MENSTRUATION AND CHILDBIRTH: THE FEAR OF BEING MESSY

​​I was eleven when I first got my period.
 
My mom had talked to me about it in a very factual manner and I think we also heard about it in school, so it wasn’t a surprise. I had been anticipating it for a while. Although I knew it was generally discouraged to talk about it, I told a few of my best friends I had “gotten it.” How could I help it? I was just so excited about growing up.
 
I was terribly disappointed when I found out a year or so later that my best friend started menstruating around the same time than me, but had not told me anything. When I asked, hurt and offended, why she kept it secret even after I told her about my period, she explained that her mom instructed her to NEVER, NEVER talk about it with anyone or leave any trace of evidence that would let anyone know that she was bleeding. And even though I don’t remember feeling any shame about menstruating before, I felt very ashamed in that moment.
 
Over the years I have talked to a lot of people whose first experiences with menstruation were negative and even traumatic. Many of them didn’t even know anything about menstruation before they got it. One of my friends told me she was punished when she started bleeding. She was called gross and messy.

The extreme need for discretion around the subject of menstruation (or really, anything that naturally goes on in women’s private areas,) is rooted on that fear of being messy or disgusting. There is a huge industry that revolves around this too.

Old add for "intimate" Lysol disinfectant. Found on Collectors Weekly.

​There are two aspects to that “being messy,” one of which is all the fluids, hair, and variations of our physical bodies. The second way of being messy, which we fear as much or even more, is the fear of being “emotionally messy.” No one wants to be called hysterical or irrational. Most of our traditional female role models are discrete, nice, good women who are very neat and who don’t make other people feel uncomfortable.
 
So, many of us go on with our lives trying to not make people uncomfortable and we keep our mess to ourselves. Many women suffer quietly through paralyzing pain, swallow their anger and sadness, or expose their bodies to dangerous chemicals or surgeries to achieve the ideal of the linear woman.

Image from "Story of Menstruation," an educational short film from the 40's.

​I started working with pregnant women around the same time that I was introduced to Women’s Circles and Menstrual Empowerment Education. Slowly but clearly, I started to see how deeply connected menstruation was to childbirth at an emotional level. 

Pregnant women are often instructed to trust their bodies and let go, but: How can you start trusting your body during pregnancy or birth when you have been taught to distrust it since so early on? If you have been associating the nature of your body with pain and thinking of your period as something gross and inconvenient for years and years!

​I remember talking to a pregnant woman in Mexico who explained her fear of childbirth by describing her menstrual cramps. “People tell me that when contractions first start they feel like menstrual cramps, but worse. My cramps have always been so excruciating! I cannot imagine if I had to feel worse pain than that for birthing my baby.” She happily accepted when the doctors recommended a scheduled C-Section.

www.amenclinics.com

​During childbirth, and especially in the unfamiliar, sterile environment of the hospital, very often that deeply rooted fear of being messy comes out to surface. The fear of being messy with our periods (both physically and emotionally), wether we are aware of it or not, can easily translate into fear of the rawness and messiness of childbirth. And it can inhibit us a lot.

• It becomes the fear of making “primitive/cavewoman noises” or screaming (my mom kept repeating to herself during labor she wasn’t going to scream, although she did).
• The fear of inconveniencing the medical staff, other laboring women, or our own family, who might worry too much about us.
• The fear of bleeding, pooping, or pouring fluids in the openness of birth, because we are afraid of offending others.

After all, many of us grew up hearing extreme expressions of disgust when vaginal childbirth or menstruation were mentioned. It hits a deeply emotional chord, making us feel rejected.

Normalizing birth, normalizing breastfeeding, normalizing menstruation and menopause are all part of the same effort, which is normalizing the female body. To normalize it, we have to understand it, so we can honor it for what it is instead of constantly trying to make it into what it is not, or turn away from how widely diverse it can be.

Being a woman doesn’t have to suck. It’s not “just natural” to suffer from awful menstrual cramps and I’m even going to go ahead and express a big suspicion that it’s not really natural for labor contractions to be painful. I will be writing another blog post just about that, but for now, let’s focus on menstruation.
 
What can we do about this fear of being messy?
 
For everyone the answer to that question is going to be different. But these are some ideas you might find helpful:

The Mooncup UK, or MCUK, one of many brands of menstrual cups.

1. CONFRONT YOUR BLOOD: A menstrual cup can help you get to know your period a lot better. You can get an idea of how much are you actually bleeding, what the color really looks like, etc. Also, if you dare to test it, you will realize that the blood itself doesn’t smell bad, like the media and popular culture might suggest. Fresh blood doesn’t smell like anything special. When the blood goes into a pad and gets in contact with oxygen it starts to oxidize and along with the bacterial growth encouraged into a non-breathable environment, sure, it can smell bad.

2.LEARN ABOUT THE MENSTRUAL CYCLE: Menstruation is not the only thing in a menstrual cycle. The hormones present during the different stages of the menstrual cycle make our nature very similar to the nature of the moon or the four seasons. We tend to act and react very differently during ovulation than during menstruation. If you want to learn more about this you can read ‘Taking Charge of your Fertility’ by Toni Weschler, ‘Women’s Body’s, Women’s Wisdom’, by Dr. Christiane Northrup, or if you don’t mind something less scientific and more intuitive, check out Miranda Gray’s writing. Once you start observing these "seasons" within yourself, you can start finding power and guidance in the menstrual cycle.

3. WORK TOWARDS EMOTIONAL HEALING: This is a deeply personal experience and it can be completely different for each person. Some women achieve this healing in complete solitude and communion with nature, for some it might come in an intimate conversation and others might experience something more subtle or different. You can try joining a Women's Circle, which provides a safe space to share your experience with other women.

4. JOIN THE CONVERSATION: Let’s break the menstrual taboo! We owe it to our next generation. I’m not saying we should talk about menstruation all the time (I’m often guilty of this,) but there is no reason to discuss the matter in ashamed whispers. If boys, girls, and everyone in between learned about menstruation as something normal and healthy from an early age, I really believe we would live in a different world.

​Christiane Northrup wrote in ‘Women’s Body’s, Women’s Wisdom’: 

“Once we start appreciating our menstrual cycle as part of our inner guide system, we start healing both hormonally and emotionally.”

I strongly believe that this healing will bring us more confident and loving births. And less painful.
 
What is your relationship with your cycles? Do you think it affected your birth experience?