Day One (Not That it Matters)

Well, day two, technically, now that I've gotten around to writing about it.

I started my period yesterday. The first one since Peeper was born.

She was excatly nineteen months, one week old yesterday, if you're keeping score.

It's been almost thirty months since my last period.

(No, the math does not compute. When we did the IVF, I was in a "holding pattern" for a few weeks, waiting for Shrike's follicles to mature. I started the cycle on February 8, and we retrieved March 4 and transferred March 9.)

And it's been just over three years since a period wasn't a big thing - accompanied by a negative beta, or signaling the beginning of a countdown to a test, an insemination, a (literal) buttload of shots or our IVF cycle itself.

Which just feels weird.

I barely remember how to have a period (I had to ask Shrike where we keep the supplies!) let alone how to not really care that much about having it.

I kind of have to remind myself that I can just be blase' about this; it doesn't mean anything.

Except, yeah, it sort of does.

I mean, I know that there are plenty of women who will get their periods back within six or eight weeks, even when exclusively breastfeeding on demand.

And I know that, even with "ecological breastfeeding," the average return of menses is fifteen to eighteen months - so I've been on borrowed time for a while.

And I know that Peeper still nurses a zillion times a day and just as enthusiastically.

But, still, it feels as though some sort of threshold has been crossed.

Like it somehow means that she's a "big girl" now, or that maybe she is cutting back on nursing in ways that I'm not noticing.

And that makes me a little sad.

Also, it means that the idea of being pregnant again is now at least a sort of a physical possibility, but I know that it's not going to happen, so that makes me sad, too.

Also? It's kind of a big pain in the ass.