Terminalcoffee discussion

Every single month I get my period, and every month I feel like making a thread about it, and dammit, I'm making it 'cause I feel like talking about menstrual cycles. Dammit.

I remember when I first got my cycle. I was 12, and it was at school. I was really really sleepy on the way home; I was bleeding lightly. I went home, and my plan was to just grab a pad from my mom's bathroom sink cabinet, and you know, not say anything about it. I went as far as to go get the pad, and then I was like, "well, maybe I should tell my mom." so then when Ma came home, I whisper, "Ma...Ma...do you have a pad?" And then she's like, "OH, DO YOU HAVE YOUR PERIOD???!!!!!!! MY BABY IS A WOMAN! PRAISE THE LORD! OH MY!" Yeah, that was so embarrassing.

My first two months, I didn't have cramps. The third month, holy shit, I got cramps, and they were absolutely terrible. I've always had crippling cramps, like, throughout the entire cycle, until I started taking birth control. I've been on birth control for about...6 months now? And the worst cramps I had was yesterday morning.

Yesterday was a fucking ordeal. I started taking my inactive pills on Monday, so I knew that my period was gonna start this week. I wake up on Tuesday morning, my stomach feels weird, but I was okay for about...30 minutes. And then the bloating came, and I was like, "oh my." so I'm getting dressed for class, I told my friends to go ahead and catch the bus because I'm gonna take my time. If I'm late, I'm late. As soon as they leave, I felt like crawling on the floor. I knew if I took a vicodin, I was going to be asleep all day. I have to eat some food in order to take a naproxen, so I inhaled a cup of applesauce, and took my pills, and crawled into bed. Cramps subsided, I slept through my first class.

So, ladies, let's talk! And guys, we can talk too 'cause I am really interested in how men...kinda perceive a menstrual cycle. I was in some class last week, and a guy referred to it as, "Well, you know, when girls get their...thing..." And all the girls giggled, of course. A boy in 9th grade took it upon himself to tell me that girls like it when they get their period because "it cleans their shit out so they won't smell fishy."

Ahem.

I love you guys.

I think I made this thread unconsciously as a test of Clark's will.

i'm sooooo glad i don't get cramps. cramps suck.

Yes, they do. Grrrr!

Period warnings have been surprising me lately. For two months last year, on the week before I got my period, I got a yeast infection. That was pretty awful. Now it's headaches. Last month, I had a headache for a week straight. Monday I had a headache that lasted all day as well.

Myles wrote: "Filing this thread under things I never need to know nothin' about.


Today's a half-full day."

Unless you're never close to a woman, you do need to know!

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by tampons. I called them "jingle bells." :)

I always got bad cramps and heavy bleeding. I mean bad. And I'm one of those people (maybe like you, Britt) whose cramps are made worse by the pill. I mean, like I know I could get through childbirth without any pain meds because it couldn't possibly be worse.

The only pill that worked for me was Yazmin, but I guess there's some sort of controversy about that one.
Now I get Depo-Provera (the shot) and it is a gift from God, let me tell you. But you're not supposed to stay on it years and years because it's not good for your bones.

Before the Pill, my cramps weren't terrible on the first day, but they were pretty bad on the rest of the days. Now my cramps are bad on the first day, but they're kinda moderate for the rest of my cycle.

I used my mom's pads for Barbie beds.

Rebecca wrote: "Myles wrote: "Filing this thread under things I never need to know nothin' about.


Today's a half-full day."

Unless you're never close to a woman, you do need to know!"

I think Myles may get a pass, actually.

Myles wrote: "Rebecca wrote: "Myles wrote: "Filing this thread under things I never need to know nothin' about.


Today's a half-full day."

Unless you're never close to a woman, you do need to know!"

My gay be..."

I originally started to say "unless you're gay" but then changed it because even gay men get called upon to go get an emergency box of tampons in the middle of the night! (as I know for a fact) You can say no, I guess, but it'll happen...

Mona wrote: "I used my mom's pads for Barbie beds."

I always keep a box of 'em in the barn because they're great as quick solutions for minor but bloody horse injuries.

There's also a roller girl - I can't remember which team, but I think she's in Chicago maybe? - who plays in a uniform covered in maxipads. She says she'd rather look silly than bruise.

I went out last night in some bitter weather just to buy some chocolates I can I'll afford (I recently joined Weight Watchers) because I felt myself tearing up over a Glee episode. I hate PMSing and I hate cramps and I hate my period. Thanks for starting this thread! It felt good to share my tmi moment. :•0

My period didn't start til I was a freshmen in high school. I remember feeling stupid in Jr. High asking what my friend had ment by her being on her rag. My brother had been the one to give me "the talk" when I was 10, but he didn't give me all the side terms.

Rebecca wrote: "I always got bad cramps and heavy bleeding. I mean bad. And I'm one of those people (maybe like you, Britt) whose cramps are made worse by the pill. I mean, like I know I could get through child..."


In jr/ early high school I had a friend that had to go on birth control in order to control her cramps and regulate the first few years of her cycles. They were irregular and possibly were a factor in her migraines. It was an inside joke between us for years, as she was/is a lesbian and would never have taken the bc pills otherwise.

Myles wrote: "Rebecca wrote: "I originally started to say "unless you're gay" but then changed it because even gay men get called upon to go get an emergency box of tampons in the middle of the night! (as I know..."

I still maintain most of the gay guys I know would prefer no details.

I've heard that late bloomers are early menopausers. So you've got that to look forward to.

Having two moms and five sisters (two "full" and three "step") I've purchased my share of feminine protection products. I'm very glad my wife no longer needs them and that my daughter has a husband to send on those late night drugstore runs.

I think I'd rather menopause early and get it out of the way. Why do I want to have a period for a few extra years?

And I am very sad right now that the only topics I've posted in TC today have been to express my dislike of periods and love of Ponyboy.

My brain is in non-functioning mode today.

Well, my mom is going through menopause right now, and she had her period for two weeks straight....

Back in my early 20s I had to go on progesterone because I had a period for 4 months straight. I've no clue why that happened.

I'm sorry to hear about your morning Britt... I was going to type about periods, but thought better of it and decided to copy and paste my period rant from another group ... I feel like this for about one week most months.

I started my period at school in 7th grade. I felt like shit and must have been a real bitch because a guy friend of mine said something along the lines of "What, are you on the rag or something?" and barely lived to see another day. My mom drove me to Safeway and made me shop for my own supplies, which was mortifying. My school librarian was shopping that evening too, so he was lucky enough to push his cart past the pad aisle with me standing there scanning that shit for the very first time.

Call it what you want a period, menstruation, Miss Scarlett's Come Home to Tara, Trolling for Vampires, A Dishonorable Discharge from the Uterine Navy, Saddling Old Rusty, Feelin' Menstru-riffic!, Clean-Up in Aisle One, Massacre at the Y, T-Minus 9 Months and Holding, Game Day for the Crimson Tide, Taking Carrie to the Prom, Arts and Crafts Week at Panty Camp, or Rebooting the Ovarian Operating System* but it fucking sucks, unless you are late and don't want to be.

As that is not the case for me, I'm putting myself in the Red Tent. I am going to sit here with some fucking cigarettes, peanut butter m&ms, some Coke, a bottle of wine and some Smartfood until I don't feel like a crazy lady because I JUST FOUGHT WITH A TELEMARKETER AT WORK BECAUSE I DIDN'T "LIKE HIS TONE".

I feel like shit and for a few crampy minutes this morning was trying to figure out if I was going to be on a future episode of "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant". Then I realized that I would actually get to be on a way cooler show because any damn baby coming out of me today would have had to have been immaculately conceived and then I was even more pissed.

I have bad belly, oily skin, a lower-than-normal tolerance for stupid fucks that seems to be manifesting as road rage and an extremely irrational hatred for the new mom who pumps in the break room and has kept me from refilling my coffee for the last 10 minutes. Additionally, my shoes aren't fitting right AND yesterday my make up bag fell into a toilet at work.

Screw this shit.

FOOTNOTE!! *Thank you Top5... I loved reading you in 1997 via the ethernet connection in my dorm room.

Britt, I had hideous cramps from the time I was about fourteen until I finally had a hysterectomy. Back in the eighties and nineties, doctors (both male and female) just told me I had cramps because I was fat, so lose the weight and the cramps would go away. I also had flows so heavy that I kind of got used to going home at least once a year from school or work in an embarrassing Carrie-like condition, and I didn't have really good sheets until I was 40.

My funniest period story (funny now, not funny then) was one time when I was just incredibly sick from cramps--barfing, pain in my groin, lower back, down both legs and in my boobs. Mom was teaching a night class, and the rest of us were having the usual family dinner together. I just said "I have cramps" to my dad and went up to my room with the hot water bottle and a heating pad. After dinner, my dad decided that he and my two younger brothers needed to come up and console me by sitting in my room and talking to me. I responded in monosyllables and just sat there HATING all three of them for being male and never feeling this kind of pain.

All the misery aside, I learned two things owing to the lack of prescription pain relief:

1. Cinnamon tea made with actual cinnamon will help reduce the cramping a bit (don't know why, but it works).
2. Forty-eight hours before you are due to start, take 200 milligrams ibuprofen every four hours. Do this religiously, and it will also reduce the pain.
3. If you can stand it, take a really hot bath, then wrap up immediately to retain the heat and get right into bed with the heating pad.

Oh, one more period story. I was talking to one male and one female friend on MSN IM one time and cramping so bad I was going to go take a bath and go to bed at something like 6 p.m. The male friend said, "Oh, yeah, I've had a cut on my thigh and bled from there, so I totally understand menstruation." The last thing I saw before I left the chat was the response from my female friend.

"You want to understand menstruation? Stick a slug up your ass and have someone kick you in the gut while you wait for it to crawl out!"

Mona wrote: "I used my mom's pads for Barbie beds."

This made me laugh out loud.

Kristina wrote: "I'm sorry to hear about your morning Britt... I was going to type about periods, but thought better of it and decided to copy and paste my period rant from another group ... I feel like this for ab..."


Loved the dishonorable discharge! Ha!

All I'm going to say about this is that I think I'm going to be the only 80 year to still be getting her period.

Can I say how happy I am that I am DONE! DONE!

*happy dance*

It's not so much the cramps for me (I could deal, I guess mine weren't so bad most of the time), but the godawful MESS, I had short and sweet periods (approx 3 days) but those first 2 days I'd be going through the super plus every hour.

Lori wrote: "Can I say how happy I am that I am DONE! DONE!..."

I'm pouting.

Ditto.

I really hoped this thread was going to be about punctuation.

Suefly wrote: "Mona wrote: "I used my mom's pads for Barbie beds."

This made me laugh out loud."

me too ! about 6 times as it kept popping back into my mind.

I would rather talk about punctuation. I might learn something.

Inside the quote marks or outside? :D

Outside.

Truth or old wives tale...?

Women living together for an extended period (haha) of time tend to naturally synchronize their menses.

Truth, Phil.

"Though widely accepted as a fact of female life, many psychologists and anthropologists doubt the existence of such menstrual synchrony. Nearly half of the papers published on the topic find no evidence that close co-habitation draws menstrual cycles closer together. What's more, studies that do find an effect have been dogged by harsh criticisms of poor design and naive statistical analyses."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/art...

Some have argued that women's menstrual cycles begin to synchronize when living together but evidence is spotty. (photo caption)

Get it? Spotty!

"The insurmountable hurdle in all the studies, he says, is that women often have persistent cycles of different lengths. As such, they can never truly synchronize, just randomly phase in and out of synchrony over the months as their cycles diverge and converge.

Last year, he co-authored a study in Human Nature following 186 female Chinese students living in dorms for an entire year, the longest menstrual synchrony study yet. He saw no evidence for the phenomenon, but plenty of random overlaps that could be seen as synchrony if viewed through a shorter time window."

- same article

I think it's true! Living in a dorm with girls have told me that it's true!

Sure, in any large group of girls and women there are going to be some, maybe a lot, who just happen to be having their period at the same time. It's kind of unavoidable.

In most offices I worked at, we gradually synchronized, even those with regular cycles. Rough coupla days for the men. :D

What about in a group of 8?

Definitely. I worked in smaller offices.

I've been eating every damn thing in sight!

That's called the seafood diet.

Who's going to join this thread first, Clark or Jonathan?

Barb wrote: "That was my first period trauma.
Now I don't get really bad cramps very often, but I've been getting nasty day-long headaches that are impossible to get ride of. Oh, and my skin breaks out a bi..."

my skin breaks out too in the week before (but it's always on the verge of breaking out), and i have to pee more often, like my body wants to get me into the rhythm of going to the bathroom every few hours.

iBritt wrote: "I am really interested in how men...kinda perceive a menstrual cycle. I was in some class last week, and a guy referred to it as, "Well, you know, when girls get their...thing..."

I'm beyond "their thing" and the 9th grader's fishy smell and I can say "period" without feeling strange but this is a part of life I've never talked about with women.