My Daughter got her first menses

How would you react if your daughter, aged 9 or 10, suddenly tells you she noticed bloodstains on the bed sheet when she woke up? Or, while playing in school, her friends called her attention to bloodstains on her school uniform.

Get unnecessarily agitated? Be confused? (like a woman that messaged me some months back that her daughter just started menstruating, and she didn’t know what to tell her) Or calmly sit her down and talk to her? You might not know how to react, but you are psychologically prepared for such an experience.

Most of us as young girls learned about menstruation the first day we saw ‘blood’! No warnings, tips or lectures by either our parents or teachers. It just happened, and we had to go through the embarrassment, confusion and stress all alone. I still remember vividly the day I started mine; it was like a bolt from the blues. Luckily, it occurred while I was at home, and I told my sisters, who were also still young and naive like me. They whispered, “I think she has started menstruating, but hers came a bit earlier than ours!” And what happened afterwards is a long story!

Wouldn’t you want your daughter to be better prepared to handle the ‘visitor’ when it eventually shows up? So to enhance your psychological readiness, let’s start with this video clip, my journey to becoming a woman. While the video isn’t perfect or covers the entirety of menstruation, it does, however, touch on some salient points.

What did you learn from the video clip? What is menstruation? Is it an abnormal process? How should your daughter take care of herself during her period? What other questions do you have?

To be continued.

By Dr Fatimah Odusote

First Published: February 2, 2020