To not want to change tampons etc in front of my kids?

[cadburyegg]

I’m pretty chilled for the most part but my periods have recently returned (had 2 years without them due to pregnancy/miscarriage/pregnancy/breastfeeding). And I’m suddenly finding the prospect of changing tampons etc, embarrassing and uncomfortable, in front of DS1 who is now 4.

I don’t know if it’s because he’s a boy but I really don’t want him, as a teenager/adult, remembering his mother on her period!

How do I get around this? At home it’s easy enough to do my business without an audience, but in a public toilet not so much.

AIBU? Surely there are many women with this problem?!

I tell my son that sanitary bins are for sanitary products. He’s perfectly aware of what periods are, what tampons are and how they work, and why women need a bin in the toilet for them. He doesn’t have to watch me taking a tampon out to understand it, nor does me asking him to step outside or turn around suggest that it’s traumatising or embarrassing - it suggests that sometimes people like privacy for intimate self care, and he’s learning that it is not difficult to respect that and act accordingly
Exactly! I was very open with my kids about bodily stuff and not prudish at all. But I never once needed them to see me remove or put in a tampon.
As a kid I'd have been mortified if my mum had done that in front of me.

He doesn’t have to watch me taking a tampon out to understand it, nor does me asking him to step outside or turn around suggest that it’s traumatising or embarrassing - it suggests that sometimes people like privacy for intimate self care, and he’s learning that it is not difficult to respect that and act accordingly.

Very well said.

My 5 year old knows that pooing is a completely normal bodily process but he still asks for privacy when he needs one. He asks me to stay nearby in case he needs help but does ask me to shut the bathroom door.

He knows that what happens in bathrooms is sometimes private and he knows it works both ways.

All those saying you've never taken your child into a bathroom with you...how did you manage when you were at home alone with them when they were say 18months old for example and bumbling about and not safe to be left alone (for any number of reasons! Stairs, plug sockets, etc etc)?

You never had a safe place for your child for when you walked into another room for a minute? You had them with you every time you walked into the kitchen to put the kettle on our nipped upstairs to empty the washing basket?
Most people will have a play pen, a high chair or other seat with straps. You could even pop them in their cot for the sixty seconds it takes to change a tampon.

Periods and pooping are normal but I don’t like to do hem in front of an audience. You can explain what you need to do and distract or turn around yourself?

Tell him to turn around?

I am a fairly liberal person and I was totally open about their questions re bodily functions, birds and the bees etc

But when my daughters were no longer toddlers (i.e they could wait outside the cubicle) there was no need for them to watch me change a tampon.

Try doing it at a festival with a long line outside and your son shouting ‘mummy wants that little mice doing going up there? Why’s all that blood there?’ Hilarious......

I always asked mine to just turn around and face the door (sometimes there are posters on the doors to look at). Never really hid anything from my kids but one of them hates blood so didn’t want to scare the shit out of them in a public loo.

Unless you are out for hours, why would you need to change a tampon anyway?

When I used them, I could go for 4 hours before needing to change. I had 2 DCs with 2 years apart, so when one was 4 the other was 2. I never took either into a loo with me because either they were in a push chair or old enough to wait outside (I'm talking cafes and shops, not outside public loos.)

Alternatively use a pad, which is far easier to whip off your pants and replace while your child stays outside the loo.

And as others have said, at 4 he ought to take notice of what you tell him and be able to stand up against the loo door from the other side. You might also find that any other women in the loos are very happy to keep an eye on him for a minute if you ask.

Agreed that's a little intimate, just get the kid to turn around. He'll prob still ask what you're doing, so tell him. Boys need to know about periods just as much as girls and giving him age appropriate bits of info as you go along will make it a natural convo. My DS asked about pads that he saw so I told him the basics, it was another couple of years before he asked more about babies, and another couple before the 'How does the sperm get to the egg?' question came along. I think both our kids ( 9&7) are comfortable asking us anything now about sex etc. which is great because other wise their info is coming from kids their own age ( who have mad ideas quite frankly !) or worse, the internet via an older brother or sister's phone.

I had to take my daughter to a colposcopy appointment once! She was only 18 months so hopefully can’t remember my cervix on a camera

There have been toilets I have not been happy to leave them outside the cubical but I used to just ask them to turn round or just be quiet about what I was doing and not shout MUMMY WHAT IS THAT

I never had this issue, generally I assume because when my sons were that age if I thought it couldn't wait, and if there was no-one I could leave them with, I changed it before I went out.

@cadburyegg Are your periods very heavy? A super tampon plus a pad for back up ought to last a long time if you change before setting out.

Mine still have a habit of following me into the toilet or wherever I am if they want to ask me something. They are a bit older now and turn around as quick if I say to them I have my period I will be out in a minute. They like to chat when I am in the bath or ask questions when I am on the loo probably because they know I can't escape.

Growing up my parents were quite liberal about nudity and toileting. I remember finding it quite disgusting and wishing they'd close the door.

@AmeriAnn
GOOD GOD!! Do let them watch you shit or have sex as well - after all normal?

Yes of course my 2 year old DS watches me shit- we are potty training and we spend all day talking about his poo and looking at it, it’s only fair that he should get to watch me if it interests him. Important to model normal toilet behaviour as well, isn’t it? There’s not much to see.

Obviously sex is completely different. ( We don’t have that. We have a 2 year old . )

And y y to the PP who pointed out that Beatrix Potter is a shitshow- Jenkins Puddleduck OMG. I had no idea of the trauma behind those cutesy pictures, had to make up an alternative story on the hoof for that one!

Both my daughters asked what the sanitary bin was for. I explained it to them. My son couldn't have cared less.

He has two sisters and knows about women and periods. He studied biology as well.

So he knows his mother had sex in order to conceive him and that his mother had periods to.

No big deal. All part of being human.

Ive had 5 kids. I have had to do this once, when DS1 was about 3. We were in a busy service station on the M1. I couldnt leave him outside the door. SO he had to come in - especially as he needed a wee first (which is why he was with me and not with DH).

I had a dress on so nothing was seen, but he still asked, loudly, in that toddler voice, "WHat you doing mummy? Are you having a poo? Whats in your bag mummy. Whats that in your hand mummy? Can I have one mummy?". I'd like to think that all the women in the nearby cubicles were laughing sympathetically. Never again.

As far as I'm aware, my child is not traumatised.

@Letthemysterybe Tue 25-Jun-19 23:15:46
Hmmm another tampon thread?

Yeah, sure are a lot of them lately.

especially as he needed a wee first (which is why he was with me and not with DH).

Why couldn’t your husband take his son for a wee?

Unless you are out for hours, why would you need to change a tampon anyway?

That's really naive.

AmeriAnn I find your equating of a "nice mother" and bodily functions very bizarre.

OP of course your not unreasonable to want privacy. Conversely your children aren't going to be scarred if they see you doing something as normal as changing a tampon.

He has seen me go to the toilet though. I've seen him go to the toilet.

He's watched his dad as well.

Part of being human is to excrete waste.

He's seen the cat poo as well.

saraclara (sorry, don't mean to pick on you particularly, justr an example), you say you're open and not prudish etc, but then that you would have been 'mortified' - i.e. desperately embarrassed shading into ashamed - to have seen your mother change a tampon. Where did you get the idea that it's 'mortifying'?

Nobody 'needs' to see their mother changing a tampon, or to have their children see it. I don't think anyone's suggested it's an essential experience. But if the situation arises, it doesn't 'need' to be not seen either. For all the talk of safeguarding on here and of not leaving children alone for a second, I'm surprised at the number of you who would be willing to leave really young children (3, 4!) outside the cubicle (yes, whether their foot's there or not - if something happens you'll never be able to react in time) when the alternative is them seeing you dealing with sanpro.

All the women on this thread banging on about trauma are the reason that girls are period shamed in highschools. There isnothing traumatic, embarassing or shameful about menstruation. Every single person in this world is alive because somebody had a menstrual cycle. It should be seen as a badge of ( occassionally inconvenient) honour and not a dirty secret that needs furtive fumbling and blindfolding your sons in the toilets so they are not scared for life. Be honest, when you change your tampon/towel, you dont hold it aloft and waggle it around...you wrap it and bin it. I have done it without my kids even noticing.

I have 4 kids between 10-21, two of each sex. All of them are bomb proof when it comes to bodily functions and haze zero shame regarding bodies or coming to me for advice if they have period issues, puberty concerns etc. My teen sons will happily go to the shop for tampons, towels etc and not even flinch.Thats the way it should be.

Yeah, because it’s just sooooo incomprehensible that on a site with thousands of female users, most of them having periods every month, there might be a few threads about tampons now and then

And there are also a look of fucked up men who get their jollies by reading stories about women using tampons, especially where children are involved.
If you don't believe me then it must be nice to be as innocent as you are.