A lot of people conceptualize their period as their uterus having a tantrum about there being no baby. I used to do that, too.
Then I found this article about why we menstruate and I realized that’s not what’s going on.
It’s actually my uterus saying, “Look, you don’t want a baby this month. I certainly don’t want a damn baby this month. We’re going to make damn sure there’s no baby this month even if I have to nuke the site from orbit.”
And I think that’s beautiful.
This
“The mother and fetus have an adversarial relationship: mom’s best interest is to survive pregnancy to bear children again, and so her body tries to conserve resources for the long haul. The fetus, on the other hand, benefits from wresting as much from mom as it can, sometimes to the mother’s detriment. The fetus, for instance, manipulates the mother’s hormones to weaken the insulin response, so less sugar is taken up by mom’s cells, making more available for the fetus.
[…]
Menstruation is a consequence of self-defense. Females build up that thickened uterine lining to protect and insulate themselves from the greedy embryo and its selfish placenta. In species with especially invasive embryos, it’s too late to wait for the moment of implantation — instead, they build up the wall pre-emptively, before and in case of fertilization. Then, if fertilization doesn’t occur, the universal process of responding to declining progesterone levels by sloughing off the lining occurs.”
Published
Thoughtfulfangirling 