Trust menstruation!

The Normal Birth Conference ended last week and praised by participants in fulsome terms. In light of that success organizers are considering a Normal Period Conference to on the same lines. According to the blogger at the UnTamponarean.com the goals of such are conference are as follows:

* Development and modulation of belief systems in menstruation.
* Descriptive data on characteristics of normal, undisturbed menstrual periods.
* Physical and psychosocial consequences of normal menstrual periods.
* Impact of interventions (eg. tampons) and/or pharmacologic agents (eg. advil) in mestruation.
* Public perceptions of use of pain relief during menstrual periods
* Cost-effectiveness of normal menstrual care.
* Initiatives aimed at low-intervention care and undisturbed menstruation.

The author of the "Spiritual Menstruation" explains:

Our culture has created a situation in which women think that their periods cause pain, but we know that women never have cramps or pain with their periods: no Advil for them. They don't need any other interventions, either. No one uses tampons. They just let the blood run down their legs and are out working in the fields.

There is an entire industry that has grown up around preserving the social construct that pain and inconvenience are part of menstruation. Let's face it, the makers of Tampax would suffer financial ruin if women realized that they did not need tampons and just let the blood flow as nature intended.

The author of the "Thinking Woman's Guide to Menstruation" agrees:

The entire medical industrial complex is devoted to promoting period interventions. Does endometriosis really need to be treated or it just a way for doctors to make money? And what about irregular periods? Why should a woman take birth control pills to regulate her cycle? Periods aren't library books: they're not due on a specific day.

The blogger at Empowering Periods bemoans our cultural tendency to medicalize and hide menstruation. Nature never intended for women to use tampons to hide the evidence of their periods as if they were embarrassed by it. Nature never intended women to take medication and deprive themselves of the joy of unmedicated periods

She has a strategy for ensuring joyful, empowering menstruation, period affirmations. She advises visualizing the kind of periods that you want and encouraging trust in your body, which, she notes, is designed perfectly to menstruate. For example:

* My period will come whenever it chooses and that is the best day for it to start.
* I will not need pain relief for the rushes of my uterus.
* I will not bleed excessively.
* I will never get endometriosis.
* I will never develop fibroids.
* I do not need to hide my period with tampons and pads. I will revel in my female power by letting the blood run down my legs.

In short: Trust Menstruation!

This piece is satire.