Bloody Barbecue & Photo Solicitation

My period started just over a week ago (on October 4th) and behaved very oddly; no cramps AT ALL (I might have had five seconds-worth of sensation that made me think I might get cramps), no big chunks, a very slow start . . . and a weird color. Instead of being purple-red or brown-red, it was orange-red. Almost like barbecue sauce smeared on my panties (normally a more plum colored or blackberry syrup color on the not-totally-RED-red days).

I've never seen anything like it.

The only thing I can attribute this to is that I started taking iodine supplements a few weeks ago because I suspect I have a sluggish thyroid. I've not had time to research it thoroughly, but haven't found anything anywhere describing orange period blood as a side effect of taking extra iodine.

I really feel the need/desire to start soliciting more flow photos just to create a library of what women's menstrual fluid REALLY LOOKS LIKE instead of still relying on vague, subjective descriptions for us all to try to figure out what is normal as though we live in fucking prehistoric times. Actually, I'll bet women knew more about what other women's periods looked like in prehistoric times. Now we do such a good job of hiding it we have no fucking clue. Of course, if I did this I'd have to make sure people know how to set the white balance on their cameras otherwise it would do no good color-wise (though would still be useful in documenting the amounts, consistency, etc.).

FOUND: Period Panties in the Street

You might enjoy reading this post I made about period-stained panties I found.

What Failure Looks Like: Exhibit B

As many of you know, we've been trying to get pregnant for over a year now which means that every time my period starts it's a reminder that I have failed to get pregnant.



I took that picture of my cozy period panties with fresh new blood, pussy stains & hours old blood back in December after a particularly sad start (we'd hoped we'd conceived near Thanksgiving when I'm sure I ovulated; my period started after I'd been SO SURE I was pregnant and had spent time lovingly decorating our Christmas tree, thinking it would be the last Christmas we'd have without kids and looking forward to sharing a tree with them in the future.

After the initial disappointment, though, I remembered how much I love my period. It felt like my body was comforting me with warmth and color and proof that I'm alive and working properly inside. Cuddling up in bed with my period and two hot water bottles (one for my crampy abdomen and one for my feet) was the perfect treatment to feeling shitty about not being pregnant.

If I can't be pregnant, at least I can have my period. That's pretty nice.

Read more about how I feel about this on my (in)fertility blog with Exhibit A.