What to pack for your period when you're travelling

What to pack for your period when you're travelling: enough supplies for the whole trip plus two or three days, liners, one or two spare pairs of underwear, disposal bags, wipes, pain relief in its original packaging, and hand sanitiser. Almost all of it belongs in your hand luggage.

Here's the reasoning behind each part of that.

Pack for more days than you need

Travel has a habit of moving things. Long flights, broken sleep, crossing time zones and a fortnight of eating differently can all shift a cycle by a few days either way. It's common and it usually means nothing, but it does mean the date you had pencilled in is a guess rather than a plan.

Pack as though it might arrive early. If it doesn't, you've carried a few extra grams.

Carry it on, never check it

Checked bags go missing, connections get tight, and the first twelve hours of a trip are exactly when you don't want to be hunting for a pharmacy.

Pads, tampons and liners aren't restricted and don't count towards the liquid allowance, so take as many as you like. Wipes are fine too. Hand sanitiser is the one exception, because it is a liquid: keep it to 100 ml or less and put it in your clear bag with everything else.

Don't assume you can buy what you use

This is the one that catches people out. What's on the shelf varies enormously by country. Applicator tampons are everywhere in some places and almost impossible to find in others, absorbency labelling differs, and brands you know may not exist at all.

Most of us are particular about what we use. If you are, bring it with you.

The packing list

• Enough for the whole trip plus two or three days
• Liners for the days either side
• At least one spare pair of underwear, ideally two
• Disposal bags, which matter more where bins aren't provided
• Wipes, for the times there's no soap
• Pain relief, kept in its original packaging when crossing borders
• Hand sanitiser, 100 ml or less if it's travelling in your hand luggage

Keep marking the dates while you're away

It's tempting to let the record slide on a trip, and that's exactly when it's most worth keeping. A month that shifted while you were travelling only confuses you later if you can't remember which month it was.

Write the date down as it happens and note that you were away. Six months on, that one word is the difference between a cycle that looks erratic and one that makes complete sense. There's more on that in how to track your cycle without an app.

Which size travels better

The Large is the travel one. Ten tampon loops covers a whole period without restocking, and the deeper Extras pocket takes more than one spare pair of underwear. At 230 × 210 mm and 25 mm thick it lies flat in a carry-on instead of rolling around in it.

The Small is the better pick for a weekend or a day trip, or as the one that stays in your day bag once you've arrived.

Both are in the travel period kit collection, and both come with two years of dated calendars and a permanent marker, so the record travels with the supplies.