How old was your daughter when she started her period?
She was in 5th grade, poor thing!
How did she deal with it? Happy? Embarrassed?
Oh My gosh! It was a hoot! I had been at a birth the night before, so she had been with Dad and her baby brother the previous evening. I was checking my email in the morning and she came running it jumping up and down saying "Guess what I got! Guess what I got!"..my first thought was "the new Harry Potter book?", because it had just come out, and she and my husband love to hang out at the book store. She lauged and said "No! My period!"...so uh,,,she was pretty thrilled! LOL!
What does she prefer to use, supply wise?
She started off with just regular pads I had left over from my menstral history (I had a hysterectomy when my youngest was 4 months old), but when she read a book her step-grandmother gave her (American Girls about growing up) they mentioned cloth pads there..so she asked. I was reluctant to go there, but eventually we made the full switch. She did start using tampons occasionally that year, as she unfortunately got her period the morning of her class swimming party later that year! So we use unbleached ones, but she has been working on a package of 16 for a year now, so really it is cloth pads.
What were her biggest hardships, or none, with this new change in her life?
She is cursed with really bad cramps sometimes, as I was. That has been the only thing,,she was eager for the change, seems to welcome it each month. We did have a ceremony for her about 3 weeks after her first period,,with women in her life coming with blessing or a poem or a song, prayer, we all brough beads to make her a beautiful necklace,,it was a special evening for us all, sitting around the table talking about becoming a woman, telling the "period tales"..you know, how you managed to get out of math class that time you leaked on your pants,, so on.
Was she embarrassed for her dad to know? How did you deal with this?
That was almost as funny as how she told me. I am remarried, so she is very close to her step but now adoptive father. As soon as she blurted to me that she got her period that morning, she insisted on calling him on his cell phone to tell him! (wasn't sure how he would take that!) He had a flower arrangement sent to her at school..pretty sweet how close they are, and how open she is with him.
He felt lucky that she wanted to tell him like that.