There are a few important things I didn't learn in sex ed. I don't know if these things weren't covered or if I happened to blink a second too long when they showed that slide or what. For the record, I don't think I blinked. Sex Ed was the best part of health class. Even though I pretended to be uninterested like everyone else, like yeah, whatever, I don't even care...
I never learned:
1. How to chart your cycle.
For some reason I left middle and high school sex ed classes believing my period should arrive "around the same time every month". How vague is that? This often left me caught off guard. I eventually learned my lesson, though I guess not the right lesson, and wore a lot of pads in the week leading up to my expected period. It wasn't until I got married and started thinking about ovulation that I realized I didn't know when in the month that happened. I read up on it, and learned so much about menstrual cycles. I finally started charting my period the right way instead of, "Uhh, I think it's sometimes that week..."In lieu of writing you an entire book on the menstrual cycle, I made you a video tutorial. Without further adieu...
2. Where Lady Pee Hole is located.
I don't think I can explain better than this:
3. We only get a certain amount of eggs.
It's embarrassing to admit this, but I only learned this one a couple weeks ago when my younger sister told me, and my even younger brother confirmed it. Well, don't I feel especially uninformed... But yes! Apparently you're born with a certain number of eggs, and you drop one every menstrual cycle (as I talked about in number one) until you have no eggs left.
I thought your eggs just kind of came into being as you went along in life, and tons of them dropped down every month. What in the world?
4. There are early pregnancy symptoms other than a missed period.
My last blog post was about this, and you can read all about how it's exactly like PMS by clicking here.
5. There are things you should avoid for the sake of your fertility.
Here, let me make you an insanely large list:
plastic, plastic shower cyrtains, plastic food containers and storage dishes, caffeine, most herbal teas, green tea, cantaloupe, too much pineapple, chemicals, chemicals in your cleaning products, chemicals in your makeup, being eaten by a dinosaur, chemicals in your food, GMOs, chemicals on your lawn, too much vitamin A, most laundry detergents and soaps, dryer sheets, letting UTIs go on for too long without med attention, antibacterial anything, being struck and killed by lightning, artificial flavors, dyes, tons of exposure to metals, this and that in your lotion and shampoo, more of this, a little more of that, alcohol, hormones in your milk, hormones in your chicken and any other food, whatever it is that makes your yogurt and milk and cheese low fat, low fat everything, sugar, refined carbs, trading your uterus for cash on the black market, stress, lots more things I didn't list, even more of that, etc.
Basically, go organic everything you possibly can.
6. You will have acne for the rest of your existence.
Teenagers all across the world stare out their windows, just dreaming about the day they hit twenty-something, and their pimples are suddenly a distant memory. But actually, I'm almost twenty five, and my acne shows no signs of slowing. It's not a "teenager" thing; it's a "hormone" thing, and adults have hormones, too. Especially women. Sorry, teens. You may cry now.
Adults, you may cry, too. Shh, it's okay...
So, how much of this did you learn in Sex Ed? (Please tell me it's not just me.) What about something you didn't learn that I don't have listed? Comments welcome! You can also find me on Twitter @Je55ieMullin5 or on Facebook. Don't want to make your comment public? That's fine! Feel free to email me at jessie(dot)mullins5(at)gmail(dot)com.
Thanks for reading!
