This post is based on a conversation between Kath Hansen and nutritionist Steph Lowe on The Modern Mother Podcast. Steph is the founder of The Natural Nutritionist and one of Australia's most respected voices in women's hormonal health and nutrition.
Here is something most of us were never told: your period is a monthly report card on your health. Not just your reproductive health. Your overall health. Your longevity. Your nervous system. Everything.
Steph Lowe has been saying this for years and it still lands like a revelation every time someone hears it for the first time.
I sat down with Steph recently for what turned into one of the most dense, practical and genuinely useful conversations I have had about women's health on The Modern Mother Podcast. We covered pre-conception, iron in pregnancy, postpartum depletion, the supplement overwhelm that is paralysing so many mothers, and why we have accidentally been gaslighting ourselves for decades about what is normal.
Here is what I want you to take away.
Your Period Is Not Something to Just Manage. It Is Something to Understand.
Steph uses the phrase "your period as your monthly report card" and it is one of those ideas that, once you hear it, you cannot unhear it.
Just because something is common does not make it normal. Heavy bleeds, debilitating pain, PMS that swallows a full week of your life, PMDD, missing cycles. These are not just part of being a woman. They are signals. They are your body trying to tell you something is off.
Steph talks about mothers who have restructured their entire week around their period. What to wear, whether to leave the house, what to sleep on. She is clear: that is not normal. And it does not have to be your life.
The Iron Conversation Nobody Is Having Properly
Low iron is one of the most common issues Steph sees in the women she works with, and one of the most misunderstood.
A few things worth knowing:
In pregnancy, your blood volume expands significantly from around 20 weeks. This makes it look like your iron has dropped dramatically on a blood test, when in reality your blood is more diluted, like concentrated cordial that has had water added to it. Steph is cautious about rushing to iron infusions for this reason.
Iron infusions are not without risk. Iron is a heavy metal. Too little is a problem but too much causes oxidative stress, inflammation, microbiome disruption and joint pain. Steph avoids them unless there is true anaemia, meaning haemoglobin below the trimester-specific range, not just a low ferritin result.
Synthetic iron supplements like Maltofer are often prescribed in doses beyond what your body can actually absorb. If you are taking one, Steph suggests every second day rather than daily.
Liver, the organ, is one of the most effective ways to support your body in making its own iron through the cofactors it provides, including vitamin A and copper. The fear around liver in pregnancy is largely based on confusion with synthetic vitamin A in medications like Roaccutane, which is a completely different form and dose. Steph says eating liver early in pregnancy can often prevent or delay the iron dip that comes with hemodilution.
What Your Bleed Is Actually Telling You
Normal blood loss per cycle is 40 to 80 millilitres. Bleeding for three to six days. A regular pad holds about five mils. A super tampon holds about ten.
If you are consistently using more than eight super tampons per cycle, you likely have heavy menstrual bleeding. If you are bleeding for seven or more days, that is a flag worth investigating. If you are missing cycles and you are not in late perimenopause, something needs attention.
Heavy menstrual bleeding often has a root cause, whether that is elevated oestrogen, something structural like fibroids, endometriosis or adenomyosis, or something in the diet that can be addressed. The point is not to panic. The point is to stop normalising something that is not normal.
The Supplement Graveyard Problem
If you have a shelf of half-used supplements that you bought with good intentions and never consistently took, you are not alone. Steph calls it the supplement graveyard and she sees it constantly.
Her approach is to test first, then triage. Without knowing what your bloodwork actually shows, supplements are guesswork. With testing, you can identify the one to three things that are genuinely the priority right now, rather than spending hundreds of dollars on things your body may not need.
She acknowledges the cost is real. But she also points out that most of us will spend money on activewear, skincare, nursery set-ups and other priorities without hesitation. The resistance to spending on our own health is something worth sitting with.
On Feeding Ourselves First
One of the moments in this conversation that landed hard was Steph pointing out that many of the mothers she sees are focusing entirely on what their children eat, while eating nothing themselves until 2pm.
We spend energy on blueberry muffins and eggy pancakes for the kids and then grab a coffee and work through lunch. She is direct about this: women do not respond well to extended fasting. Eating every three to four hours during the day stabilises blood sugar, reduces the crash that leads to grabbing chips at 9pm, and makes every other thing we are trying to do with our health more possible.
This is not about perfection. Steph openly shared that her third child has eaten hot chips in the high chair and that she considers herself less of a purist than she was in her earlier career. Good, not perfect. Most of the time, not all of the time.
For Mothers Who Are Also Thinking About What Comes Next
Steph made a point that I keep thinking about. Many of the women who are hitting perimenopause hard right now are the ones who were never taught about their bodies, were put on the pill as teenagers, and have never fully replenished from pregnancy and postpartum depletion. They are arriving at this phase without any of the reserves they needed.
If you are still in your reproductive years, the work you do now on understanding your hormones, your iron, your cycle, your nourishment is not just for now. It is for who you are in ten and twenty years.
And if you have daughters or nieces or young women in your life, the most powerful thing you can do is start the conversation early. Not about fertility in the context of having babies, but about health, about understanding their cycle, about knowing their body. Steph's daughters are six and four and they already know why periods happen. That is the shift she is hoping to see in the next generation.
The Checklist: Things Worth Paying Attention To
Use this as a starting point for your own reflection, not a prescription.
Your cycle:
- How many days do you bleed? Three to six is the range to aim for
- How heavy is your bleed? More than eight super tampons per cycle is worth investigating
- Are you experiencing pain that stops you functioning? That is not normal even if it is common
- Are you rearranging your life around your period every month?
- Are you experiencing PMS or PMDD symptoms that take you out for a week or more?
Your iron:
- When did you last have your iron tested? Not just ferritin, full iron studies
- If you are postpartum, have you had bloodwork at six to eight weeks and again at six months?
- Are you relying on synthetic iron supplements without knowing if you actually need them?
- Have you ever explored food-based iron support including red meat and organ meats?
Your nourishment:
- Are you actually eating lunch?
- Are you going more than four to five hours without food during the day?
- Are you eating for your own needs or only thinking about what the children need?
Pre-conception if relevant:
- Are you starting pre-conception preparation at least six months out?
- Are you including both partners in the conversation?
- Have you had functional testing done, not just standard GP bloods?
Where to Find Steph
Steph Lowe is the founder of The Natural Nutritionist. She offers personalised consulting and has an extensive podcast and course library that she specifically mentions for those where cost is a barrier. Her podcast alone contains full episodes on iron in pregnancy and many of the topics we covered here.
You can find her at thenaturalnutritionist.com.au and on Instagram at @thenaturalnutritionist.
To listen to the full conversation, find The Modern Mother Podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Published by Bubba Cloud. We believe mothers deserve the same level of care and attention they give to everyone else.
