Growing up.

It was the day after Boxing Day and I was nearly 13 when 'it' happened. I told my mother, who pursed her lips and reached up to the top of the wardrobe and handed me a packet of Dr White's. She hadn't spoken to me about menstruation before this (although I'd learned all I needed to know from friends). She said little else apart from saying I mustn't GO NEAR boys when I 'was like this'. . The worst thing was hearing her telling my dad in the kitchen as she cooked the lunch. "That's our A started her periods". I was absolutely mortified.

My mother told me all about it one Saturday evening when I was having my once weekly bath. I was 12 years old and she had realised that I was nearing starting my periods. I started at school and was so shy and embarrassed that I couldn't ask to go home. I waited all afternoon and was very relieved when the bell went and I couldvrun home. My mother gave me a sanitary belt and a pack of Dr. Whites. How happy I was when my friend introduced me to tampons!

No one told me a thing and I had 3 older sisters I think they just assumed my Mother had told me... I was about 13 and I didn't even tell anyone for ages just used up old rags in the linen cupboard.. I don't even remember how my Mum found out but eventually she gave me a sanitary belt and packet of Dr.Whites.. I'd be horrified if my granddaughters had to cope with it as I did.. thankfully the world has moved on since then.

Like Marelli, no one at home told me - my stepmother must have assumed we learned about it at school. I was 14, she kept the Dr Whites in the airing cupboard, but I had to ask for a sanitary belt...

Oh, the joy and relief when tampons became widely available, although there were mutterings from some older women that they shouldn't be used by 'virgins'! Periods never bothered me after that.

nankate your story gave me goosebumps......

It was not horrific when I started my periods there were no chats I just knew what was going to happen from school.

But like you I hate my periods and used to hate the heavy periods and remember being afraid of loosing the blood.

My menapause is also behind me too!!

Sorry to give you goosebumps Tcherry but it just came to me how awful that part of growing up was, but other than that I had a great childhood with wonderful parents, so I was far luckier than many others.

I started on Good Friday and being of quite a religious family I was petrified that it had some sort of special significance. I had to really pluck up courage to tell my Mum, who handed me 2 safety pins and a piece of old towel and told me to pin it to my vest. It was awful at the time and for a long time after that too. She didn't buy me any pads, just left a pile of old strips of towel on my bed. I had no idea what to do with the used ones. It was a nightmare. I was 12.

Eventually I managed to find a little knitting wool shop that sold "ladies sanitary wares" and could buy a pack of sanitary towels with my pocket money.

I loved my Mum but she was desperately embarrassed by anything below the waist and could never ever talk about anything to do with periods, sex or childbirth.

My mother explained periods to me when I was nine, rising ten. I had been staying with my gran and had felt oddly unwell one day. I think I was just hot, certainly felt better when I changed into a cooler dress on her suggestion. Anyway, I think she might have nudged my mum. The explanation was simple and straightforward and then I went out to play again. My periods didn't start for another four uears and it was while we were visiting the principal of the college where my dad worked, for a posh tea. I asked my dad for the car keys because I knew there was a box of tissues. Sorted myself out in the lady's bathroom and didn't tell my mum till we got home. She got me sorted with pads and then I went and played table tennis with two of my brothers in the garage. No idea why I remember that bit!

Nowadays there is plenty of talk at school about such things

My mum used the occasion of our boxer bitch coming on heat for the first time to explain periods to me when I was 11. It happened at Christmas when I was 13. We had a film at school to explain the biological aspects of ovulation and menstruation.

I explained the biology of ovulation and its connection, or not, to babies growing inside mothers to DD1 when she was six! Because she asked me loud and clear in a public toilet why I was putting "that stick in my bottom"! I said: "I'll explain at home." So I did.

my should be your

I remember we had a film at school which showed a mother taking her daughter to the chemist and buying supplies so that she would be prepared when she started. Not in my home I'm afraid! My mother had given me a book about the facts of life, but it was written so vaguely that I didn't have any idea what was really going to happen and as she hadn't said anything to me I didn't like to ask her. When I did start it seemed to come as a great surprise to her and I had to go to school with an old terry nappy pinned to a bit of elastic.

The best thing about the menopause was going back to my 13 year old self with one day of the month being just like any other.

When DD was 12 she went to Belgium for a week and I put a pack of pads in her suitcase "just in case" I couldn't imagine trying to cope with it in a foreign language!

Gagagran my mother was similarly hopeless about anything "below the waist" !
I started when I was about 14. About a year before that my mum had showed me a little book book about periods etc. and very embarrassedly said "ask me anything you don't understand" in a manner that made it impossible to do so.

She didn't get any suitable protection in for me So there was I with these dreadful sanitary belts which were too big and these revolting Dr Whites type towels.
About that time though there were some disposable types coming out which were a lot easier and more reliable to wear.

I made quite sure I had a box in in plenty of time for when my daughter needed them. These were the good panty liner type. So much better than we had.

Actually reading this makes me realise I was not the only one with a mother who did not manage this part of growing up at all well.

I don't remember much about such education in school other than whispers from other girls.

My mum gave me a book about growing up and reproduction, and talked to me about it when I was 10.
My periods started when I was eleven, on the way back from a holiday in Scotland. I felt really uncomfortable and didn't realise until we got home.
Mum sent me to the chemist to buy some Kotex and a belt.

We also had a film about it in the first year at High school.

I was about 13 and a half, and living with my grandma, plus my auntie on a visit from Australia. It happened at school, I was terrified that something major was wrong with me, told my auntie when I got home, she went out to the chemists, came back with a sanitary belt and a pack of sanitary towels, showed me what to do, and said "This will last about a week, and will happen once a month till you`re 45. And keep away from boys." I wish they had stopped when I was 45!

My Mother did not explain anything at the time other than to give me a length of elastic which had to be fashioned into a belt to hold those awful towels in place. She also told me never to wash my hair during a period ( although she never said THAT word) also said I was never to go swimming either! This would have been about 1962 - so much for the swinging sixties and all that. I was the second daughter in the family, so assume my sister had the same treatment but it was NEVER discussed. All in all didn't do me much psychological damage, however never did learn to swim!

When I asked my mum about Tampax (advertised in women's magazines as 'no belts, no pins, no pads') she gave me a very dark look and replied, "They are only for MARRIED women!" So that was the end of that. And because I really knew nothing much about my own anatomy I believed that I would have had to wear the tampon like the towel....oh dear!










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My mother had three DDs but conveniently forgot to mention puberty, I was a very late developer and did not menstruate until I was sixteen so I probably knew more than my mother anyway. I was studying anatomy and physiology so the reproductive system was no mystery.

I heard about it in playground and was so scared and worried! When I finally started at 14 my mum just went to local shop and bought me belt and towels, she dared me not not use tampons, but I did later of course, I would rather have been told before scary playground stories!

Never did discuss facts of life was always one day when we alone. As said when she finally mentioned periods already knew, she earlier when we were in loo together made up some story about cutting herself?

Still she was a lovely mum it was just how things were then.

My older sister told me about periods in a very vague way. I had used sanitary towels at home, but when I was 14 I was living with my stepmother and she gave me old rags and told me I had to wash and re-use them - it was just one of her many deliberate humiliations. I was mortified. Many times I bled so heavily that it seeped through my clothes. I still remember how embarrassed and ashamed I felt.

Periods are the Number One Design Fault!

Mine were excrutiatingly painful from day one, and I was known to faint with the pain - they were heavy and clotty right from the start. Was I glad to have a hysterectomy at age 42!! My life was a monthly misery - well, more than that, as right from the start they lasted about 10 days. I would just get over one and the pre-menstrual misery would start, then ten days of blood bath. I HATED every minute!!! By the time I had my womb whipped out, I was bleeding more often than not.

How I ever raised three children and held down a job I shall never know!

I made sure that my brood of girls knew all about it from a very young age, and was very careful what I said about pain or discomfort as I did not want them to think themselves into it! Thankfully I managed to succeed with that aim.

They were introduced to tampons from day one and I demonstrated their use on a teddy bear, who thenceforward was known as the Tampax Teddy! I also demonstrated how the tampon can absorb lots of liquid by dropping it in a glass of water and watching it expand. This rather misfired on me, as one DD watched it grow and wondered how on earth she might get it out!! I assured her that if a baby can get out of there, so can a tampon.

I loved having DDs, and never missed having sons - but I was a bit sad that they would have all this misery to go through. Luckily they did a lot better than I - hooray!

My mother just mentioned 'what all women have', which I assumed meant babies! I started at the age of 14, whilst on a school holiday, but found what I needed in a mysterious paper bag in my suitcase. Later I used Nikini pants and pads. The pants used to crackle as I walked, but the poppered-in pads were comfortable. Throughout my adult life I used a Tassie, similar to a Moon Cup, which was very easy to use and never leaked. I was very ignorant of my own anatomy, even when I got married. The relevant school library book was always missing, no doubt being giggled over in corners!

My mother told me everything, because her own mother had assumed that her big sister would pass on her own scanty knowledge - of course, she didn't so my mother had a 'very nasty shock', as she put it, and was convinced that she was dying. Lillets were supposed to be ok for virgins, so after a horribly messy time of sanitary belt and awful pads much like the early disposable nappies, I was bought some of those to try out. They were a huge improvement, but if you used those you were deemed capable of going swimming at school, so we had to lie on particularly cold days in order to get out of going swimming!

I do remember hearing about not being supposed to wash your hair that week, that explains all the women I saw with greasy hair, then. Luckily my mother was very enlightened.

I think it's so strange that all of those mothers/grandmothers must have suffered so much, yet did so little to help their own daughters. If my mother could break that strange silence, why didn't more women of her era? Looking back it must have been partly to do with male attitudes, because I remember a very bad period pain when guests were due, and I was cuddling a hot water bottle in agony. My father said that the bottle had to go, my mother agued that I should be allowed to keep it, in the end I chose to stay away from lunch altogether and go to my room and read while they were there. Up until then I had had no idea that anyone found it an uncomfortable topic.