(NSFW and quite personal) Ladies, can you remember your first period?

I was 13 and thank God I was home then. I wasn’t surprised, I was glad actually

Yes, because it was a surprise. I wasn’t surprised that I was going to have one, just that you never really know when the first one will happen. I was 11 and it lasted one day. The next one happened two months later. Since then, once a month, 5 days, for the last 36 freakin’ years. Ugh.

I was thirteen, and visiting my aunt in another state when it started. I was so relieved to have started at her house, because she had the (very new at the time) thin pads. I hadn’t even known they existed, because all my mom had were these big maxi pads, and I wasn’t looking forward to using them! I was also relieved to have finally started, well after most of my friends had.

Thirteen. At my grandmother’s house, in some chatroom or other (quite the novelty at the time, come to think of it. Those days you were a real nerd if you were in junior high and had an email address. ^_^)

I wasn’t surprised, but it took me a while to figure out what was going on. As soon as I did, I was fine. No big deal.

I was going on vacation with my mom, age 11. We stopped at a rest stop to go to the bathroom. When we got to the relatives’ house, where we were spending vacation, my mother had to tell everyone “She got her first period!” and the women were all congratulating me but it was so embarassing.

Yeah, I didn’t tell anyone. Including my mother. I was very embarrassed.

Yep, that was around when my decade of chronic depression and self-loathing began, because I was not and have never been a lady. Thanks be to God it’s all over.

I think I was 12, at least that is what my mom told me when I couldn’t remember. LOL. Literally I am not sure what grade I was in or my age, but I take my moms word for it. It definitely was either 12 or 13. The 12 makes sense since I got it around the time my friends did, and I was the youngest in my grade, technically should have been in the grade behind.

What happened was I was upstairs in my house and noticed something in my underwear. I told my mom, and mentioned it had happened last month too. She told me it must be my period. She handled it fairly matter of fact, which was a good thing in my opinion. Those first two were barely anything, but then the periods after that became very painful on the first day, my cramps were bad, but only one day, nothing premenstrual ever, and the bleeding became more “normal” my normal in the following cycles.

I also remember my aunt told me mazel tov, which totally embarrassed me.

I remember it very clearly – I was 13 and, fortunately, at home. I also remember being a total bitch to my friends the week prior and wondering what was wrong with me, haha.

It was my 13th birthday. It was also one of my best friend’s 13th birthday and we both started our periods on the same day. We all used to meet up at the ‘little park’ when we weren’t in school and on that day we both arrived so excited to tell each other our news. I wasn’t scared at all or worried. Neither was she.

I don’t remember it. I just know I was 12, or 13. It probably happened at home, so it wasn’t a big deal.

I was 14 and it happened at my friend’s house. We were a few girls having a movie night and I remember there was blood on her matres and I was so embarrassed, I turned the matres over and I went home before they discovered it. I was also totally freaked the night before (also at my friend’s) because there was an early sign of my period, but I didn’t know it was that at the time, so I thought something was wrong.

Yes. I was not quite 13, by a couple of months and had been playing at a local park when I felt something weird. I went into the bushes and put my hand into my shorts and it had blood on it! I knew what it was but I was freaked out as I hadn’t expected to start having periods yet. My mother was 15 or so, and I guess, in my mind, I thought I still had a few years to go.

My daughter was 11, and was at home when she had her first period. I was shocked again, I thought she was still a year or so away. Wrong again!
Sexual maturity just keeps getting younger and younger, bah! Us poor girls.

A vivid memory. We had all been prepared with some hearts-and-flowers Walt Disney film that we girls saw, accompanied by our mothers. Then we were given the sanitary belts and thick pads.

Mine arrived in school during 7th grade. I stuffed paper towels in my under pants until I got home. Then my mother helped me out.

That night she and my father had friends over; my bedroom was at the top of the staircase and acted as a sound stage. I heard her tell her friends, and I remember to this day my humiliation and rage.

I learned about tampons the next summer at camp.

I have no memory of my daughter’s first period. I will ask her.

I was 14. I wasn’t surprised, I was one of the last in my group to get it. I was kind of relieved. I interrupted my mother, who was talking with a few friends. She came upstairs and told me what to do. When I came down stairs, her friends were smiling little smiles and I realized she had told them. I was embarrassed, to say the least.

I remember it very well. I was playing in a softball game with my church youth group. I wasn’t athletically inclined, so this was an anomaly. I felt sharp pains in my stomach, After a bit they hurt so much that begged off, left the game, and walked home. I remember clenching my stomach and crying and trying to run.

My underwear felt wet in a strange way even though I hadn’t had an accident. When I went to the bathroom at home, there was blood in my underwear. I was 12, and my mother hadn’t told me anything but vague generalities, so I was shocked and horrified. Being told that it was normal and would happen all the time did nothing to comfort me. Neither did the belt and those big old bulky pads she produced. I never wanted it to happen again. I felt tricked and trapped.

@Jeruba: Astonishing, isn’t it, about mothers who are unable to prepare their daughters?

I had a secretary years ago, from an Irish Catholic family and five older sisters. She got pregnant at 13 because no one had told her anything. The family and the priest put her under house arrest during the pregnancy and until she finished high school. She did keep and raise her daughter but at a terrible price. The young father got away scott free

@gailcalled, I think I was much more underinformed than most. My parents were such good, sheltered Christians that I don’t think they knew or understood very much themselves, even though by the time I was 12 I had three younger siblings, and I’m pretty sure they knew how they had accomplished that.

For some reason my friends and I just did not talk about any of this stuff, maybe because it wasn’t “nice.”

There were things my mother never warned me about at all. Many years later (like when I was in my fifties), I thanked my mother for having trusted me on several memorable occasions. She said, “Trusted you? The truth is I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know what could happen.”

I got most of my sex education from listening hard during late-night room sessions in my college dorm. It was a bit of a challenge because much of it was expressed in slang and vulgarities that I didn’t understand. I had to work out the meanings through context clues. That’s where I learned about tampons, too.

I remember it very well. I was 14 and it was a Sunday. I was at home and it was just after Sunday dinner.
I still remember the Navy and cream wool houndstooth skirt I was wearing, with a navy blouse and opaque hose.

I felt awful, I had a really bad backache and was crampy. I went in the bathroom and found dark red blood on my underwear and knew what had begun.

My mom had prepared me well. I knew where babies came from and how they got there from about the age of five. I was told about menstruation very early and prepared to expect it. I went and told my mom that I had started and she asked me if I needed any help getting fixed up.
I had a “starter kit” from Kotex, and used my new pink and white belt with those big thick Kotex pads. I had the “slim” version for teens, but they were still very thick and uncomfortable. I felt nauseous and my back hurt really bad. That was how it was to be for years until I went on birth control pills.

By the second day, I knew that I didn’t want to have to use those pads, and I knew that my mom used tampons, so I asked her if I could try them. She said “sure, read the directions in the box and give it a try. You shouldn’t be able to feel it if it is in right.”

I was determined that I would be able to use them and I did.

My periods were long and I flowed very heavily. I felt sick with bad back aches, cramps, vomiting and migraines. Aside from that, I am grateful that I had a lot of good information and I wasn’t scared or confused about the whole thing.
Thanks mom.

Oh the cramps and feeling so sick, awful. I remember being so sick with cramps one Xmas day that I didn’t leave my bed all day. My family filed in with gifts and I didn’t even care to open them!

It “happened” just before I had to attend my orthodontics appointment. I didn’t really feel any emotion, it was just like, “oh shit”. I was 15.

@wilma Despite wanting to, it took me a good few years after starting my periods to be able to use tampons. Everytime I tried I struggled but was obviously clenching my muscles (maybe due to anxiety – I don’t know) and so I couldn’t make tampons work. Then, one day, I decided to give it another go (I was about 18 years old) and had no trouble at all, I’m not sure what changed in my head for tampons to, all of a sudden, become so easy.

I was 12 and it was the day before my first Christmas dance! I don’t remember how I felt about it though. I think I had been “waiting” for it to happen ever since I learned about it.

Unfortunately, yeah. I was 12 and we were out of town for a family reunion. My great aunt was passed the age of having pads or tampons around the house so my mom and dad had to drive near an hour to a regular grocery store that sold that stuff. Lots of old women were congratulating me and I had no idea why since I thought it was one of the worst things that could happen to me and I’d hope to avoid it for a few more years.

@Leanne1986 Same thing happened with me and tampons. I am still afraid of one getting stuck in me. I think about it every. single. time.

Thank goodness there were two outside resources to clue me in, as Mom and my older sisters didn’t. When a new girl in town moved in and was adopted by our group, she filled us in on the basics while sitting out in a wooded area. A best friend shared the information that her mom gave her. It was the Kotex starter kit that @wilma mentioned, in which the pamphlet just covered top-line information.

The day it started was when I was 13 and in school. All I remember is feeling shocked and embarrassed, although no one else knew. I had no clue that a period would last for days. A period to me was just the dot at the end of a statement. A blot.

I finally approached Mom. She was in the bathtub, and I entered with my head hung down. She must have assumed what had happened as she asked. I just nodded my head. The next day, a box of tampons was in my bathroom. It was mortifying adding tampons to the grocery list that was always next to the toaster in the kitchen. Anyone who entered the house might read it.

It took years before I was comfortable buying sanitary supplies. As much as I love my mother for her good points, this is one area that she failed. There is also a smidgen of resentment towards my older sisters for not cluing me in, but their education could have been very different.

As for the grocery list @Pied_Pfeffer , the code in our family of mostly females was :
P = pads
T = tampons
PL = panty liners
We might also add the extra information of regular or super to the P or T.
I still do it and the list is on my kitchen counter all the time.

I was almost 16, so I had been waiting impatiently for it to begin for years! I always felt bad that my friends had it and I didn’t. (Even though I still sort of knew that I wasn’t missing much!) It was Halloween and I had stayed in to study for a History test. Earlier that day, I had looked in the mirror and thought that I looked particularly good – not a thought that I had very often at all. When it came that night, I was glad that I had finally “caught up” with my peers.