The practical half
of having periods.
The practical half of having periods: the first one, what to say to a parent, what the products actually are, school, sport, leaks, cost, and how to tell the difference between something ordinary and something worth ten minutes of a doctor's time. Written plainly, for someone who may be eleven, and sourced the same way as everything else here.
Everything under this
Your First Period: A Complete Guide to the Day and the Year After
It is far less blood than you are expecting, every kind of product is safe from the first day, and the year that follows is meant to be untidy. Here is the day, the hour after it, and the two lines worth knowing.
Read it 5 min read · 5 sourcesHow to Tell a Parent About Your Period: What to Say, and When
Six words will do it, and you can send them as a text. Scripts for saying it, an option for when a parent is not the easiest adult, and the two things you actually need from one.
Read it 9 min read · 8 sourcesPeriod Products Explained: Pads, Tampons, Cups, Discs and Period Underwear
Five kinds of product and no order of merit. Here is what each one is, how much each one holds, and the long list of things — comfort, ease, which one suits somebody starting out — that nobody has ever measured.
Read it 7 min read · 6 sourcesHow to Use a Tampon: A Plain Guide, and the Safety Part Told Straight
The NHS describes a tampon in about three lines, and the rumour about toxic shock is much longer than the evidence. This page prints the symptoms, the emergency line and the measured numbers, and refuses to invent the one figure everybody else gives you.
Read it 8 min read · 7 sourcesMenstrual Cups, Honestly: What Forty-Three Studies Actually Found
Forty-three studies sounds like settled science. Only three of them were of moderate-to-high quality — so here is what they found, with that caveat attached to every number.
Read it 7 min read · 5 sourcesPeriod Underwear, Honestly: How Much It Actually Holds
The most marketed period product has the least measurement behind it. One trial of twenty people is the whole evidence base, and its most useful finding is a warning rather than a review.
Read it 5 min read · 5 sourcesSwimming on Your Period: What Works, and What Nobody Has Actually Studied
The question everybody types has no citable answer, and that is worth saying out loud rather than filling in. What can honestly be stated here is short; the rest is a rule somebody invented and nobody ever checked.
Read it 7 min read · 6 sourcesSport and Your Period: What the Research Says About Training and Competing
For the fixture that lands on a bad day, the coach who wants a plan, and the training group where everybody has a theory. Plus the two NHS lines that people good at ignoring their bodies walk straight past.
Read it 7 min read · 5 sourcesPeriods at School: The Kit, the Toilets and the Awkward Bits
Nearly every school problem is one of three: no pad on you, a lesson you cannot leave, or pain in the middle of one. A kit you pack once, and the NHS line on who to ask when you have nothing.
Read it 7 min read · 6 sourcesPeriod Leaks: How to Make Them Less Likely, and What to Do in the Moment
A saturated super pad holds about 5ml. A whole period is 20 to 90ml. That is the entire explanation — and then the part nobody writes down, which is what to do in the ten minutes after it happens.
Read it 7 min read · 6 sourcesHow Much Does a Period Cost? Honest Arithmetic, and What Nobody Has Measured
Every page ranking for this question prints a grand total built on invented assumptions. This one shows the arithmetic, prints the single published price range, and leaves the slots only you can fill blank.
Read it 8 min read · 8 sourcesTracking Your First Year of Periods: What to Write Down and What to Ignore
A messy first year is the expected result rather than a fault. Here is the one thing worth writing down, the things that are not, and the two thresholds that are worth an appointment.
Read it 8 min read · 8 sourcesTalking to a Doctor About Your Periods: What to Bring and What to Say
Bring dates, and say what your periods stop you doing. Those two things turn a vague ten minutes into a useful one — and neither needs you to know anything medical.
Read it 8 min read · 8 sourcesIs My Period Normal? Clots, Colour, Length and the Things That Look Alarming
Most of what looks alarming is ordinary, and each one has a line where it stops being ordinary. Here are both halves, with the NHS's own numbers attached.
Read it 8 min read · 9 sourcesWhen to See a Doctor About Your Period: The Thresholds, Not the Worry
Three different speeds, and telling them apart is most of the answer. Every line here is quoted from the NHS or ACOG, and almost all of them are an ordinary appointment.
Read it 7 min read · 6 sourcesPeriods and Sleep for Teenagers: What Actually Changes and What Does Not
Bad nights and bad periods turn up in the same girls. The one study of the right age group says it cannot tell you which is causing which — and that honest answer is more useful than the confident one.
Read it 7 min read · 6 sourcesPMS in Teenagers, or Just Being a Teenager? How Anyone Actually Tells
The symptom list cannot separate PMS from an ordinary bad fortnight, because everything on it belongs to both. What separates them is where the bad days land — and that is only visible going forwards.
Read it 7 min read · 9 sourcesDo Periods Sync With the Moon? And Five Other Things You Will Hear at School
The lunar month is about 29.5 days and the average cycle about 29, so half of everybody bleeds near a full moon by chance. That, and five more corridor stories with the numbers put back in.
Read it 6 min read · 6 sourcesPE and Periods: Getting Through Gym Class Without Dreading It
The research does not support sitting out: pooled across 78 studies the effect was trivial and the interval crossed zero. That is not the same as "so stop complaining" — pain is real, and this page covers both halves.
Read itHow to read these. Every page under this heading links the source of each claim, and every statement about a named app is quoted from that company's own published policy or support page rather than from a review, a memory or a marketing site. Where something cannot be checked, the page says so instead of guessing.
Nothing here is medical advice, none of it is legal advice, and none of it replaces someone who knows your history.
The tools these pages point at
First Period Kit Checklist
What to put in a school bag and what to keep at home, on one printable page. Editable, unfussy, and written to be reassuring rather than dramatic.
Open itPrintable Period Tracker
Build a paper tracker for any month or a whole year, then print it. Flow key, symptoms, an optional temperature row — and a gentler version for a first tracker.
Open itPeriod Late Calculator
How late is late, measured against your cycle rather than a textbook one — plus the ordinary explanations, and the day a test would actually mean something.
Open itPrintable Period Symptom Tracker
A month across the top, your symptoms down the side, one box a day. Rename every row, print one page, and bring the pattern to the appointment.
Open itCycle Length Calculator
Log a few period start dates and read your own numbers: average, shortest, longest, and how much the whole thing moves.
Open itAthena keeps all of this on your phone.
The calculators here forget you the moment you close the tab. Athena is the same arithmetic living on your device — the moon ring, an honest calendar with ranges instead of false precision, and a database that never leaves the phone because there is no account and no server behind it.
In development for iPhone and Android. Not released yet — when it is, it will be on this site.
What Athena is