What "old wives tales" were you told about periods?

I was 12 and on a Colony Holiday. I had been to the loo, just after bedtime, and felt I was still wet so I asked the girl in the bed next to me if I could borrow (well, use) a tissue. When I wiped, I saw some blood and showed it to her! (I cringe at the thought now)

Anyway, seems I was the only girl in the dormitory who had been sent without sanitary towels and other necessary equipment, so the other girls rallied round and kitted me out.

I hadn't been told about periods or anything. I think I vaguely knew something about it and just accepted it when it happened.

What I hadn't been prepared for was to have tummy ache and feel rotten for the next few days.

grandetante I always used to leak round the sanitary pads so my Mum bought me some of those horrible plastic pants!! They were dreadful and must have been terribly unhygienic.

I remember the sanitary belts. They are the only thing that keeps a towel in place if you are a dancer. I continued to use them when performing even after I started using tampax, as I was always capable of soaking through the largest size of tampax, three minutes after inserting it, so I never risked going on stage without both tampax and a towel.

I was told the facts of life long before my first period, but I was told not to bath during a period nor wash my hair. We washed at the basin for our top half and used a potty to wash where we most needed it during our periods.

My mother told me firmly that tampax were only for married women, so no swimming during a period.

I only knew one girl who was allowed to use tampax when we were teenagers.

Anyone else who remembers Nikini pads and the horrible plastic pants you used with them?

Evie, I do remember reading the old wives tale about not bathing or washing hair during a period. Not that it ever happened to me but wondering if this stemmed from the time when people had tin baths in front of the fire sharing with others? Obviously nobody would want to get in a red bath? Just a thought.

I think my Mum must have been one of the pragmatic ones because the only thing I can remember about it was I was trained to burn the used pads on the kitchen fire.
OTOH what I do remember is at age about 11, being caught by the teacher with a note bearing a drawing of the sex act, passed to me by a naughty boy. I had no idea what it meant. I had no brothers.
The teacher contacted my Mum who explained it very simply. Then I forgot about it until I was a bit older.
Never forgot the humiliation from the teacher though.

My DDs knew about periods very young (and sex) and they were the main source of info for their peers!

When it was time to try tampons, we practised on a large teddy bear (who happened to have a suitably situated tear in a seam!), which ever after was known as the Tampax Teddy!

My friends and I used to call the Dr Whites delights "planks" - what a nightmare they surely were!

Dottydots that really made me laugh.

henetha I'm so glad you mentioned the 'clarty rags' as my Gran used to call them. Old sheets torn into strips and folded into a pad were what I was given by Mum. They were soaked in a bucket of cold water and washed to be re-used again and again.
No baths or hair washing or going out to dances allowed.
Dr Whites (and others) must have been around because she gave me a pink elastic belt with hooks but I had to use safety pins (large ones) to pin the pads in place.
They were very poor at absorbing the flow and it used to seep out of the sides and stain your knickers so you worried at school that you might have stained the back of your gym slip.
I didn't get 'proper' pads till I started work and could buy my own as I had no money, although I knew they were available. Those pads people remember as bulky were luxury to me.

My two older sisters told me, when I got my first period I went to my dad. My mother and I were extremely close but even after 6 children, I was the 5th, she still seemed so innocent.

I remember the ST belt, looking back I preferred it and the enormous pads, I suffered with heavy periods from day one.

I knew nothing about periods and was really worried when, aged 12, I went to the toilet and found blood. I came out of the toilet and said to my brother, who was 13, "I've got a lot of blood in my knickers." Well, he legged it out of the room as fast as his legs would carry him. He obviously knew what it was and was embarrassed.

in the early 1950's Dr Whites pads and also Southalls were what were in the chemists , under the counter probably! and what my much older sister used. Lilia were much later on I think!

I am curious that everyone who mentions brands of sanitary towels, cites Dr Whites and wonder why – best known? cheapest? most reliable? My first STs, which I didn't use for long before "graduating" to tampons, were called Lillia, I think. As far as I recall, they were in a pink cardboard box with soft-focus photographs of grey doves and the product itself wasn't hideously cumbersome and uncomfortable.

My mother was simply factual. However, one of the girls at my primary school started puberty at the age of 10 or 11 (early for our generation but more common nowadays) and thought she had a terrible disease. She tried to kill herself; fortunately she was not successful.

On a lighter note, my daughter asked about a pack of Tampax in the bathroom when she was about seven and I gave her a brief outline about all grown-up women's bodies getting ready for a putative baby, etc. She listened carefully and then asked in an awed voice, "What – even Sally?" – the mother of one of her former toddler group and current school friends. I still have absolutely no idea why she thought Sally should have been exempt.

I was told that, if you had really heavy, bad periods and cramps as a teenager, you'd sail through the menopause without a problem. What a big, fat lie that was!

I had to take in notes - as I couldn't do swimming in the school pool for two weeks out of four - and I wasn't believed!

When my chum and I first went to train as student nurses aged 17 we read a notice in the Nurses' Home Sanitary pads to be put into the incinerator at the east side of the Home. My chum and I thought an incinerator was a large industrial furnace and we trecked across the grounds with our STs in paper bags and asked the man attending the gigantic hospital furnace "could we burn these please?" He was very nice about it and a little puzzled I suppose.

Ah!, those ST's and belts. Mum told me about them, but when I looked at the ST's, I hadn't a clue how to fix it all up.

I did wonder how on earth I would get my legs through the loops though.

Mum did say, that when I 'started', and if she wasn't around, I could ask dad anything. Of course I never did.

oh what a good topic, I have burst out laughing, especially the one where as a girl she thought it was a hat and went to meet her mother wearing a pad with the loops round her ears! I remember as a a nosy child with older sisters finding a packet of dr whites in a cupboard without a clue as to what they were for..... wasn't told anything and neither were my sisters who told each other when they started and I told my next up sister....
I remember with friends them telling me about bleeding each month but I thought they said once a year not once a month and was so shocked.
when was fifteen I found my mother having a sob holding a letter......she said my older sister had a letter from the antenatal clinic, well I had no idea what that was and why mother was so upset!

I had to go into hospital when I was a young teenager and my period started.
I told the nurse but they didn't have any sanitary towels so this kind nurse decided to make me one. She used gauze and filled it with cotton wool.
It was the biggest sanitary towel I had ever seen. More like a small cushion but I was grateful despite how uncomfortable it was.

Witzend, that is hilarious, and made me laugh out loud!

I remember my mum having a subscription to a magazine called, 'The Book of Life', and she sat down with me when I was about 10 and explained things in simple terms.

My periods started when we were staying at my gran's, when I was 11. Mum asked gran if she had any sanitary towels in the house, as I had a very young aunt living at home, who was only 4 years older than me at the time. She gave me one her belts, and a massive Dr. White's ST, which I was horrified about. Mum promptly went off to the chemist and bought me a supply of slimline stick-on pads. My young aunt was most put out and wanted to know why my gran had subjected her to the embarrassment of wearing those horrible belts for so long!

Mum even bought me tampons when I was a young teen, but I struggled to use them ... until I was older, and had a boyfriend!

I suppose the old sanitary towels with loops may work as a face covering. The loop could tuck behind your ears. No virus could get through all that heavy cotton wool.

I have roared with laughter at some of these replies. I'm so pleased I wasn't the only one!

Re the old looped STs, aeons ago a flatmate told me that when she was maybe 9 or 10 (probably late 1950s) she found some of these in her mother’s drawer. She thought they looked like the little hats that were fashionable at the time, with handy loops to go round your ears, too!
So she went off to meet her mother from work - down a busy street - with her nice little white hat on! ?

As she said, her poor mother’s mortification knew no bounds.

No old wives’ tales from my mother. She told me about periods well before I started at 11. I was the first in my form, so quite a heroine! These things were talked about constantly in the last year of my all-girls junior school. I later met girls who had been told nothing and had thought they were dying when they started. I wondered how they had got through their junior schools without hearing all the schoolgirl talk I did.

Like other posters I too was told that tampons were for 'married ladies'! In my case by the assistant in the chemist where I picked up my first packet, feeling very grown up and sophisticated. I bought them anyway and never regretted it.

I was also told not to mention if in front of my dad or any man or boy. For a long time I thought it was a secret women had that men knew nothing about!! Fortunately I had been forewarned by my mum as I started at school. At school it was always known as ‘the curse’. I was also told the usual about not washing hair, having baths or going swimming at these times.