When I was pregnant last, I absolutely, positively, 100 percent guaranteed I would never be doing that shit again. Ever.

Coming in at my third pregnancy, and an unexpected one at that, it was by far the worst when it came to morning sickness. On no fewer than eleventy million occasions did I beg my husband to mercy kill me with whatever object was nearest so as to end my unspeakable misery, but alas, he did not oblige.

The way I saw it, my only other option was to shut down the baby factory for goodsies lest I find myself knocked up from something as simple as sniffing my husband’s pheromones mere hours after the doctors had dug this baby out.

I had an aunt who had done it, but that was way back in the ’80s, so I wasn’t sure how helpful her memory of it would be. I also had a friend who had recently had her lady pipes closed for business, but as she had practically flash danced off the operating table, not one complication to speak of, I knew better than to expect my experience would be comparable.

So I did what any rational person who had already made up her mind would do and read up on all the horrific side effects women who had undergone the procedure recounted, concluding that not even a lifetime of feeling like I was hemorrhaging shards of glass would deter me from getting those tubes cut, burned, and tied into knots (if the doctor would be so gracious as to accommodate these minor requests).

Of all the unmentionable byproducts of tubal ligation that I encountered — and believe me, there were plenty, from increased anxiety and depression to “the worst cramps ever in the history of, well, EVER” — there was one nobody even bothered to hint at. And that was…

MURDER.

In my uterus.

Nobody mentioned that there would be murder directly in and then flowing out of my uterus for days once every month.

They don’t make Kotex or super tampons absorbent enough for what happens during a woman’s time of the month following a tubal ligation. Not even those ones with which they send you home from the hospital post-childbirth can handle what my baby baker was putting down.

Every pair of underwear I own looks like Jaws crawled up in there and ate a bunch of children who were minding their own business, just trying to have a good time on a banana boat. I mean, I can’t get through two hours at work when I’m on my period now without feeling the familiar trickle of womb waste start to slide down to where my thigh gap isn’t. And the worst part? Not even my dog, the chronic used tampon caper, can stomach rummaging through the garbage for a crimson cookie these days.

I have given every extra absorbency tampon on the market a good test run, and nope. Not one can contain this Niagara Falls of hootenannies. Not a one.

I seriously almost called Stephen King the other day to see if he wanted to go in on a partnership of sorts. I even brainstormed a few titles for him:

The Green Red Mile

Clam Sematary

The Shining Tampon

Under the Dome Labes

The Dead Vagina Zone

Doctor Sleep Menses 

Cujo’s in My Underpants

Bag of Bones Bonerkillers

Carrie, That’s Not Pig’s Blood on Your Prom Dress

*sigh* I still might give old Stevie a ring.

In the meantime, I suppose I should relish the fact that it’s still better than nine months of constant morning sickness. Anything’s better than that.

Even the permanent blood stain that now adorns my bedroom carpeting.