Aunt Flo, You Bitch

My cycle is all out of whack these days. Prior to getting knocked up with The Bon, I was picture perfect with a 28 day cycle. I could pretty much predict when I would get my period to the hour.

Now, it's totally different. Bizarrely, painfully different. Well, that makes it sound like it wasn't painful before when Holy schnikes, it sure was. I've basically exchanged mild mid-cycle pain and horrific end-of-cycle pain for intense mid-cycle pain only. C-R-A-Z-Y.

Since high school, I've known exactly when I ovulate (which was a moot point then at any rate.) I can still remember feeling the syrup bottles thumping against my poor left ovary as I dragged ass around Samuel's Pancake House (may that pervy bastard rot in hell.) It was definitely uncomfortable but not a big deal. Now, YIKES, it's HORRIBLE. It's cold-sweats, doubled-over, can't-lift-the-baby painful. The first time it happened after Bon was born, I thought I was dying. Like, appendicitis or something. Now I am expecting it every month but the intensity of the pain continues to surprise me. Is the poor little egg bumping up against the severed part of the fallopian tube and trying to burrow it's way out through my skin instead? Sure feels like it. Yeowch.

Bright side of my new menstrual normal: no cramps. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Anyone who knows me knows that I have always had ridiculously horrible cramping with each period. I passed out in eighth grade because of it! (In the middle of an anti-abortion movie which everyone thought grossed me out to the point of unconsciousness. I wasn't about to correct them.) My mom took me to the GYN when I was 15 to get on the pill, that's how bad it was. She didn't want me missing school every month which is pretty much what would have happened without pharmaceutical assistance. Now, my period arrives without even a whisper of pain and I have no idea until I hit the bathroom and spot (pun intended) the evidence. It's almost creepy. Why? What has changed? I shouldn't question too much because I'm not looking to go back to the bad old days.

There is one downside to my new cycle and that is its brevity. Whereas before, every month on my period calendar was like February (with the occasional leap year just to make me nervous) now we're talking 21-23 days max. What the fizzle dizzle is that all about? I barely have time to put the Midol back in the closet before I need it again. The feminine needs industry is happy for the change but I, most emphatically, am not. Still, it's worth the trade-off if I never have to get vomit-inducing, gut-wrenching, curl-in-the-fetal-position cramps again. I guess. The grass is always greener...