A childhood belief about periods

My mom never told me about girls getting a period...When I was 10 yrs. old I woke up one morning to having some blood in my panties, well I thought I scratched myself in my sleep but I was very PRIVATE girl and did not go to my mother about it...as the day progressed I saw drops and tried looking with a mirror to see where I scratched myself...NO LUCK!!...the next morning I woke up and there was even more blood spots so I put BANDAIDS all over my private area but to no avail it continued and was only getting worse...so I finally went to my mother TOTALLY EMBARESSED to say "Mom I scratched myself and it just wont stop bleeding and I have tried using bandaids to cover the scratch but it's not working"...Needless to say my mother wanted to see and when I showed her or rather she could tell it waas not a scratch but my first period...It took everything for her to not laugh at the site of bandaids everwhere from front to back...She proceeded to tell me then what it was...One thing she told me was now I was a "Woman" so to speak and I had to stay away from boys..lol...I sure made sure when I had my daughter to tell her very early on about this subject...lol