WOMEN’S BODIES: MENARCHE AND MENSTRUATION
The menarche (pronounced men-ark) -or first period, menstrual period or menstruation – is the most notable event of puberty for a girl and is the most obvious sign that she is well on the way to sexual maturity.
What happens to cause the first period? When the ovaries become active early in puberty they begin to produce the hormone oestrogen which, among other things, causes the lining of the uterus to grow and change.
With time the ovaries produce more and more oestrogen. In most girls, between two and three years after the beginning of puberty there is enough oestrogen in the blood for its feedback effect to temporarily stop the pituitary from producing FSH. When this happens, the amount of oestrogen produced by the ovary declines. When the level of oestrogen in the blood falls, the lining of the uterus dies and is shed. The dead, liquefied tissue and some blood drains through the vagina, and the first menstruation has occurred.
You may worry that your first period will take you by surprise with a sudden gush of blood from your vagina. It doesn’t happen that way. The first period usual starts with a small amount of watery blood-stained discharge. You’ll have plenty of time to tell your mother if you’re ail home, or a teacher or nurse at school, sol that you can be provided with a pad to prevent further staining of your clothes.
After your first period you may find that your parents treat you differently. There may be more control over what you do and where you go, especially if boys are involved in the plans. In some societies, after girls start menstruating they are ml longer allowed to be with boys or to go out without a chaperone. This is because parents see your first period as clear evidence of sexual maturity, though most young women don’t ovulate and thus can’t become pregnant until the menstrual cycle becomes regular. However, parents may suspect (and they may be right) that your attitude to men and boys has changed, and there is a long-standing taboo on sexual activity and pregnancy before marriage.
In other cultures the first period is an event that calls for a ceremony to initiate the girl into adult society. Not so in the Western world, where it is considered polite to be very private and ‘hush-hush’ about bodily functions, especially those to do with reproduction. But these attitudes are changing. When I was in my teens we would hang about the pharmacy waiting for the female assistant to come to the counter before asking for a packet of sanitary napkins, which would be whisked out from its hiding place under the bench, already wrapped in brown paper. These days products for use during menstruation are advertised in magazines and on television, and you see men loading their trolleys in the supermarket with pads and tampons for family use.
It must be very rare these days for the first period to be a complete surprise for any girl in Australia. Mothers, sisters, school lessons and the things she reads will have prepared most girls to expect the menarche. But only a few decades ago many girls were totally in the dark when their first period arrived. They were often very frightened by the blood, thinking that it meant some awful internal disease.
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