HIKING WITH A MOONCUP
Ok firstly let’s get something very clear: I am not big advocate of intense exercise or huge mountain days on your period, because that’s time well spent in recovery and as I learnt only too well recently, if you ignore that recovery period (genuinely didn’t spot this until the proof read and am going to leave it there because it’s punny), you pay for it big time.
Bit of background…I use a mooncup during my period. I find it comfortable, easy to use (after a few practice runs) and secure. Plus, there’s always the added smugness of knowing that you’re contributing to less waste by investing in something reusable and better for the environment. I also use period wear, which I found recently and I find comforting to use overnight and during the last day or two of my period when the flow is lighter, but if I’m using a mooncup I tend to just wear regular underwear because I don’t feel the need for additional support.
When it comes to hiking, this is the first time I’ve been out on the mountain with a bleed (used to have the coil) and I was genuinely amazed at how well the mooncup performed on such active days. For context, I ended up in this situation because I had booked onto a winter hiking course over a year ago, and I wasn’t exactly going to turn around and re-jig a £550 course with such limited availability based on sketchy period maths. I was expecting it to arrive on the Friday but knew it might arrive earlier due to the flight (changes in air pressure can affect your cycle) and the physical stress I was about to put my body through.
THANKFULLY, even though I got my period mid-way through the course and a couple of days early as I had thought, it arrived in the evening after one of our biggest days out on the hill:
Britain’s second highest mountain
Snow and icy conditions
First time using crampons
17km / 6hr hike
…not exactly the breeze of a day I tend to opt for during this phase 😂😂
The next day I was feeling tired (for obvious-see-above-summary reasons) but I had faith in my trusty period sidekick! And it did not disappoint. We got up to a decent height, spent a lot of the day practising sliding around on the ice, kicking in with crampons, and self-arrests (which is where you voluntarily slide down a patch of snow and then stop yourself by flipping around onto your front with an ice axe). Coming off the mountain found us being consistently blown over by 60-70mph wind gusts, so in summary I was active most of the day and spent a fair amount of time rolling around in strange positions.
Despite allllll that activity…no leakage in 6 hours 😎
And this was the same on Friday, and the same on Saturday – no real need to go to the toilet, no feeling like there might be leakage, and full trust that I’m good to carry on with whatever I’m doing!
I mean seriously, can you even imagine changing a tampon up a snowy mountain and then having to take it with you back down in your pack?! Or needing the toilet and changing a pad / keeping the same one because you can’t be bothered to get a new one out because you’re freezing? Because you cannot leave any trace up there; no toilet roll, no nothing.
Admittedly, I didn’t need to empty my mooncup, but if I did, I knew could just wash it out with water from my bottle (NO EMPTYING OR WASHING ANYWHERE NEAR A STREAM OR WATER SOURCE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE), put it back in, sanitise my hands and be off again! I will at some point test this theory on a 2-day hike plus a wild camp and write another blog about how it works in reality, but based on this experience I am really quite optimistic!
ignoring your recovery…
…and paying for it big time. Yep, I felt that to the extreme towards the end of this week, not only in relation to my energy levels, but also in my mood; I was IRRITABLE AF about everything.
Legit everything. I wanted to kill G sometimes for being an inch away from me in bed. It was such a mental struggle to remember that I do in fact love the man dearly and I shouldn’t yell at him over dinner plans or ignore him completely and expect him to read my mind 😂😂
I talk a lot about managing your cycle and energy (hi welcome to The Female Method) but I also acknowledge that when you’re in this type of environment, there’s not a lot you can do. This week in particular, so much of my energy (that was already at the lower end of my spectrum) was put towards focus, learning, being socially engaged with other people on this course, physical stamina and effort, that I essentially finished the day with a negative energy balance. Extrapolate that over a week, and you’re just fully fucking done in. You have to find your energy gainers, which for me were:
a nightly soak in the bath
reading fiction books
sleeping at least 8 hours
eating a seriously solid breakfast every day
putting my phone on DND for basically the whole week
And an entire day to myself on the Sunday, sitting in the hotel bar and staring out the window at the snow, getting through some worky bits and emails that I wanted to do, and not having to be outside or do anything active at any point. It wasn’t even that I didn’t want to be active; I just wanted to be alone for a significant period of time.
…YEAH OK, BUT WHY?
Your menstrual phase is a super low hormone phase so your focus naturally tends to shift inwards; it makes it a great time to reflect and review things in your life. That might be work, relationships, the past month, goals for the next quarter, or just self-assessing your current mood and getting stuck into a good read. Could be going for a walk. The important thing is to know your body and where your limits are. I certainly hit mine during this week, and although I enjoyed myself immensely, I know that pursuing this level of activity every cycle would be detrimental to my own self-confidence, physical recovery and quality of my relationships.
Thankfully, at least I don’t have to worry about how to handle my actual period and can just trust the mooncup to ensure that side of things is covered. I just have to handle my hormones…
