For women, randomly getting your period while you’re out in public and totally unprepared is seriously tough luck. But when you randomly get your period in public, and you have twin preschoolers in tow? That’s truly a nightmare scenario — and it’s exactly what happened to mom and blogger Eliza Morrill on a recent Target run with her sons. The mom detailed her mortifying experience in a hilariously relatable Facebook post that has parents cracking up.
“Well, any shred of dignity I had has been left in a Target bathroom,” Morrill writes in her post on the Momstrosity Facebook page. The mom of four reveals that she was out and about with her sons when she realized she needed to use the restroom. Using a public restroom with kids is already a harrowing experience for most parents, but things got even worse when Morrill realized it was also that time of the month.
“The handicap stall is conveniently out of order, so I have to cram inside of a tiny stall with both of my children and my purse that could easily hold one of their siblings,” she explains. “… I try to distract my young cherubs so that they may not be so interested in what is going on inside of the toilet bowl, when it happens. Child 1: MAMA!!! You have … BLEED ON YOU!! Child 2, horrified: BLEED IS COMING OUT OF YOUR BOOTY!!!!”
Not only did her sons notice she was on her period; they started loudly asking her questions about it the entire time they were in the restroom. One son yells that she needed a Band-Aid while the other suggests she call 911. “I am begging them to be quiet,” she writes, “‘Are we the only ones in here?’ I silently pray. A muffled guffaw from the next stall over tells me that we are not.”
Just as Morrill hears a new group of people enter the bathroom, her sons ask, “Do you have a cut? On your booty? On your bee-jina!?”
Finally, one of her sons puts the nail in the shame coffin by sticking his head underneath the bathroom stall door and loudly informing another bathroom patron that mommy is “bleeding really bad outta her booty.”
Unsurprisingly, everyone with a uterus, a preschooler or both has found the post absolutely hysterical. Some are telling the mom to look on the bright side: She should be proud that her boys clearly know to call 911 if they see someone they think is hurt. Others are commenting with their own bathroom humiliation stories that involve little kids.
“I had three 2-year-olds in the stall with me when I realized I had started [my period],” one person writes. “I pulled out a tampon, which elicited excited screams of ‘Popsicle! Popsicle! Popsicle!” Shortly followed by ‘Oh no! Mommy put the Popsicle in her butt!’ And then tears and loud wails x3.”
Another adds, “This now ties for first in my favorite bee-jina stories. The other is our niece yelling at her mom ‘Your vagina is BEAUTIFUL!’ loudly in a public restroom.”
Even grandparents are getting in on the fun, with one grandma writing, “I took my granddaughter in [the bathroom] with me when she was about three. She proceeded to ask loudly, ‘Mema, why do you have fur on your hiney?’ Luckily her mama was the only other person in the bathroom. She was cracking up in the next stall.”
Morrill, who runs the website Momstrosity with friend and fellow mom Stephanie Hollifield, has added an update to her post saying she’s blown away by the huge response it’s gotten. So far, it has 1,800 likes and almost 600 comments. She also notes that she and her blogging partner are using their newfound viral fame for good by encouraging people who read the post to donate period products to people in need.
Ultimately, she writes, she’s just glad her post could bring so many moms together. “I am going to assume you are all laughing WITH me and not AT me,” she adds. “… It’s so nice to know that we are not alone in all the mess that is motherhood!”
