Call the cops

It was 1971, I was 11. We had “the discussion” and my mother had prepared a kit for me in anticipation of the onset of womanhood – it was all very scary – hidden away in my wardrobe waiting for me. The sanitary towels were so thick I thought I would have to walk like John Wayne and the belt looked like an instrument of torture.

Then I saw a small ad – I think it was in Jackie magazine – offering trial tampons if I sent a stamp and my address – easy and discreet, I thought.

About a week later I came home from school to find a small box open on the kitchen table and my parents looking furious. Dad was still in his police uniform, the panda car parked outside.

The package had arrived and my mother saw my name (I never got sent parcels and this was the time of the IRA bombs and police were particularly at risk). She panicked and called my father at the police station. The package was collected in a police car and taken to the station.

Several policemen gathered to investigate – imagine the hilarity and my father’s embarrassment when it was finally opened.

Sue Spillman

Dad takes charge

My first period came when my mother was away so it was just my father and little brother in the house. I remember my father handling it with aplomb, he beetled off to the chemist and came back with about four boxes of tampons in various sizes. We have had our ups and downs over the years, but I will never forget that Saturday morning. Me, mystified, on one side of the bathroom door, him on the other, shouting instructions from the leaflet: “Have you tried putting one foot on the toilet?” Anna Menzies

I only have sons

I have sons but no daughters, so I always assumed I wouldn’t really have to deal with anyone’s periods starting. However, as a teacher of 10-year-olds and 11-year-olds, of course this hasn’t been the case. One girl I taught years ago sadly lost her mother to cancer shortly before she started: she quietly told me and I hugged her, welcoming her to the world of women. I found out afterwards from her dad, that it had meant the world to her. Jan Bennett

‘The budgie’s died’

When my eldest daughter was 11 (I have six children, three of each), we were having major reconstruction work done on our house. The work was being carried out in January, there was no roof on half the house and it was snowing. There was no heating, no kitchen, no hot water, all eight of us were living in one room, the youngest child was one year old and learning to walk on floors from which all carpets had been removed leaving only gripper rods to impale her bare feet, the middle children just fought all the time, the older children were pestilential prepubescents, and the father always late home.

One tense evening about 6pm in the middle of this mayhem, while I was trying to prepare tea, the eldest daughter shrieks down from upstairs in great distress: “Mum! Mum!” and I think, “Oh great, that’s all we need,” and yell up to her with no sympathy at all: “I suppose you’ve started your bloody periods now, have you?”

“No,” she said, “the budgie’s died.”

I can’t remember how I handled her first period when it did happen, but I hope it was with a bit more tendresse than that. Margaret Smerdon

Dad takes charge, pt II

The year was 1981. I was 11. I lived with my dad. Had a tummy ache and thought it was due to the three Wagon Wheels and two Penguin biscuits consumed in quick succession. Went to the loo. Vivid red staining in my knickers! At that moment the electricity meter ran out. Plunged into darkness – as was my mood. Worried I had snagged my nether regions on the fence I’d climbed over earlier. Decided this was not the case and I must be dying. Quick call to my mother who sobbed down the phone that her baby had grown up and she wasn’t there – not a clue what she was waffling on about. Five minutes on phone to my older sister who was furious that I’d had the nerve to bleed before her and convinced I was lying – still had no clue. Confused. Eventually informed that I had a period – still no clue. Dad came home: “Dad, I’ve had a period.” Dad coughs a lot, leaves and comes back with every form of sanitary protection available. He asked if I knew what to do? “Pfft, course I do!” Went to school the next day with a still-wrapped tampon in my knickers and a piece of string tied around my waist. It was a very uncomfortable day. Josephine

‘Don’t talk to lads’

I started my periods at 11 years old – I had no idea what was happening. When I told my mum the next morning, she disappeared from the room and reappeared with a sanitary towel attached to a “sanitary” belt. She told me: “It’ll happen every 28 days for the rest of your life. Don’t talk to lads.”

I was 13 before I found out what it was, in a biology lesson at school. Anonymous

Life gets worse

I will never forget the day of my first period just before my 14th birthday – a lovely old lady who lived across the road had died the same day. When I approached my mum in tears about the death and starting my period I was told: “Life will get a whole lot worse.” There was no advice and I had to learn from other friends the same tender age as me. Minky

Arctic Roll

In 1984 I was 15. We always dined at the table in the evening. Table is set – Dad, two younger brothers, 14 and 10, and little sister, eight. Eagerly awaiting food, Mother walks in and makes an announcement. “Today, Caroline became a woman. To celebrate we will be having Arctic roll for pudding.” I turned an interesting shade of red, my brothers’ muffled laughs will stay with me for ever. Caroline Knight

Bringing us together

My biological mother died when I was very young and I was largely estranged from my two sisters.

One evening last year when I was called to the bathroom to hear the words from my daughter, “Mum, I think I’ve started,” my first impulse was to hug her and we both shed a quiet tear. My second impulse took me by surprise. I had a huge urge to connect to the other women in our family and for my daughter to be embraced by us all in some way.

I sent texts to my niece (estranged from her mother), one of my sisters, and my mother (who had not spoken to me for more than a year). Not much of a matriarchal pack to draw from. However, when my daughter turned to me with a knowing look and asked why Nicky, Auntie Ann and Grandma had texted her, our family felt momentarily whole. Anonymous

A note at breakfast

By 1975, all my friends had started and filled me with horror stories. When I did eventually begin mine, I notified my mother with a note slipped under my morning breakfast bowl. I arrived home from school to an enormous box of thick Kotex pads, sanitary belt and a book entitled Now You Are a Woman.

It took an age to work out the fitting of pad to belt and I was sure everyone could see what felt like a mattress between my legs. But the worst thing was that the elastic belt had a tendency to ride above my jeans, and my brothers took great delight in pinging it and laughing loudly. So very pleased when I mastered the tampon. Liz Wilson

Dad’s DIY to the rescue

My mum found it difficult talking to me about puberty, periods and the pain of adolescence. So she avoided it. She apparently thought my elder sister would explain it all to me. My elder sister was too busy having fun with boys to bother telling me anything. As a consequence, when my period began, I was not really sure what was happening. It was only when my mum spotted blood on the sofa that it came to light. I had the embarrassment the next day of going to school wearing a sanitary towel hand-fashioned by my dad. Dad did everything on an industrial scale, and this was no exception. There ought to be a funny punchline, but there isn’t. I survived unscathed, but did ensure that my own daughter would never have to wear a sanitary towel created by her father.

Anonymous

Dad takes charge, pt III

My first period arrived on a Sunday – no shops open, and for some reason Mum didn’t have any sanitary towels. Dad was a deputy headteacher at the local secondary modern, so armed with threepenny bits, he got emergency supplies from the machine in the girls’ cloakroom. The best bit was how totally unembarrassed Dad was. Sue Jenkins

‘Don’t tell yer dad!’

“Mum, there’s all blood in the bed.” “Ooh, ooh,” Mum’s stock response to anything remotely threatening (escalators, cars, the outside world in general). “Don’t tell yer father, don’t tell yer father!” She handed me 50p. “Go to the chemist after choir and ask for a packet of Dr White’s and a sanitary belt.”

Back home, all the paraphernalia strapped on, I watched Dad as he sat reading the Sunday People. Had Mum told him? He seemed quite normal, so probably not. Why did this need to be kept from him? I felt ashamed.

I eventually coerced Mum into getting me tampons: “Ooh, ooh, but they’re for married ladies.”

Another century, another world. Karen Herbert

Dad takes charge, pt IV

During my adolescence, I was living with my stepdad and two younger brothers (my mum had died when I was nine) so my stepdad was left to “prepare” me for what was about to happen.

We had a female dog, Jenny, who had turned up at our door on my birthday. We took her in and she never left. Never spayed (no money for vet bills), she regularly bled over the kitchen floor, to be mopped up after.

Clearly out of his depth, my stepfather broached the subject of my impending journey to adulthood like this: “You know what’s happening to Jenny right now? That’s gonna happen to you too.”

Cue horror at the thought of trailing blood around the school corridors!

Now the mother of two daughters (10 and seven), I hope to be marginally more well-rounded in my approach. Sarah from Manchester

Mysterious appearance

I was born in 1956 and any matters relating to puberty or sex education were not discussed in my family. All household toiletries were kept in a cupboard in my parents’ bedroom and when I was about 12 or 13, I noticed a pack of sanitary towels appeared on one of the shelves. When my periods started about a year later, I simply took what I needed from the shelf and they were always replaced with a new pack, but the subject was never mentioned or discussed. I left home at 22 and presumably no more were purchased. Sue Moore

In the club

Mum was always calm and reassuring. I had had a careful explanation of menstruation before I entered my all-girls secondary school. Anxiety became linked to the burgeoning development of others. Girls became young women with breasts: bras became a new item of clothing proudly worn and evident in PE changing rooms.

Four years went by. Classmates talked of the “time of the month” and some presented notes to the PE staff excusing them from sporting activities. There was a discreet count in year 10 with just one question, “Have you started yet?” The “no” number among us 14-15-year-olds became smaller and smaller.

Friends acquired boyfriends. Big bosoms were highly desirable in the 1950s. Less endowed girls stuffed their bras with handkerchiefs or even socks, but flat-chested me had not even earned the privilege of wearing a bra.

In year 11, O-levels temporarily moved the emphasis away from bodies. But something wonderful was happening to mine. My breasts began to grow, slowly and painfully – but they grew. Mum suggested that we buy a 32A bra. Oh, how proud I was.

Then in the spring of 1957, abdominal pains began: I rushed to tell Mum that I thought I needed the sanitary towels tucked away in the airing cupboard. I hurried into school: the whisper went round. I had been the only girl who hadn’t “started”. Some turned and smiled at me: others clapped. I had a broad smile. I was now a full member of the club. Jenny Gale

Perfect day

My 11-year-old daughter and I were on holiday in the Isles of Scilly and we had just finished exploring the beautiful gardens on Tresco. I was waiting patiently with a crowd of people outside a rather small building that was then the “ladies”. Out walked my daughter at long last – head held high with a big grin on her face – “I’ve started my periods” she announced, very excitedly. There were lots of smiles and a few embarrassed shuffles among those gathered by the loo. She then got her phone out and said: “I must text Dad and tell him too.”

We then had a very pleasant mother-and-daughter time walking along the white beaches of Tresco, chatting openly about how this would affect her body, how she would feel, the fact that she could now get pregnant. Looking back on that day, I was so lucky to be able to have the time and space to welcome her into womanhood, and very proud that she felt able to talk normally about it. Faith Constantine

Dad’s girl no more

I was 15 and dumbfounded and thrilled. Yet I felt no different inside. I only told Mum, and she was matter-of-fact, as ever. But that night, my dad kissed me goodnight, and was especially affectionate, stroking my hair, asking questions about my day. We never spoke about it but I realised that he knew his eldest child was no longer a little girl and that it was a small rite of passage for him, too. Something wordless, but understood, passed between us, and for that sensitivity I am grateful. Sarah Westcott

Dad takes charge, pt V

I was always very conscious of how embarrassed my wife was around her periods. Before we were married when we first lived together she used to hide her tampons in the bathroom. I could see how ashamed she had been made to feel about her body as a woman and I was determined that our daughter wasn’t going to have the same issues.

My wife told me that my daughter was having her first period but didn’t want me to make a fuss or try to talk to her about it.

I asked my daughter if we could have a small family celebration as I thought this was an important event. She was embarrassed but she was also pleased. We bought a cake with red icing and some balloons and a card. We had a low-key party, then we went shopping and bought my daughter a bracelet to commemorate the day. She did warn me that if I told the shop assistant what it was for she would kill me. I wanted to tell but wisely didn’t.

She is still embarrassed but sometimes she will whisper to me that her period is a bit hard this month. I’m glad we had the party.

Anonymous

Afternoon tea

My period began in a music lesson, shortly after my 11th birthday. As soon as I got home that afternoon, I told my mother. “You’ll have to be very careful what you do with boys now,” she said. I puzzled silently over her words as I got to grips with safety pins, bloodied knickers and sanitary towels.

With Antonia, my own daughter, I keep the door to the bathroom and the door to conversation wide open. Two years ago, when she was nine, she said: “I want to have breasts, but I don’t want to have periods. It doesn’t look much fun, having to wear one of those eye-patch things on your fanny.”

Antonia’s first period started, like mine, in the autumn term, but a year earlier, when she was 10. On a sunny Saturday shortly afterwards, we had afternoon tea to celebrate, in a room at the back of a tiny shop crammed full of chocolate curiosities.

As we left to walk back up the hill, I thought of all the women who went before me: my mother, in a uniform serving in the second world war before she was 20. I thought of my grandmother, dead of breast cancer in her early 50s, and of my great-grandmother, who raised nine children and died at 91. Elizabeth Johnson

What about the Queen?

I am now nearly 72, but I remember my first period, which started when I was 10, vividly. Our house had only one lavatory, which was occupied at the time, so I had to use the chamber pot that was in the bedroom I shared with my sister. As I was about to push the chamber pot back under the bed, I noticed the dark red clots floating slowly to the bottom. There had been no previous warnings that this might happen, so I was very taken aback and knew that things were not quite right. I crouched there by the side of the bed and called for my mother. I was staggered to be told that from now on this was going to be a monthly occurrence. I remember asking her if the Queen and Mrs Michael (my Sunday school teacher at the time) had periods? On being informed that they did, I felt slightly better. Gwenda Ellis

Cosmopolitan past

Growing up in a children’s home in the 1970s meant that I was pretty naive about the facts of life. Yes – I’d watched the public education films in biology, but the images of teenage girls running through cornfields mystified me. As did the stern message that girls should not go swimming at their time of month and must change five times a day. I only discovered what a sanitary towel was when I was 12. Reading an old copy of Cosmopolitan, I was curious about an advert for sanitary towels. Feeling brave, I asked one of the younger members of staff what they were. Initially she laughed, as she thought I was joking. Then realising I was deadly serious, she gave me a huge hug, took me aside and explained in frank and honest terms that when I started my period I would bleed for days “down there”, so would have to wear protection. I gawped in disbelief then feeling hot with embarrassment at the thought of it all I skipped off to play, with a sense that I now had an enormous secret. Needless to say, when I started my period six months later I didn’t tell a single soul. I stole a packet of sanitary towels from my local chemist, as I felt too embarrassed to buy them, and forged a letter to get out of my swimming and PE lessons. It was a very lonely experience. Jan

Mum’s telepathy

My first period was a wonderful experience and in large part this is testament to my mother Shirley’s best qualities. I started age 11, when I had come home from school for lunch. My mother wasn’t in but when I phoned her she somehow knew what had happened without me having to say – a strange and comforting telepathy.

I remember feeling at once shocked, excited and warm inside – full of wonder at my body’s development and potential. Telling me that it was OK to stay at home for the rest of the day, Mum communicated that it was a significant, vulnerable and special time, and also that I would be all right.

She was a nurse before she became a mother, and her efficiency dealing with the messiness of humanity along with a very healthy body acceptance underpinned her handling of her only daughter’s burgeoning womanhood. As it turned out, my periods would cause me long-term suffering due to endometriosis but, 30 years on, my mum’s way of taking care of me that day is something I have never forgotten – it was a fantastic welcome to being a woman. Thank you, Mum. Elizabeth Turp