Bedikah

I have such conflicted feelings about being a Nidah.

On the one hand, I hate being separated from my husband. I take strength from him and part of that strength is physical. I like to lean on him, to touch him and feel connected.

On the other hand, it does give us time to work out issues we won't otherwise address. It also, to some extent, takes the pressure off because there's no way for us to try to have intercourse when I'm a Nidah.

It's the Seven Clean Days I really dislike. I get the not sleeping with your wife when she's bloody. I don't get the Seven Clean Days. To me they're more like the Seven Awful Days. Especially because I bleed longer than five days in the first place, so I have seven days of bleeding and seven clean days and then how much of the month is left for me to even try to be with my husband?

But what I really hate about Nidah are bedikah cloths.

You're supposed to wrap a white cloth around your finger, insert it into your vaginal canal, move it around and see if there are any stains on it. The problem with this is I am very frightened of inserting my finger into the vaginal canal. I am comfortable inserting tampons now but I'm not comfortable inserting my finger.

I did do it with the doctors onlooking because they said I had to and I responded to the authority in their voices. But when I try to do bedikahs with my own finger and the cloth I just end up failing. The reason why, I think, is that it hurts a bit when I prod myself seeking entrance and I don't want to push harder and hurt myself more just to put the finger in. I wish my husband were able to do my bedikahs for me because I don't mind when he puts his finger in. I trust him so I'm not scared then.

I tried to explain to my kallah teacher even before I got married that I was scared of bedikahs and that I didn't think I knew how to do them. She wasn't helpful. She said to use tampons and that I had to insert my finger at least to my knuckle  by a bedikah. I don't think she got that at the time I had no idea where to insert the finger.

Bedikah means to search. Theoretically you're searching for blood, but in my case I'm searching for so many other things. Confidence. Lack of fear. The ability to push the finger in even if I'm scared it will hurt or it does hurt. I worry that I'll always be searching. That I won't get over this. That we'll both be unfulfilled and I won't have kids. I worry about the shame when I have to go to gynecologists for pap smears and I'm still a virgin even though I'm supposed to be married. I worry that my bedikah will be unsuccessful and I'm going to stay stuck for a very long time.