Before they could walk, they already knew what blood meant.
Not the kind from scraped knees.
The kind that meant life flows.
We never hid it.
We never locked doors.
We never said not now.
They learned before language,
because my body spoke first.
The bathroom was never closed
I changed pads,
my daughters brushing their teeth,
my underwear stretched between my knees.
They saw red on white and asked, “Are you hurt?”
I said, “No, I’m healthy.”
That was the truth.
We had other bathrooms.
We used one.
Because privacy was never the same as shame.
So they grew up knowing that wombs reset themselves,
that blood is part of rhythm, normal, regular,
that a woman can bleed and make lunch in the same breath,
that she can shuttle her children and leave stains on the car seat.
They didn’t flinch.
They watched.
And they learned what is so.
Skin to skin
Their first breaths were taken on my chest.
Each one of them.
Straight from womb to breast, in a single movement.
Michelle, our obstetrician,
the same woman who delivered all three,
waited until they’d settled.
Then she’d lift each baby for the briefest exam,
check what needed checking,
and return them straight back to my body.
That’s how it began.
That’s how they learned breath, warmth, gravity, belonging,
before language ever came.
And when they cried later,
months, years, even into their tens,
I would rhyme it out loud, the same way every time:
"skin to skin,
skin to skin."
I lift my top, bare my belly,
and pull them to me.
Their breath follows mine.
Their pulse slows.
Their world comes back into rhythm.
We never called it comfort.
We never called it regulation.
We call it skin to skin.
Even as they grew,
ten, eleven, twelve,
when a storm rose in them,
they still came close.
I lift my shirt,
open my arms,
and place them against me,
their cheek to my soft, stretched belly,
until their breath steadies
until their pulse slows.
No performance.
No shame.
Just their skin remembering where they began.
That’s what holds my house together:
my body saying, you’re safe here.
The first day
Both daughters cramp hard on day one
the kind that folds their body in half.
I didn’t.
Maybe I ignored it.
Maybe I powered through, like I was trained to.
Working the restaurant floor from the time I could reach the counter,
I don’t stop for pain,
I worked around it.
He didn’t dismiss it.
He created space.
He reminded me that pain this deep is real,
because he’d seen it before,
a friend at school who trusted him enough to tell the truth.
From him I learned that endurance is not the same as strength.
That holding space can heal more than pushing through.
That when women are allowed to rest, the whole space softens.
So when our girls curl up on their mattress,
he doesn't tell them to toughen up.
He makes space for it.
He let it be.
That’s what men forget sometimes:
to steady without fixing.
He keeps pads and tampons in his bag,
next to his sunglasses and wallet.
For me,
For Petra.
For Padme.
And wet wipes; always.
He being ready is not performance.
It’s one of the ways he holds us.
There’s an empty lip-gloss jar tucked in each school bag,
a single paracetamol placed inside,
just in case the pain hits between classes.
And on a day,
they say they can’t go to school,
he lets them stay home.
No argument.
No guilt.
That’s the space he's holding.
It should be this way everywhere.
When a woman calls in and says, "I’m not coming in today",
that should be it; final.
No proof.
No explanation.
Just clarity.
It will be the most normal thing on the planet.
The birds and the bees
We answered every question.
Where babies come from.
How they get there.
Why blood means readiness, not fear.
Even before they understood the words,
they heard them.
They grew up in a house where truth wasn’t delayed until adolescence.
It was the air they breathed.
So now, when they ask the harder things,
they don’t expect silence.
They're ready for truth.
Because that’s what their space remembers:
when adults don’t hide what's so,
children learn to stand.
In truth
Menstruation isn’t a secret.
It’s the first calendar.
When a family can hold that,
without embarrassment,
without performance,
then even the talk about the birds and the bees
becomes what it was always meant to be:
a lesson
in what works,
in what is so,
in completion.
Notes:
Early skin-to-skin contact strengthens the infant’s autonomic regulation and long-term attachment patterns.
Maternal body-to-body contact lowers cortisol, synchronizes heartbeat and breathing, and supports emotional stability into adolescence.
(Feldman, R., Weller, A., Sirota, L., & Eidelman, A. I., 2002. Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics;
Feldman, R., 2010. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.)
Workplace research confirms menstrual leave policies increase productivity, retention, and wellbeing.
(Forbes, 2023; BMC Women's Health, 2020.)
