Period 14: pull that string
Book news
If you’ve gotten an early copy of the book, you may have found where I joke that I will not be providing instructions for IUD self-removal. However as I’ve started to do more research for my next book, Pregnancy, Interrupted: The New Science of Miscarriage, it’s been sitting with me less well. Period is a natural history, a guide to critical thinking about periods rather than a how-to book (which I tend to hate because they are prescriptive, assume a universal norm, and even the anti-clinical ones can be pathologizing). But still, given what I’ve been reading about contraceptive counseling, maybe I should be providing instructions. When PUP Ideas asked me to write a companion piece to my book, I did just that. Enjoy!
A bunch of the recent reviews on Goodreads have been both five stars AND a result of LibroFM’s selecting my book for their March Advanced Listener Copy campaign. I am so grateful they liked the book enough to give it that extra exposure!
I’ve really been enjoying all the folks who are sharing pictures of their copies/their unboxing of their copies online. I’m touched! Please keep sharing and tagging me!
A few links
I was quoted in this TIME story by Jamie Ducharme on how long COVID is making some people reconsider whether they want or can have children. I spoke to her regarding the physiology of how long COVID might influence menstrual cycles and what evidence is out there so far.
Two new case studies provide evidence that, like CMV, rubella, HIV and Zika, COVID-19 can cross the placental barrier and cause fetal brain damage (here also is Reuters reporting on the article). Do you all remember the microcephaly reported in mothers who got Zika? The same thing has now been observed with two COVID-19-infected mothers. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: COVID-19 is a teratogenic agent. It causes birth defects. In the past, this has led to massive campaigns to create vaccines that reduce transmission and to greater efforts to protect pregnant people and their fetuses. Now? We still only have vaccines that reduce severity. Which is great but may not protect a fetus from seizures and microcephaly.
When colleagues see me masked and ask if I’d like them to as well “for my comfort,” I do always say yes, but it’s not for my comfort. It’s to accept responsibility for reducing transmission of something that harms fetuses, children, parents, the immune compromised, cancer survivors, and the elderly.Anna North has written a touching essay about what it means to have a uterus, to have a hysterectomy – and the particular ways her experience made her grapple with her own identification as a woman. This article also discusses fibroids, which occur in far greater proportion among Black women than among other groups, and (no surprise here) are massively understudied, with few treatment options beyond an eventual hysterectomy.
Weird period fact
Pediatricians are some of the first health providers a young person engages with when they first get their period. Yet pediatricians are massively undertrained when it comes to counseling about menstrual management, and menstrual knowledge more generally. In a recent sample of pediatricians, not only were they unfamiliar with basic American Association of Pediatrics guidelines on menarche, they had some embarrassing gaps in their understanding of periods. In general male pediatricians were far less likely to demonstrate knowledge of pad or tampon use, and they were less likely than female pediatricians to discuss how to use tampons – including how to insert them, how often to change them, and under what conditions it is appropriate to use them.
Only 64% of male pediatricians in this sample (compared to 85% of female pediatricians) answered “yes” to the question of whether it was safe for menstruating people to wear a tampon while swimming in the ocean.
And only 44% of male pediatricians provided the correct answer to the question of whether it was safe to wear a tampon at night (the correct answer according to the survey was: yes, provided you remove it after 8 hours). 67% of female pediatricians provided this answer.
...yikes.
Source: Singer, M. R., Sood, N., Rapoport, E., Gim, H., Adesman, A., & Milanaik, R. (2022). Pediatricians’ knowledge, attitudes and practices surrounding menstruation and feminine products. International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health, 34(3), 20190179. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijamh-2019-0179