happy to use small tampons right from the start. Being very physically active also helped to ensure they were unlikely to suffer much in the way of period pains.

No idea about my g.daughters, although, all but the very youngest have now reached the ages of starting these. Assume they, like their Mothers, were all very well aware

Franbern My sons used to play with my tampons in the bath too. They then threw them out of the window where I eventually found them on the flat extension roof! They did know all about periods and how babies were made from a very early age as I always answered questions at an age appropriate level and we were open about everything.