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Cycle and symptom diary

Memory is a poor record of a hard month. This one-page diary lets you write down, in a minute or two each day, what your body did: bleeding, pain, mood, sleep and anything else you notice. After a month or two you can see your own pattern in black and white and, if you decide to see a clinician, hand it over instead of trying to remember. Print it, keep it somewhere you will see it, and fill in one row each evening.

One month: fill in one row per day
Day	Date	Bleeding (none, spotting, light, medium, heavy) and how many pads, tampons or cups used	Pain (0 none to 10 worst) and where	Mood and energy (1 low to 5 high)	Sleep (hours, quality)	Other symptoms or events	Medicines taken (as usual)
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This page stores nothing. It is a blank form for you to print and fill in by hand, so no personal health details are entered on the site. Write down medicines only as you normally take them, and never change a medicine because of what the diary shows.

How to fill it in

Mark the first day of bleeding in the date column, and count days from there if that is how your clinician asks about it.
Use the same words every day. Pick your own simple scale for bleeding and stick to it, for example by counting how many pads or tampons you change.
Note clots, bleeding between periods or after sex, and anything that stops you doing normal activities, in the last column.
Add context: illness, travel, a stressful week, a new medicine or a change in routine can explain a change in the pattern.
If you miss a day, leave it blank. A rough record is still useful.

How to read your month

Look for patterns rather than single days. How many days did bleeding last, and how many were heavy? Did pain or low mood tend to appear on certain days of the cycle, or at random? Did sleep or stress seem to line up with worse days? Write two or three plain observations at the bottom of the page, such as "bleeding lasted eight days and I changed protection every two hours on days two and three." That is the sort of concrete detail a clinician can use. Do not try to draw conclusions about hormones, fertility or a condition from the diary yourself; interpreting a pattern is what the appointment is for.

When to take it to a clinician

Bring the diary if your periods are very heavy, very painful, much longer or shorter than usual, or if they have changed noticeably. Bring it too if mood, sleep or energy changes are getting in the way of daily life, or if you are going through perimenopause or menopause and symptoms are hard to manage. The questions checklist helps you prepare for the visit. Our guide on when to talk to a doctor about heavy periods gives general background.

What the diary cannot do

It cannot predict ovulation or a fertile window, confirm or rule out pregnancy, or diagnose a condition. Methods that estimate fertile days need specific, careful instruction and have error rates; our cycle tracking article explains the general ideas and why a clinician or trained instructor is the right person to ask. Nothing on this page should be used as contraception or to plan around pregnancy.

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Where this comes from

Keeping a record of bleeding, pain and symptoms before an appointment is standard advice in patient materials from bodies such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Office on Women's Health at the US Department of Health and Human Services and the UK National Health Service, which commonly ask about period length, heaviness, pain and changes over time. The columns here follow those usual questions. The layout is original to this page and is not a clinical instrument. Details of what counts as heavy or abnormal vary and are for your clinician to judge.