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Dealing with Problem Menstrual Bleeding in Schools
Have you noticed that we don’t usually get squicked out by the sight of a spot of blood on a man’s collar because he’s cut himself shaving? I can also testify if you cut your hand during a dissection because you are inept and out of practice most pupils are enthralled rather than horrified.
Even allowing for the fact that pupils from some cultures might be less comfortable with blood than others, the fact remains that we treat menstrual blood differently. And we treat it differently because it comes from our vaginas and we don’t necessarily want to remind the world, at that point that we have a vagina. Nonetheless, as I am fond of saying, we take our vaginas to work.
All this means that we have a very specific fear of menstrual blood leaking through onto our trousers or skirt, or of staining furniture, or of (and I promise this does happen) it trickling down our legs.
It’s not just perimenopausal women that suffer with unpredictable and heavy periods. It can be an issues for younger women for all sorts of other known and unknown reasons — but it does happen more in peri-menopause, and that’s all to do with our friend the corpus luteum.
If we have enough oestrogen to build up a womb lining (and remember it’s sputtering) and not enough to cause ovulation, then there’s no left over…
