Gabrielle Ho­sein

Di­ary En­try 3

All lofty-am­bi­tions-like, I had planned some pro­found post to­day. But then, and stop here if you are squea­mish, I got my pe­ri­od. It's the first pe­ri­od I've had for 18 months. I'd been feel­ing a bit strange over the last few days, womb-heavy and slight­ly wob­bly. I called the two Mam­a­to­to mid­wives who gen­er­ous­ly con­tin­ue to an­swer my calls, for free, nine months af­ter the birth. This is why we need mid­wives, be­cause which doc­tor are you go­ing to call at 7.50am to ask, "I think I got my pe­ri­od, but I'm not sure, what do you think?" Of course, like most mid­wives, they were breezy about it. "It hap­pens," said Deb­bie. "Some women bleed even though they are breast­feed­ing." "Well, it's been nine months," said Mar­i­lyn who a week be­fore told me to cut down on pump­ing breast­milk-and so I had. By mid-morn­ing I had ac­cli­ma­tised and was work­ing steadi­ly at my desk, feel­ing like a su­per and si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly breast­milk-pump­ing, bleed­ing, pa­per pub­lish­ing, e-mail-re­ply­ing, breezy, on-Mi­dol mom.

This mi­nor tran­si­tion in my post-preg­nan­cy body got me re­flect­ing on how lit­tle I know about women's bod­ies, even at my age, even as a fem­i­nist, even as a proud own­er of my own Our Bod­ies, Our­selves since I was 14. I didn't know that women bled for a cou­ple of weeks af­ter child­birth. I didn't even know that women bled while breast­feed­ing. I thought it de­layed fer­til­i­ty and child­birth. I knew you could get preg­nant...but I didn't know you could get a pe­ri­od. So ba­sic, so ob­vi­ous. For sim­i­lar rea­sons, some male and fe­male stu­dents in my first-year class cre­at­ed a Men­stru­al Cen­tre on the UWI cam­pus for their cul­ture-jam­ming ac­tivist as­sign­ment. Men­stru­al leave, I had point­ed out is a decades-old work­ers' right recog­nised in some Com­mu­nist coun­tries. In mod­ern In­done­sia, women fac­to­ry work­ers con­tin­ue to fight for two days of month­ly leave. Per­haps women should get two days, each month, of leave with pay be­cause fe­male labour­ing, PM­S­ing, bleed­ing bod­ies should not have to work un­der the same con­di­tions as sup­pos­ed­ly "nor­ma­tive" non-bleed­ing, non-egg, pro­duc­ing male bod­ies.

Af­ter all, women work­ers are fe­male hu­mans. What about men­stru­al cen­tres on every cor­ner in­stead of rumshops? Women could go for mas­sages, con­scious­ness-rais­ing and sup­port groups, de­li­cious and help­ful smooth­ies, in­for­ma­tion, health­care and col­lec­tive or­gan­is­ing. First scan­dalised, the stu­dents coun­tered that they should al­so in­clude sup­port groups for men, sort of like "Friends of Men­stru­at­ing Women." Ay, it's stuff for thought. They built a frame us­ing bam­boo, in­ter­viewed male stu­dents about taboos on buy­ing pads and tam­pons in a store, paint­ed posters say­ing Man the species men­stru­ates (If "Man" refers to men and women, then it re­al­ly should in­clude women, right?,) and hand­ed out pam­phlets on how wombs work and why, and nat­ur­al fruit and teas that help. Maybe if men­stru­al cen­tres re­al­ly were on every cor­ner, I might have known more about my own body, and post-birth and dur­ing-breast­feed­ing bleed­ing. As I keep learn­ing, even with my­self, there is clear­ly more work to do.

(Gabrielle Ho­sein works in Caribbean fem­i­nism, teach­es at UWI and is a new moth­er)