Every. Damn. Time, I think as I barricade myself in a bathroom stall and root around in my bag for—fingers crossed—an emergency tampon. Back at the gate, the plane’s beginning to board, and it’s getting to be desperate times: I’m about to get on a 12-hour budget flight from Berlin to Singapore, and my period has decided to surprise me—again.
It seems like I always unexpectedly get my period when I travel. After getting a hormonal IUD (love her) and dealing with a year of heavier-than-usual flows fading to intermittent spotting, I’ve gone largely, blissfully, without a period for nearly two years. But the random occasions my period does show up always seem to be the worst days possible, like this one when I’m rushing to catch a longhaul flight. It happens on around two-thirds of my trips.
It doesn’t help that I’m a travel writer, so, you know, traveling is sort of my job. On one trip-turned-horror-show, I was caught off guard yet again and had to spend a 10-hour transatlantic flight with toilet paper balled up in my underwear, afraid to get up and walk around in case my flow decided to truly burst forth. At one point, I realized I had tampons from no fewer than five different countries in my bathroom in Berlin, thanks to all the spontaneous flows that struck me while on a trip.
The travel period, it turns out, isn’t that unusual. “When anything is stressful, we know that can get in the way of having a regular period or someone ovulating,” says Lauren Streicher, M.D., a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Traveling, even to the most magical of destinations, can be a minefield of stressors—weird sleep schedules, questionable foods, mad dashes to the airport—which can cause a spike in cortisol that can really throw off your body and the regularity of your period, says Leah Millheiser, M.D., director of the Female Sexual Medicine Program at Stanford University School of Medicine. This irregularity isn’t universal: “It certainly doesn’t happen to every woman every time they travel, but it may happen occasionally,” Dr. Millheiser says.
That makes it insanely hard to plan. Depending on where you are in the world, getting the supplies you need to cope can be a challenge. In some parts of Asia, for example, tampons are still a cultural taboo and can be difficult to find. But it’s not just there: I’m continually surprised by how many airport bathrooms aren’t prepared for women who find themselves beset with a surprise visit from their cycle. And the ones that are equipped with a tampon vending machine seem to have been designed by someone who’s never had a period. “There’s nothing worse than running for the plane and saying, ‘Where the hell am I getting two quarters or two dimes to get a crappy tampon?’” says Claire Coder, founder of Aunt Flow. “Toilet paper is offered for free—why aren’t tampons and pads?”
Coder’s mission is to make sanitary products a basic right for people with periods just like toilet paper is for the rest of the population. Aunt Flow is in talks with a dozen major airports and airlines to get them to offer gratis supplies in their bathrooms—and they’re finalizing a partnership with RSA Roomservice Amenities, a company that supplies hotels with toiletries, to get Aunt Flow’s company-made organic tampons and products into hotel rooms, which guests would be able to use for free. Personally I’d be OK with any free setup that doesn’t make me break out a bottom-of-the-purse emergency tampon, (should I be so lucky to have one) when my period surprises me while traveling.
