How We’re Preparing for My Period This Christmas

Jessica has endometriosis and is an endometriosis health coach, and Chris is her partner.

From Jessica

This year for Christmas, Santa is bringing me my period. Yay for me. This wouldn’t be such a problem if it wasn’t that Christmas is a time that tends to lean towards indulgence. My periods tend to be easy and low to pain-free, as long as I’ve followed my usual precautions, especially in the lead up to it starting, such as avoiding sugar and caffeine.

However, eating sugar or starchy foods just before my period can result in a lot of pain, and we luckily had a test run of this over Thanksgiving. We’re British, so Thanksgiving is not the norm for us, but this year we wanted to try celebrating. We designed a fairly endo-friendly meal, the only exception being starchy white and sweet potatoes, which I’d normally avoid just before my period. I’m a sensitive soul, and it’s not just straight up sugar that bothers my inflammation levels, but anything that could spike my blood sugar, like starchy foods or very high carb meals. Thanksgiving proved this theory with my period arriving just a few hours after dinner, and causing me pain for three days where normally I’d have none.

As a result, I know I have to be careful this Christmas. It’s a bit disappointing but I’ll have many more to come and thanks to all our experience with managing endo, I know I can make this a wonderful Christmas despite the arrival of my period.

From Chris

A major change we’re making to help manage Jess’ symptoms this year is greatly cutting down the amount of traveling we’re doing. Having family in different locations, with different meals and events on, means we end up driving all around the southeast of England over the Christmas period. This year however, we’re going to spend the few days before and after at home. It’s easier to do this year as coronavirus restrictions still limit the number of households that can gather together, but the main reason is to rest. Traveling around and eating at other people houses is festive and great fun, but it makes managing endometriosis hard, and eating endo-friendly, getting to bed at a regular time, taking regular supplements and a bunch of other management strategies fall by the wayside.

As we are eating at home on the day, we are able to cook a completely endo-friendly Christmas dinner and treats throughout the day. We’ll be replacing sugar with substitutes like stevia, maple syrup with inulin syrup, goose fat with odorless coconut oil, roasted meat with vegan sausage stuffing, regular chocolate with 100% cacao, etc. This will seriously reduce the amount of sugar and other carbs Jess is consuming and will hopefully have a big impact on making sure her endometriosis symptoms don’t flare up.

Finally, we’ll have control over the days surrounding Christmas and we can make sure that, even if Jess’ symptoms are particularly bad, we can have all the magnesium bath salts, ginger teas, and time she needs to feel better. Preparing an endo tool kit before your period is a great way to make sure you don’t get caught off-guard, and having the day after Christmas free from travel means that we can implement all those restful and healing practices if they’re needed.