I was thirteen when I got my first period. I was with my family – on vacation. Ugh! I told my mom that there was blood in my pants. She explained what was taking place inside my body and how I could look forward to this special gift each month. Yuck! Seriously. Wasn’t at all excited about having this piece of womanhood.
I didn’t receive my second period until two and a half years later. I was at school thinking, “Okay, this is not so bad. Every two and a half years. I can handle that” But there was no two and a half year wait for my next one. They started coming in perhaps every five or six weeks. Soft. If it weren’t for the disgusting smell, I could have probably gotten away with just a band-aid for my entire period. I have never been a heavy bleeder. I have never been regular.
I didn’t get married until I was thirty-nine. I had joined a ready-made family and was quite okay with it as I didn’t plan on bearing any children myself. Roland wanted more children, but I told him I was too old. Plus our financial situation was so unstable, I didn’t think it was a very good idea.
Now I know the only sure method of birth control is abstinence – which I knew would not be happening with Roland’s strong desires. I did take birth control in the first year of our marriage – never knowing whether I really needed it or not.
I’d been instructed on how to take them and what was expected from the cycling process. Instead of my usual four to five weeks, I would be ovulating just every four. And although my period did come more regular than it ever had in my entire lifetime – it was every three. And so I was still irregular.
Before I got pregnant with Jenna, Roland and I were told that there would be a 25% chance of my getting pregnant IF I took frailty drugs. This was due to my age and having only one tube. I had finally convinced Roland that I would not be able to bear him anymore children. So that was that. Or so we believed.
The boys were out of town the summer of 2003 and Roland and I had gone to a health fair to donate blood. I don’t know whose bright idea it was to have the registration so far away from the blood bank – but it was. We filled out the forms at the school and walked half a mile across the playground to the trailer where the blood was drawn.
Roland has excellent blood. He has marvelous health and was hooked up right away. Well, by the time I walked all the way from the school to the trailer in the unbearable beating sun, my blood pressure was too high. My efforts were rejected (though I did get a piece of red gauze to wear on my arm so that it would appear that I had donated)
We went to another exhibit. I was tested for diabetes and told my sugar was high – but because of the heat it might not be accurate. I was given a card that had the address and phone # of a medical research and was told I should make an appointment – which I did. I was feeling sluggish.
On the morning of my scheduled appointment I questioned some pain I had in my breasts – like rubber bands snapping. That was a familiar pain I had had before the major pain that had taken me to the hospital the previous year.
“Could I seriously be pregnant?” I wondered.
When I arrived at the clinic I told the staff that it was possible that I might be pregnant. So they did two tests on me. I tested negative for diabetes and positive for pregnancy. My obstetrician was in the same complex, and so I left the medical center and went right over to make an appointment.
The first thing my Dr. did was send me downstairs for an ultrasound. He didn’t believe in the test results I had taken and wanted to see what was really going on. And if I was pregnant that my baby was growing where she was supposed to be and not in the remaining tube. Sure enough I was pregnant. Blew my doctor away!
Babies seem to arrive early in my family. Like so many others, Jenna was born before the intended due date - eight days. My mom and sister and I were just about to leave the house to attend a birthday party for an eighty year old we had all worked with. But then my water broke. Surely I wouldn't be able to drive myself to the hospital.
I had just finished eating a tuna fish sandwich – which came out shortly after we had all checked me in. My mom and sister stayed camped out with me in the birthing room. And Roland joined us after a while. I was starving, but they wouldn’t let me eat anything. And Jenna had certainly taken her time.
23 ½ hours! 23 ½! I had to be induced (I never did contract on my own) and Jenna’s head was guided out as I was told to push or not push and I was so loaded up on epidural I didn’t know if I actually was pushing or not.
Short of seven weeks Jenna and I are nearly 42 years apart. My first one. My only one biologically. I had had some weird symptoms with her.
I couldn’t drink water without getting sick (even that summer when Roland had donated blood and I had been rejected; before I even knew I was pregnant I would get sick just drinking water) I developed a really numb case of tendentious.
Every time I mentioned an odd side effect, my mom would just look at me with a puzzled expression and state, “I don’t remember ever getting that when I was pregnant” Nor did my sister-in-law. But they were also 20 years younger when they had their first babies.
Jenna keeps me young at times. But at the same time I feel so much older as I am theoretically old enough to be the mother of some of her friends' parents. I will be sixty when Jenna graduates high school. And at the rate I’m going I probably won’t experience menopause until I’m in my late 70”s.
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