Layers, Part I
Wearing easily removable layers is extremely important for a woman of my age. There are only a few times when this doesn’t do the trick:
- When I’m driving.
- When I’m sleeping.
- When there is only one layer left.
The sleeping thing is really getting to me. It usually happens about three times a night, and I frequently have trouble getting back to sleep after one of those times. Fortunately, I typically get to sleep late in the morning, BUT I DO NOT LIKE SLEEPING LATE. There are other things I’d rather be doing.
Since I’m getting more and more exasperated about this each night, I’ve been thinking about other things that women have to deal with.
Like periods.
Starting for “women” at around age 12.
12.
Oh, the cramps and the mess. And learning about tampons.
The gynecologist visits, which start in your late teens or early twenties, are always disconcerting – no matter how old you get.
Then there are the pregnancies. Now, there are a lot of positives to being pregnant, and it can be a very exciting time. But I can remember one March sitting at my kitchen table and crying because I was too big and too tired to move, and I felt trapped inside the house. (March is not a good month outdoors in these parts.)
Of course the deliveries are not a piece of cake either. During the first delivery, I can remember a nurse yelling at the doctor because he kept leaving the door open when he left or entered the room. At the time, though, I really didn’t care what people were able to see from the hallway. The second doctor informed me I wasn’t really feeling any pain as he sewed me up. The third doctor told me that closing up the C-section incision would go a lot quicker if I would just settle down. (I was taking deep breaths to deal with the emotions of having had an emergency C-section.)
But I would much rather take the pregnancies and deliveries over fertility issues. (For those of you struggling with fertility issues, my sincere sympathies, if that’s okay, and a plug for Circle + Bloom – my sisters’ company.)
And getting back to periods. They can really kick into high gear during pre-menapause. High gear meaning they can interfere with your life style since for two or three days every three weeks you can’t go much more than an hour without visiting a bathroom for fresh supplies.
Because they were interfering with my life style, I had an ablation. During the procedure, I started crying. It was the compromising position I was in combined with the discomfort (pain, actually). It just hit me. It’s not fair.
All of it.
It’s not fair.
