Martha on the Period Story Podcast: Invention, Education, and Living Without Limits

We are so excited to share that our founder Martha Silcott recently appeared on the Period Story Podcast, hosted by nutritionist and women's health expert Le'Nise Brothers. It was a wide-ranging, funny, and genuinely moving conversation, covering everything from Martha's very first period at age 11 to the moment FabLittleBag was born at her kitchen table, and the brand new HyGeeni bag that's already changing lives.

If you haven't listened yet, here are the highlights.

"I thought I'd arrived" : Martha's first period

Like most of us, Martha's period story starts with a mix of emotions. She woke up aged 11, saw blood on the sheet, and had a simultaneous wave of mild panic and quiet pride. "I remember thinking this means I'm kind of grown up," she told Le'Nise, "even though I was so, so not grown up."

Growing up in the seventies, there was very little open conversation about periods beyond pain levels and whether you'd leaked. Martha counts herself lucky, she had a relatively manageable cycle through her teens and twenties, but her forties brought a decade of heavy, painful, unpredictable periods that she hadn't seen coming. Including one particularly memorable meeting-room moment involving blood on a chair, a quick exit, and a new pair of black trousers from the nearest shop. ("To this day they don't know," she laughs.)

The problem no one was talking about: disposal

The real lightbulb moment for Martha came not from her periods themselves, but from a visit to a friend's house with no bathroom bin. Faced with the choice of risking a blocked toilet or the dreaded handbag smuggle, she chose the latter — and came away thinking: there has to be a better way.

What followed was months of snatched thinking on buses, trains, and in the shower. "It was a little bit obsessive," Martha admits. Eventually, a eureka moment, it wasn't about pushing a bag open, it was about pulling it apart, led to a prototype made from a sandwich bag, staples, nappy velcro, and Sellotape, assembled on her kitchen table.

Seven years of patent applications later, FabLittleBag was born.

The taboo within the taboo

One of the most striking things Martha talks about is how disposal is "the taboo within the taboo" of periods. Nobody discusses what they do with used products, which means nobody realises how differently everyone handles it. Flushers, binners, loo-roll wrappers, handbag smugglers: Martha's given them all names, and as soon as she uses them, people immediately recognise themselves.

The environmental stakes are enormous. Around 2.5 million tampons, 700,000 panty liners, and 1.4 million pads are flushed in the UK every single day. Menstrual products are the fifth most common item found on European beaches. And yet none of this is taught in schools or on the side of a packet.

FabLittleBag's mission has always been two things at once: giving people a genuinely easy, hygienic way to bin rather than flush, and sparking the conversations that make that feel normal.

"I cannot do it on my own," says Martha. "We have to have a grassroots movement of conversation going on."

Periods in sport: no girl left on the sidelines

Martha is a proud Arsenal season ticket holder, so when Sports England research in 2022 showed a significant exodus of teenage girls from sport, with periods cited as a consistent factor, it hit close to home.

The response was the FabLittleBag coaches' bag: a first-aid kit for periods, designed to sit naturally in any sports kit bag. Black, discreet, and stocked with tampons, pads, and Fab Little Bags, it was created so that male coaches could feel comfortable holding it up and declaring its existence because if a girl needs to change behind a tree, at least she can do it with dignity and without the bin problem.

The Period Supportive movement in sport has since grown to include national sporting bodies, county clubs, and grassroots teams across football, rugby, cricket, tennis, hockey, volleyball, athletics, rowing, triathlon, and more.

"Periods must not be a barrier to participation in sport," says Martha. "There's no reason why they should be."

Meet the HyGeeni bag 2026 is its year

FabLittleBag began with Martha's own experience. The HyGeeni bag began with a customer called Ali, who got in touch because she used FabLittleBags to dispose of her catheters, but they were just slightly too small.

Martha's response? "Can we just meet? I'd like to understand."

That conversation opened up a whole world Martha hadn't known existed: people self-catheterising, managing stomas, dealing with male leaks all with no proper disposal solution, because product manufacturers focus on the product and rarely think about the "then what."

HyGeeni is the answer: a larger, one-hand-opening disposal bag that seals completely shut no smell, no leaking, no stress. It was designed for people who have had their world close in around them because of the anxiety of managing an ostomy or continence product in public.

At their first stoma conference, Martha was moved to tears. One woman pointed to her 7-year-old daughter and said simply: "Thank you. This makes school that little bit better."

"My silly little bag that seals up," Martha reflects, "is actually changing the life of a 7-year-old."

2026 is the year HyGeeni steps into the spotlight. Watch this space.

Martha's parting thoughts

Martha left listeners with two things:

If you have an idea that won't leave you alone, don't dismiss it. Improving something that already exists is just as valid as inventing from scratch. Find the support that's out there, think it through carefully, and know that naivety,her word,can be a genuine superpower for founders.

And if you're living with painful, heavy, or unmanageable periods: push for answers. Don't sit with undiagnosed endometriosis for years. Insist on seeing a specialist. You have that right.