nods knowingly My partner calls this “circus tits”.
My period likes to stay between the 22nd and 29th of each month, and varies in length by 4 days normally. When it gets too far from those dates, I have an extra-long cycle (and test for pregnancy) only to get my period again at a time that syncs things up again.
I don’t keep track. I have tried to in the past, but my periods are irregular. (And heavy and long! Yay!) I’m neither trying to get pregnant nor trying to avoid pregnancy (my husband has had a vasectomy) so there isn’t much point in calculating things out. It’s roughly once a month, and I know it’s coming when I want to: cry, eat everything in sight, have a cocktail or 4 after work, and also when my boobs start to hurt. The only place I note it is in my food diary, when PMS accounts for food cravings and water retention, and no weight loss. Sometimes I’m in sync with the moon, and sometimes not. It would be handy to know where I am in my cycle by glancing up into the night sky, but alas, that connection just isn’t there.
TMI alert: I sure notice a correlation in my monthly cycle, vaginal secretions, and desire for sex, though. I just find it vaguely interesting, in an “oh, that’s where I am” kind of way.
But pretty much how my breasts feel tells me where I am in my cycle.
I don’t get “tit effects”. That seems to amaze people. No, they don’t get larger, they don’t get more tender or less tender. Seriously, nothing of the sort.
I get sort of minor cramping in my lower back, my hunger spikes upward, I get chapped lips, and the day before, slightly constipated (is that TMI yet?)
I don’t do a very good job of keeping track. Sometimes I remember to make note, sometimes I don’t. I just keep a permanent stash of tampons in my bag and start wearing black panties when my boobs start hurting and my abdomen gets crampy, but lately it’s been a week of bloodless achy boobs and uterus instead of a day or two. I’m not gonna blow unless I’ve been on my period for hours, so it’s not like I’m going to ruin my pants by not keeping track.
I do it exactly like you do. Except that when I’m going to the doctor, I check the calendar before I go. And then the doctor will check with me to see if what he sees matches with what time of the month I’m telling him it should be. And yeah, I thought that meant I was on top of things.
My normal cycle is very long (every 60-70 days), and very heavy. When I was a teenager and early 20s I could use a superplus tampon every hour for a day or two, getting up at least twice during the night to prevent accidents, and in total it lasted about 8-10 days (I’d use at least one box of 40 tampons every cycle). I never really kept track, other than knowing it should be about every two months. I never had abdominal cramps, but I did get an early warning signal from low back pain that usually started a day or two ahead of time.
Then I started using the birth control pill, so my periods are every 28 days and much lighter than before. And now I use the Diva cup, so I barely have to think about my periods at all, which is fantastic. I don’t know if it’s because of the birth control, but I don’t get very much back pain anymore, and I don’t really have any other warning signs like breast tenderness or mood changes. I do get very very light spotting for a day ahead of time, so I know to keep the Diva cup on hand.
Ah, that makes sense in the “every stupid uterus is different” way. 95% of the time I don’t get any of what people call PMS symptoms until after it has arrived, and my periods are always the heaviest the first 36 hours, which isn’t the best combo.
I said “yes” in the poll, but that’s only because I’m on the pill. When I’m not on it, I’m hopeless. When I wasn’t on the pill, I kept thinking “oh hey, I should be having a period soon…maybe. Seems like it’s been awhile, anyway.” Then I’d forget about it and bleed all over my underwear. (Never ruined a pair of pants, though.) When I’m on the pill, I see that the little orange pills are coming up and I think “another period? But I just had one.”
I want my nice, well-behaved, absolutely punctual, you could set atomic clocks by them periods back dagnabit! Every 32 days and 6 hours, except for the Fall, where it would move ahead by 7 days in September or October depending on when the full moon fell in relationship to the equinox, and 7 days back-move in March or April…
Or at least a gynecologist who doesn’t look at me like she’s trying to decide whether to call me a wuss of bitchslap me when I moan about not having them any more. According to Them, crap like spotting, irregular periods, cervical bleeding and so forth which make it a Good Idea to carry a reserve pad at all times are “normal.” Well, “normal” means that sometimes I can’t get examined vaginally even though I’m not on my period per se, because I’m bleeding, it just isn’t my period. Can I say here that there are times I’d like to grab “normal” and give it a red hot poker up the ass?
Regular as clockwork, every 25 days, lasts for 3 days at the most and then it’s all over. Luckily as I’m on the pill, I just know it starts four days after I finish the last pill in the pack. Simples!
I have never kept track, ever. I always get a whole day of cramping pain the day before it starts, so that’s my cue. This worked even when I was on the pill.
OWOWOW today = tampons tomorrow.
You’re very lucky. In my teen years, I had really terribly irregular periods that were also really heavy to make up for the fact that they didn’t show up as often. Birth control only helped so much with this-- I’d be regular, but I’d still have miserably heavy periods and, even with keeping track of when it’d show up, sometime mid-period I would end up with stains in my underwear or pants. However well I prepared, a pad and a tampon combined were my best arsenal against bloody clothes, but weren’t failproof because my period was so heavy and unpredictable. My worst cycle was when I was in high school and went 10 months without a period, only to have all that endometrium decide to leave all at once in a two-week period while I was on a trip with no tampons. That was when I ended up on birth control after doctors finding nothing conclusively wrong with my uterus.
These days, I’m more regular (sometime around the end of one month and the beginning of the next is when I start), but the only consistent behavior that I can chart the impending period with is that my libido will go into overdrive a few days before I’m due to start. TMI: It’s not mild, either; I will literally go from having a “so-so” interest in sex to wanting copious amounts of sex and having a severe wandering eye* to the point where I find more men attractive than I normally do. It’s really strange and goes back to normal either during the middle of my period or right after it’s finished.
*Obviously I don’t act on it, but it’s there nonetheless.
ETA: I now use a copper IUD for birth control, and after the first year, it and my uterus have gotten along rather well. I do occasionally have a variance in the heaviness and duration of my periods these days, though.
I haven’t stained my pants since I was a teenager, too, though I did have a fairly humiliating incident in India once, in a temple no less (not supposed to go to the temple when you have your period and all that jazz). Whatever.
But then when I was a teen it was much heavier and much more irregular.
Oh, there was a time I kept track on the calendar, too. My internal clock is pretty good though.
My aunt had terrible periods… She just had a partial (?) laproscopic hysterectomy. She was having periods THREE weeks out of FOUR. Constantly heavy bleeding, too. It was terrible and I can’t imagine having to go through that for most of your life.
I always mean to mark it down on a calendar, but only do about 50% of the time. I think the other times, I assume I’ll remember (“Oh, I’ll know I got it the day before I went to <wherever>”) but then when it comes time to actually trying to track back, of course I don’t remember.
My period is like clockwork too, so you’d think I’d have caught on to when it starts by now. Nope. Those years I was on Depo during which my periods stopped altogether certainly didn’t help me remember things. It was like starting all over again.
Fir the first few years of having a period I wasn’t very regular but I did track it on a calendar. Then I was so regular it came about the same day every month, which means I wasn’t really regular because some months are longer than others. Once or twice a year I’d be almost a week late or early and my day might change but it would go back to almost the same date every month. Now I am perimenopausal and it’s really annoying. I had a period that stopped for two days and then started again, I thought I was going to bleed to death. A couple weeks ago I had my first period since October. Even though I was worried it would start at an inopportune time, those 3 months without a period were great.
Lucky. I STILL get blood on my undies from time to time. That’s when I break out the third string undies.
I used to have horrible periods and horrible cramping. In college I went on oral contraception to deal with the 3+ days of cramps, starting the day before - so at least I always knew when it was going to start, from the cramps before I was on the pill, to the improved timing after I went on. It switched to where the bleeding would start within a particular couple hour window, the 4th Tuesday of the cycle.
Now that I’m on continuous oral contaception, I don’t get any warning for breakthrough bleeding, including cramps, so I’m back to having staining problems. (Fortunately, a lot less in amount/size.) I’m currently thinking over the options presented by my gynecologist as to how to (permanently) deal with this.
I used to. My cycle was the same every month: 28 off, 5 on. That all changed once I had my daughter and a tubal. Then my periods were off the wall: I couldn’t calculate when they would happen, and it was fast and furious every single time.
I have now not had a period in 7 months. I’m hoping for 5 more so I can be officially menopausal. But my 10 year old daughter just had her first cycle this last week, so I’m keeping track of the days to see if she has a pattern.