Menstruation. From puberty to menopause, it's a part of life for most women.

We're either pre-menstrual, menstrual, or post-menstrual. Everything resolves around that wondrous menstrual cycle. With only 30-31 days in a month, it sure seems to come back around fast.

• Have you ever been in a position of wondering when you're due to start and you realize you have no idea? Maybe you think you're pregnant. Maybe you know you're not pregnant, but now you wonder what is really wrong and you have no idea when you should start worrying about being 'too' late.
• Maybe you're trying to plan around your vacation, wedding/honeymoon, etc. You're trying to avoid your period. How do you do that if you don't know when you're due to start?
• What about when you start trying to plan a family? Start dates are handy when calculating ovulation.

Bear with me as I further explain the need for charting, how to chart and finally, some fun stuff to pad this hub out. Yes, that pun was intended.

I discovered a long time ago that keeping up with the start dates of your menstrual cycle can be very important. I went through a period (another pun!) where I was missing several cycles at a time. The doctor needed to know dates.

When I suspected I was pregnant, the doctor wanted to know the date of my last period in order to estimate the due date.

Tracking her menstrual cycle is something I've instilled in my daughter as well. If you teach them early, it becomes part of their routine. It's easy to do, I promise.

Being a Excel spreadsheet type person, I tend to build spreadsheets for everything. Yes, I even track my hubs and their hub scores and page views via a spreadsheet. But, that's a whole different hub.

I want to share with you a simple chart you can keep to help keep track of your menstrual cycle and perhaps provide valuable information should you need it in the future.

This chart is designed to work with formulas on Excel, but you could do it by hand if you want to.

You simply write down the start date for each menstrual cycle and calculate the number of days between start dates. It doesn't matter if you include the day you start or not. What is important is that you do it the same way consistently. You're just looking to calculate an average.

In the example below, I count the days like this. If you started on June 19th, that means there are 11 more days in June (30-19=11). Then you started again on July 14th. Add those two together (11+14) and that's 25 days. As you can tell, the pattern is very consistent for the remainder of that 2000 year. As you look at the full-sized version you'll notice the length of time between start dates varies more.

I've been capturing this monthly data on myself in this spreadsheet since June 2000. With this much history I can easily show a doctor how my cycle normally is, should it become abnormal.

While researching some information to add to this hub, I stumbled upon some interesting items I couldn't pass up sharing. I don't know how I missed learning about reusable cloth sanitary pads or sanitary napkins. They are also known as mama pads

The first is a reusable sanitary pad. I had never heard of them. If you can think in terms of poopy cloth diapers, it does make sense in a way.

This site offers sizes and colors.

I love the name of this one.

I especially like the ric-rac embellishment on this one.

You have to see the petal. Unbelievable. I'm not even sure how you'd package this.

I love these. You have your choice of plaid or appliqued blood stain!

This is a good site showing different styles of mentrual pads.