hey everyone i owe zines to, (excluding the one i said i would mail friday which i mailed friday) i am going to probably mail em later this week. i was gonna do it today but i have such bad cramps i do not want to get out of bed

book-baby:

I have a question for mom’s who chose to give birth naturally. I am curious about the correlation between bad menstrual cramps and bad labor pains. I myself experienced very bad menstrual cramps pre-pregnancy, to the point of passing out on a few occasions and was even prescribed 800mg Motrin to help with pain management.

Will my having bad cramps mean my labor pains will also hurt more than most peoples? Or- that I am simply more prepared for the pain to come?

Please repost if you have a lot of “mom followers” because there is very little talk of this on the internet.

unsure about this in particular (i don’t THINK there’s a correlation between menstrual pain and labor pain, though) but my mom always told me her menstrual cramps got much, much better after having kids—apparently this is a thing.

rgr-pop replied to your photo: one time i made fun of laci green for writing a…

i’m p sure she had a cup of tea though

where the fuck is my cup of tea

actually literally this is a thought i’ve had all day 

it’s really difficult for me to take photos of myself because the front of my phone is smashed (thus i can’t take pictures with the camera switched around) and my macbook is trashed so i have no webcam. anyway this is the best i could do.

i am a crampy baby so i made myself cramps tea and i’m drinking it in bed in a mason jar. i bought this sweater for daniel as a gift but i made him leave it here so i could think of him now that he’s gone. i spent a lot of the time he was here wearing his clothes. he stopped by today to get some stuff and see me and i’m going to see his new place sunday, so it’s not like i’m going a long time without seeing him or anything but it will not be the same as him temporarily living here.

so i’m going out to see a friend i haven’t seen for a while but i moved a bunch of boxes in the attic and then was overheated and crampy so i turned the fan on high and stripped off all my clothes and i don’t know how to do it 

let’s get real tho cis dudes who are freaked out by periods/period sex are the literal worst dudes 

sic-semper:

rozemarsepein:

sic-semper:

Menstrual Cups

These are all herbs and plants that have some use for menstrual/uterus issues. On the other side are brief descriptions of what they are and what they are used for.

L to R: Yarrow, raspberry leaf, rose hips, motherwort

whoa I really love these.

blushing/dying/also reblogging just because these are really relevant to me right now! I got to go to an herbalism conference in Portland this weekend and I’ve been reflecting a lot on this project and how it really kindled an interest in herbs and plants that is becoming more and more a part of my life… really want to do more stuff like this, if I can get access to a studio again!

oooh i forgot about these! i use some of these herbs nowadays for tea. 

i am really proud of whoever made this

oh btw i should post my tea recipe. i have modified my original recipe to be more effective and to be served as warm tea. maybe later i will take a picture of a fully packed tea ball because it looks pretty nice. 

there are a variety of herbs you can use. do your research, find out what herbs have actually been scientifically proven to be more effective than placebo. all of these are except red raspberry leaf, where there is basically no information. i include it because of anecdotal evidence and because it’s delicious. the rest of herbs i use are proven to be better than placebo.

get some herbs:

• fresh ginger
• cinnamon sticks 
• yarrow
• red raspberry leaf 
• blue or black cohosh

chop up the fresh ginger. it doesn’t really matter if you peel it first. you are not eating the skin. put that in a tea ball or other loose tea consumption device. if using a tea ball it should be about a quarter to half full with ginger. fill the rest with yarrow, red raspberry leaf, and blue or black cohosh. put a cinnamon stick in yr mug. make tea like a person who knows how to make tea. it’s not hard. 

this has made me feel noticeably better whenever i have made it. 

i’m really mad about these cramps i have because the last two months have been so mild that i thought i had made myself better by eating better and apparently i was wrong. 

anyways i made some cramps tea and it made me go from feeling uncontrollably awful to feeling tolerably awful, so i’m not under threat of crying or anything (any more) but i am still not happy. 

mappingthemoon:

“The Menstrual Joy Questionnaire,” from The Curse: a Cultural History of Menstruation (Janice Delaney et al., 1976).

“We believe that with a more positive attitude toward female [sic] processes, researchers could begin to view PMS in an altogether different framework. In the case of the Menstrual Distress Questionnaire devised by Rudolph H. Moos in 1969, for example, the title reveals quite clearly that the attitudes will be negative. Of the forty-seven items in the questionnaire, only five predict positive results, for example, ‘feelings of well-being’ or ‘bursts of energy or activity.’ The other forty-two questions measure menstrual distress, for example, ‘avoid social activities’ or ‘decreased efficiency.’ The questionnaire, because of its overwhelmingly negative emphasis, is bound to show negative results.

“If the questionnaire were called the Menstrual Joy Questionnaire, if the majority of items asked for responses such as ‘happiness’ or ‘feeling great’ or ‘able to plot effective strategy’ or ‘increased creativity,’ the end results would inevitably be different.”

I KNOW ABOUT THE MENSTRUAL JOY QUESTIONNAIRE!!! i wrote a paper about this.

noble-fail replied to your post: MENSTRUAL HELP?

If you have time one day, I can tell you all about the science of the uterus. Unfortunately I doubt that raspberry leaves will help, but ibuprofen and other non-steroidal anti inflammatories will,

INTERESTED. i’m trying to work out a combination of herbal remedies with ibuprofen and whatever because usually what i do is take way too much ibuprofen and that’s not good for me.

HERE IS MY METHODOLOGY FOR HERBAL REMEDIES:

i know a lot about herbal remedies and specifically which ones have actual effects—previously what i did to check facts was 1. initially find out about stuff from sources like this, or google, and 2. then ask daniel, who is very good at researching the actual science behind things and can tell me why things work or don’t work and if he thinks they are bullshit AND more recently 3. ask lydia, who is taking a medicinal plants course and now has a helpful textbook and more knowledge.

i specifically asked about raspberry leaf because i’ve really only got the first kind of information about that. daniel looked into it and said there hasn’t been hardly anything done about it scientifically, and i find it super dubious it both induces labor and helps cramps. normally i would just like, not get it, but it smells really good and would probably be good in tea with other herbs that help for reasons. i’m just wondering if it would potentially actually make things worse, because of the inducing labor thing.

(usually i make this kind of tea, which has things that are helpful and is also delicious but i got some other stuff this time —namely black cohosh—so i’m trying to use more herbs and figure out if i should also use a little raspberry leaf in tea or not.)

yo have any of you menstrual witches ever used raspberry leaf tea for your cramps? because i’m finding it some serious bullshit that it’s supposed to help menstrual cramps as an antispasmotic AND induce labor

one of those must be wrong because those are opposite effects? from what i understand there’s no scientific studies on raspberry leaf for cramps so i guess tell me about your personal experiences/what you know about it?