Womb Blood, Ziploc Bags, Bears, and Baby Wipes

If the talk of blood makes you squeamish, stop reading now.

If the talk of menstruation makes you squeamish, blame the patriarchy, and also, grow up.

I’m going to paint you a pretty vivid picture here of how I came to schedule a uterine ablation the same week I googled “can bears smell period blood” at 4am in the woods. I’m going to paint with blood. And also, with my words.

 

Before I get to the part where I found myself with my pants at my ankles, hand covered in blood, in the dark Alaskan woods holding a Ziploc bag full of my own urine, let me give you a little bit of history.

 

I have a couple reproductive conditions that make my periods real likely to create horror movie looking scenes in the bathroom at least one or two days a month. I have been back and forth with multiple providers and basically my options for not bleeding to death every month come down to two things. The first option is hormonal treatment/birth control, but that is actually not an option for my sanity, which was confirmed last year after a 3 month attempt with an IUD that ended in me sobbing over a guy at my kid’s school who was angry about a cat, and then having to take the day off work and get that thing removed from my body, restoring my sanity to its only, as you’ll soon see, semi-sane levels) or permanent procedures that also have risks, and leave my uterus, which currently affectionately has the name “baby mansion” for her quite hospitable and twice as large as normal environment, inhospitable for any future fetuses.

 

My periods have always been this way (unless I’ve been on hormonal BC and am a – more - crazy person) and have gotten progressively worse after having children. Last year I got very close to having a uterine ablation done, but eventually decided against it the slight risks and having to give up the dream of having another baby one day – honestly, a dream that I’m not sure was based more in reality and practicality, or more on grieving the loss of the parenting partner I’d once hoped for and dreamed of. (More simply put, did I really want the option of another baby or did I just want another chance at having another baby with someone else?)

 

So, because my periods have always been the Niagra Falls of blood, I have grown used to the exhaustion that comes with the related iron deficiency, waking up multiple times a night when I’m on my period, and using multiple layers of protection on my heaviest days. It’s down to a teetering on the edge of the waterfall kinda sorta science. One that depends on me NOT taking my children camping in the middle of (blood) rush week.

 

But, in true 2020 fashion, my period showed up a couple days late, landing perfectly in line with our planned camping trip. One in which I’d already paid for a rented camping van, had taken time off for, and one my children were really looking forward to – maybe the one thing this year that I could actually do for them (as planned), unlike eradicate coronavirus and send them back to school. Because I took the time off, I was able to take them during the work week, which meant that there was only one other group of three in the whole campsite. (The prediction of rain might have had something to do with that, but that’s neither here nor there.) This might sound like a normal Alaskan’s dream, the peace and quiet in the beauty of AK, but there is something about being responsible for yourself and two small children in bear country (ok and maybe having OCD) that made it pretty difficult for me to relax or put down the bear spray. We had fun spending the afternoon and evening playing. I encouraged loud noises which was not a problem for me or my children, one of whom made so much noise I was worried a bear or moose might think it to be some sort of mating call. We did the campfire, hot dog, smore’s things, and then the night came.

 

The dark, dark, night. (Ok sunset at 10:11 p.m., but still.) You guys. The night.

 

I found myself, sharing a car bed with my two kids (because God forbid they want to sleep in the pop up tent on top of the van that they were soooo excited about until it became time to actually sleep), trying to strategically plan out the best way to get through the night without soaking all of us in a pool of my own blood – in, let me remind you, a rented vehicle. One of these children, who after walking in on me in the bathroom for the thousandth time, once had the nerve to ask me “Why do you waste all of that WOOOOMB blood? It’s for the baby’s HOME!!”

 

We went to sleep about 10:30, and I woke at 12:30 a.m. I thought to myself “I should get up and go to the bathroom.” I had the bear spray ready to go, and could use my phone as a flashlight to get to the outhouse, but that would require walking a short way through the dark woods. Would a moose or bear hear me before I started them, and I was charged? Would they smell my womb blood? Did my daughter’s mating calls and my period alert the entire moose and bear population of Nancy Lake to our presence? I think I dropped some hot dog juice on the ground earlier. My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard and my hot dog juice and period blood is going to bring all the bears to the campsite. I know it. And is it raining? Maybe I’ll just true Alaskan girl style this, and squat next to the car. And maybe I can go back to sleep for a little while before I really have to…

 

2:30 a.m. came. I could tell, things were not…quite right. I needed to get up, but OMG, I’d rather drown in a puddle of my endometrial lining than have my children witness a bear attack on their own, potentially half naked, mother. I could wait til it got light out, right? Let’s just google the sunrise time…

 

3:30 a.m. I woke again. I could no longer wait. IT WAS HAPPENING. I laid there for a few minutes, making a plan. I would shine my phone flashlight around the campsite, so as not to startle the bears and moose I was certain were forming some sort of mating or feasting circle around our vehicle, anticipating my arrival. I would then place the flaslight face out of the car, lighting my menstruating way, and squat next to the car to go. I grabbed a Ziploc bag to put my used vag cleansing wipe, that I’d use to clean my diva cup and myself. I guess I’ll dump the contents of my diva cup (which one of my daughters used to refer to as “the squishy bowl”) on the ground. No! In the Ziploc bag. Yes, this was genius. I would just put all the period stuff in the Ziploc bag, and store it inside the car (away from our bed, I’m not an animal, you guys) until morning when I could properly dispose of it, away from the waiting creatures of the night.

 

I got into position. Pants at the ankles, gallon Ziploc in one hand, vag cleansing wipe in the other, and started to squat.

 

No.

 

No no no no no.

 

Things were all wrong. (Obviously, things were so right before all of this.)

 

None of this is going according to plan.

 

I have to pee. I did not think this through. If I pee, it’ll get all the leaking blood all over the ground and my Ziploc plan will be worthless. I guess I will just, oh man I really have to pee, and my cup, She overfloweth, it’s pouring out of me like lava now, I’ll just reach up and remove the cup OH MY GOD it is so slippery (and not the fun kind of slippery) and it’s still pretty dark but I can tell now my hand is covered in blood, it’s dripping down my hand into the arm of my sweatshirt. I can’t get the diva cup out without bearing down but if I bear down, I’ll pee, and I’ll pee it will get all over my sweatpants at my ankles. Those sweatpants already feel wet but I can’t tell if its from blood, or if I have peed already, or is it the wet ground the sweatpants are scrapping against?! Everything is happening so fast and I guess I’ll just –

 

Pee in the Ziploc bag.

 

Yup. I guess that’s what’s happening. I’m peeing in this Ziploc bag. But, now it’s full, and I have one bloody hand, and one hand trying to hold onto the bottom of my sweatpants and the cleansing wipe and so I don’t know how to shut the Ziploc bag, so I guess I should just –

 

I should just dump the pee onto the ground. Ok, that just happened.

 

There you go, wild animals, the blood of my ancestors/uterus and the pee of my bladder, all over the (now extra) fertile Alaskan soil for you. I decided at that point I may as well just dump my diva cup into the ground, and I hear my children stirring and can hear their cries to the future or current therapist in my head now “And I woke to my mom’s bloody ass in the door of the car, a second before a bear came out of nowhere and tried to invite her into the physical act of love.”

 

I looked at the one, measly, vag cleansing wipe I had in my hand, still in its packet. I couldn’t open it – my hands were too slippery from the blood, or the pee, or the rain, or maybe the sweat at this point. Even if I could get it open, that one wipe was about as insulting as handing someone performing a leg amputation one square of TP to soak up the blood. Luckily two crucial items – sent straight from Jesus, my faith restored – were within reach, and now that my eyes had adjusted to the dark of night, my view: baby wipes, and a full water bottle. I dumped the water bottle over my bloody hand and the diva cup, washing myself, and, spilling fresh blood water on my ankles and pants at the same time. I used more baby wipes than a grown woman should ever have to use on herself, and put those in the Ziploc that once held my pee, only moments, and yet a lifetime, ago.

 

It was in that moment – a pee soaked Ziploc bag that held bloody baby wipes in one hand, what felt like war paint/potentially period blood streaked across the right side of my face, still holding a squat (at least I got those quads, guys), with wet pants at my ankles, what looks like a crime scene gone wrong around me, that I thought “And I’m suffering through this every month on the chance that someone might want to…impregnate this?”

 

I got my diva cup back in, my pants back on, unable to reach another pair without climbing over my sleeping and probably traumatized children, and laid back down, literally panting. I didn’t fall back asleep after that, but at least by the time I had to do all of this again two hours later, the sun had come up, slightly hidden by the rain clouds that poured around us. Before I got dressed later that morning, I stood in the rain, half naked, and poured the entirety of a gallon jug of water on my sticky, lower half of my body. My kids barely asked any questions as they watched their mother become one with nature, stained pink and shivering, and I’m not sure if that should make me more sad, or more proud.

 

Unrelated, but I decided maybe we should head home a day early.

 

The first thing I did when I got home (after a hot shower), was schedule that pre-op appointment for that ablation. Good riddance, baby mansion.