I was a late bloomer, 15, almost 16 years old. I did not recognize my first few periods as such, because I was expecting big flows of bright red blood. But all I got the first half year was a reddish brown trace in my panties.
I mistook it for a “skidmark” and threw it in the hamper, disgustedly. That evening, my mother came to my room with that panty and a happy, proud smile. I thought she was mistaken about it being my first period. So I just avoided to talk about it, in my surly moody teenagerstyle. I guess we missed out on a good mother-daughter moment.
It was about a week before eighth grade started; I was putting together school stuff and was feeling this weird pain in my abdomen. So I went to see what was up, hoping and praying it was my period, and it was. It used to be I knew within a couple of hours of it starting because I’d get cramps beforehand. Not now I don’t. The amount of underwear I’ve had to relegate to the period pile…sigh. I should get back on the pill just so that I know when it’s gonna happen.
I WANTED to have my period. I don’t understand that. I’d be happy to not have it now!
I was 12. It was a Saturday morning. I was home alone with my older brother. Thank gawd I knew what was going on, since I think my brother would have spontaneously combusted with embarrassment if I had asked him. And thank gawd I knew where my mom and sister kept their stash, because I would have used up every square of toilet paper in the house rather than ask him for help
I was 11 and like Maastricht I didn’t recognise it at first because it was brown rather than red. I also only had a couple drops the first day and then nothing at all until the next day. When it returned the second day I showed it to my mother and she confirmed what it was. That night my Dad gave me the “my little girl is really growing up” speech and I was absolutely mortified, I swear if I ever have a daughter her father is not going to say SHIT to her when she starts bleeding.
I really hated getting my period, just as I hated when I started growing breasts. I didn’t want to grow up. I remember reading Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and being completely unable to relate because of Margaret’s enthusiasm over it.
It was about a month after my thirteenth birthday. I was sitting down to pee and looked down and saw the blood in my panties. I called my mother and asked her if this was it, and she said, “Yeah, most likely.”
Then my best friend up the street came down with some pads for me because the kind my mother had were, in my mind, for “little old ladies.”
I was excited that night, but the rest of the week I was miserable and moody and I hated it. I absolutely did NOT want my father to know. I would have died of embarassment. I don’t know if he found out or not. (Although one day he did ask my mother if I was getting my period because I was so bitchy!)
The SECOND time I got my period was more interesting-I was at school and I hadn’t expected it, so I had to tell my teacher. She was walking me to the nurse to get pads and confided, “Well, I use tampons myself, so I don’t have any pads for you.”
For a thirteen year old, that was EXTREME TMI. I was telling my friends this when we were changing for gym, and all us girls were pretty disgusted by the knowledge.
I was in the 7th grade, in history class. Looked down, and saw blood starting to show through my jeans. Went to the nurse, and got a monster pad.
I also remember in the 5th grade, we took that sex ed class, where they give you a couple of free pads. Me and a friend of mine went home and “practiced”…we snuck into our moms’ stashes, and changed our pads every hour or so for about 3 days…yeah, we were dorks.
I was 11, a horribly naïve 11, and it was also very light – merely brown stains. My family never mentioned a word about it to me, and when I asked, they made bad puns about a period being a dot at the end of a sentence. So, I had just gotten out of sex ed class (ha, ha) when I went to the bathroom, and being the social idiot that I was, started asking classmates if that was my period. groan Well, yes, it was, we found stuff for it, all was well except for the next six months of endless teasing and the fact that the whole school knew that I had gotten my period.
Could someone explain to me why mums are happy about it? Is it because their little girl is all grown up? Thats all i can think of. I can’t believe any mums would ever tell the dads, thats just wrong. I still don’t think my dad knows.
It was all fairly matter-of-fact. I would read up a lot on human anatomy from medical books since I was about 10 or so, and from the time I was 12, my mother told me all about the monthly period, what it meant, and how to wear the pads (in those days, on a sling of elastic with safety pins. Most uncomfortable to sleep in).
I came on at Intermediate School a month before I turned 13, made my way from the toilet after a clean-up to my classroom to get one of the pads I always, at that point, carried in my schoolbag. I remember one of the teachers (male) asking me why I was in the corridors at that time, and I told him outright why.
I’ve never, from that day, seen it as a source of personal embarrassment, but I’m mindful that for others it is.
Oh, yeah. Mum wasn’t “Woo hoo” thrilled, just sort of noted it as part of things developing normally with her daughter. Mum was cool, like that.
I was about 13 and it was the day after Christmas. I’d already had the talk at school and from my mum. So I knew exactly where all pads were kept ect. I was at home and went to the toilet and noticed it. I got a pad on then went downstairs and told my mum. She gave me hugs and “my little girl is growing up” look. Then she told my dad, which didn’t actually bother me.
I discovered tampons after a few months. (Thank God!). I also never got cramps for the first year or so. I do now though.
I’m glad to know there are so many others who started at eleven. I was home at the time and my mom made a big deal of me becoming a “woman” in front of my brother and sisters. She pobably told my Dad too, but fortunately, I wasn’t around for that and Dad has the good taste not to bring up those things.
What irritates me no end is that I’m on the verge of my 46th birthday and I’ve never, ever been pregnant. I’m sure not going to start popping them out now so why do I still have to put up with this mess? I just wish my body would get a clue NOW and not in another 5 or 10 years! Arrgh!
I was 12, on summer vacation with my parents in Nova Scotia. My father was making a K-turn on a side street, while maneuvering he accidentally backed into the curb, which was extremely high.
Shortly afterward, we began to smell gas. My father got out and sure enough by hitting the curb he punctured the gas tank. We went to a gas station and although I do not recall why the mechanic on duty sent us to another station. Of course, we got lost and drove around for hours trying to find this damn station.
All the while, I am getting increasingly angry and scared. In my twelve year old brain, I’m thinking that if someone drops a cigarette or a match on the trail of gasoline we were leaving, the gas would ignite, the flame would follow the trail and eventually blow us to smithereens.
My father would stop and ask for directions and everyone he asked got us more confused and lost. I was furious, neither my parents nor I could understand why I was so pissed. I was punching the door of the car every so often, yelled at the next asshole giving us directions to make sure he knew what he was talking about, etc. My father was yelling, “Calm the fuck down.” It was a scene.
Three hours later, we find the gas station. I run into the bathroom, pull down my pants, pull them back up, run to mother and discreetly explain the situation. She gives me a pad and I go take care of business. When I emerge from the bathroom, my father is beaming and telling the mechanic and anyone else he could that his little girl had become a woman in Canada. :rolleyes:
I stayed in the car while it was on the lift, hoping that everyone below would forget about me.
Wow, that makes me feel better I was in ninth grade, and I didn’t realize what it was at first either. I’d had “the talk” several times by that point, so I’d been expecting, well, a mess. Who knew that the tiny brown smudge was what I’d been waiting for?
I thought the same as you, that I’d been neglect for the first time in cleaning up #2. I’d seen skid marks in laundry before, but I was upset that I’d allowed that to happen. Girls are supposed to be cleaner, after all.
It wasn’t until the second slightly larger smudge appeared a few months later (I didn’t realize that they were often irregular when they started, either), just weeks before my 15th birthday, that it occured to me that it just might be my period. I was so embarassed that I didn’t figure out what it was earlier that I never told my mom that it wasn’t the first time it happened.
It only took another couple of months after that for things to become respectably messy like I’d anticipated all along. lol.
My period started on the worst possible day for me. The first day of eighth grade in a new school in a new city in a whole other state (we moved to Kansas City from Las Vegas). The day had been shitty enough, so when I got my period I thought, “Figures.” Like others, I just KNEW that I got it.
I was 14, and my first one was light brown stains for a couple of days. I knew what it was but I didn’t tell anybody. My parents were away on a motorcycle trip and my sisters(they are younger) and I were staying with my grandparents.
Mom was a nurse and had talked about periods, but not about sex really. And I’d had the PE sex-ed class and so on. When my second one came around I told my mom, because it was heavier and red now. She got me supplies, I used them, and that was that. We weren’t the kind of family where it was celebrated, and dad was told. Although after a while I’m sure he figured it out.
No memory whatsoever. None. Clueless. Perhaps I was abducted by Aliens.
I do remember having my first heavy period in my late 20s (I was anemic). After however many years of having a period that lasted, at best 24 hours, bleeding like a stuck pig with what an earlier thread described as "clots the size of fried eggs for a week or so was quite the nightmare.
Payback is a bitch, I guess. After all those years of buying 30 tampons every six months…
I was twelve, and it was during the week we came back from Christmas break.
We still got recess at that point, and I can remember that one of our favorite games was to stand with one person on each side of each other, then have both the side people lean in hard so that the middle person fell down. Well, this was done to me that day, my legs flew up, but no one said anything - I don’t know if anyone realized or not.
I realized it when I went to the bathroom later that afternoon. I used the toilet paper trick, and hoped that no one knew what was going on. I had to wait after school for my brothers to pick me up (they were in high school, and my oldest brother had his license) - I was worried that I would stain the car seat that was covered in carpet (now I know that it really wouldn’t have shown up on that car seat, it being the color that it was). They were giving someone else a ride home and made me ride with them, even though that went half an hour out of our way - so it was an hour later than normal when we got home.
I told my mother sometime that night. She hugged me, but I don’t know when or if my father was ever told. If so, it wasn’t done in front of me, something that made me happy.
What ** acrossthesea ** said. With the exception of that it was “dress as your favorite sport” day, and I had a cute little ice skater outfit on (GRRRR!!).
My mom fixed me all up, got me a longer pleated skirt of hers that was almost as cute as the skater one (and it was red) and off to school I went with my red skater outfit on, a supply of giant diapers in my cornet case and my skates laces tied and resting “jauntily” on my shoulders.
I too remained mortified by any mention of it, or knowledge of it by any male, LONG into my 20s. My husband at the time, who was from the south, used to get the biggest kick out of me leaving the room when “Feminine Hygiene” product commercials would come on. They had JUST started to air a lot in the late 70s.
He’d call out (heavy southern accent) “Hey darlin!!! Where you goin’??? What’s the matter”?
JERK!!!
Nowadays I don’t die of embarrassment anymore, but JEEEZ, is it Reaaaaally necessary for it to be sooooo, so “common”?
I had gotten The Talk at school in 5th grade, and also from my mom when I was 12. However, at no point in The Talk from my mother did she say that I was supposed to tell her! When I started my period when I was 13, almost 14, it never occurred to me to tell her. I had a box of Kotex from the school’s talk, and used that for my first period, and then my friends clued me in on Tampax. Seeing as I already spent most of my pocket money at the corner drug store on amazingly hideous make-up and hair products, buying a box of Tampax once a month wasn’t a big deal.
About a year later, my mom mentioned that she thought it would be a good idea if she scheduled a visit for me with her gyno, even though I hadn’t started my period yet. But mom, I DID start my period! Like, a year ago! She was really peeved that I hadn’t told her. I was astonished (and frankly, I still sort of am) that she assumed I would make a big announcement – in my mind, one’s period is a bathroom type thing, and surely at the age of 13 I wasn’t telling my mom every time I used the toilet.
Mine started the month before my fourteenth birthday, the same week as Halloween. I was so glad it started! I thought I was completely delayed. It seemed every other girl I knew had already gotten hers.
Of course, by the second day, when the cramps arrived, I was no longer quite so thrilled. It took me about a year to figure out that I really preferred tampons, and several more years to learn that it really wasn’t normal to have a period every two and a half months that lasted for two weeks. Boy, did I love going on the Pill. Happy happy joy joy!
My mom was pretty low key about it. I was only disappointed she wouldn’t let me come home from school when I was cramped up. She probably informed my dad privately, which I appreciated. My brothers were so icked out by the idea, that neither of them have ever conceded that I’m a fully functioning female.
