International Menopause Day

Apparently today is World Menopause Day, and this year the International Menopause Society is focussing it's attention on the 'hot flushes and night sweats' that is one of the most common menopausal symptoms. And the wise and knowledgable ones will even be holding a world gathering in Cancun in 2014 ... who knew it was all so exciting.

Feeling distinctly less menopausal recently.

Photo from a celebration of International Waffle Day, which sounds a whole lot more fun to me:-)

Just funny

Getting wise

So one minute I'm kept in lengthy anticipation and the next it tries to catch me unawares, but I am wise to that now. Even the old 'I'm finished ... oh no I'm back' trick can't catch me out. It gives a whole new meaning to the trusty Scout motto of 'Be Prepared'. But mainly I've been trying not to worry too much about it all.

In contemplating a new role at work I was forced to consider that I have experienced a significant decline in my energy levels over the last six months or so, it's one of those very vague symptoms often attributed to the menopause and yet could have so many other explanations, mainly just plain old getting-on-a-bit maybe?

I did find a nice side to the story however on a link from The F Word (a feminist blog site), to an article about the improvement in your sex life that comes with age and experience. Also via The F word I found this brilliant site called Adventures in Menstruating, I never knew there were such aspects to the women's movement, it has opened up a whole new arena of activism. Their 'raison d'être' is defined thusly:

"We think menstruation is funny. This is why we write about it, talk about it and make up smutty jokes about it. Then we laugh. A lot. Why is menstruation funny? Um...for the same reasons a lot of other stuff is funny. It's a taboo subject - the shock of it all always gets a giggle right away and, immature or not, the gross-out factor is still fun. It's the new fart joke. You wait and see. Laughter is therapeutic - sometimes periods are a pain in the uterus. Observational humour ain't all bad, and that moment of recognition feels good. We like that shared experience thing. Comedy as subversion is addictive - once you start undermining those stereotypes and analysing the euphemisms, you just can't stop. Menstruation has historically, socially and culturally been cloaked in fear and shame. Deconstructing these beliefs, with brute force when necessary, is empowering. Oh yeah - all our stuff is for menstruators and non-menstruators."

men's troubles

The media tends to give the impression that it is only women who worry about getting and looking older and the 'problems' of ageing. It's easy to forget that men have hormones too (I think men forget it too). The group of men I was working alongside on Saturday morning were bemoaning the state of their hair ... or rather loss or lack of it. Although hair loss does seem to be an any-time-of-life issue rather than one restricted to middle age, it was just nice to know that, as well as the endless football conversations, they do also occasionally talk about their problems. Despite the fact that men do not get a male menopause in the same way as women, after all men can continue to produce children well into old age, they do still get hormone fluctuations causing many similar symptoms. Anyway, I decided not to share my recent tribulations with them, so I just made sympathetic noises.

welcome back?

69 days. Just when I was getting used to the idea, it's back, no apologies, no excuses. Waltzed right in and settled down as if it'd never been away. I tried ignoring it, hoping it would go away. I want it to leave again ... I mean, things will never be the same ... why doesn't it stop dithering around and just go. But it has this nasty nagging, insistent, persistent quality that won't leave you alone. All the pain and discomfort and none of the perks of fertility. This is really the trouble with this whole thing. You are neither one thing nor the other. It's a kind of no-woman's-land between abundant earth mother and wizened old hag.

Not welcome exactly, simply a return to normality.

I don't think I ever experienced the welcome relief that I know can follow the dread of a pregnancy scare ... because I was never scared of being pregnant. I was far too careful. Tediously so. I spent years wishing for the random accident of falling pregnant on the pill, because I was too afraid to risk doing it on purpose. I wanted the decision taken out of my hands so I didn't have to feel guilty and irresponsible.

Feeling wistful and nostalgic, ignore me.

the test

So Creature and I popped in to Quality Save and invested 89p on a pregnancy test this afternoon. I needed a lift, and we giggled round the shop and joked about her standing looking ashamed while I payed for it. I read the instructions very carefully, and find that menopause can cause unreliable results, but they don't say if that might be false positive or false negative. And also that all sorts of unpleasant other things, like breast cancer, can result in a false positive.

Thankfully the result was an unequivocal negative ... the little red line you can see shows that the test worked properly, and there would be a second line if you have a raised whatever hormone level.

It is now 53 days. My period came for half a day and then disappeared again. I think I needed to just do this to stop myself having silly thoughts about babies.

49 days

Just for the record.

When checking out symptoms the NHS site is the most reassuring, because in America it seems they get 34 different symptoms or even 44! I am so not looking forward to losing my teeth, hair and sex drive, but the idea of a burning tongue just sounds intriguing. It is almost funny it is so hysterical (no pun intended). I thought the medicalisation of childbirth was bad ... it seems the same thing goes for menopause.

Holding my breath

It's now been two and a half weeks.

I feel as if I am holding my breath, waiting to see what my body might do next.

It can't be trusted any more.

It feels like certainty and rhythm is gone, disrupted.

I watch myself for moodiness and irritation and feeling too warm.

It's making me moody and irritated and hot.

Then I remind myself it is June and it's meant to be warm at night.

Dreaming pyjamas

I had a very weird mixed up dream last night. The only strong image that I was left with was of Lewis. I was trying to pack and had all these pairs of pyjamas in different sizes, from toddler up to seven or eight year olds, all new and in packets, and even though he was standing there, he looked about four or five, I knew they were all useless and he would not fit any of them because he was grown up. It left me with an intense feeling of sadness, because he was big and I didn't need any more pyjamas for him. There was always something so lovely about cuddling a small child who is clean from a bath and dressed in fresh pyjamas. It is part of what I have gone through in the last few years ... missing the little people that they used to be, loving the people they are now, but still missing what we used to have.

The beginning of the end

Today my period is five days late, and since it is the first time in the last ten years when I can be absolutely sure I am not pregnant I am left to draw the conclusion that it is the beginning of the end. So in the spirit of something or other I thought I might record the experience of menopause right from the first inkling of change.

I am currently 47 and three months. I started menstruating the month before my 15th birthday (I know, I was a late developer), so that's been thirty two years and four months, excepting three pregnancies and the breastfeeding which stopped my cycles for 8 months with Lewis, about a year with the twins (for the record, that's Jacob and Thymian) and about a year with Mirinda (I think, not sure at all now I think about it because I fed her till she was two and a quarter but it definitely didn't stop that long).

It's kind of funny because for the years between being 40 and 45 I kept vaguely hoping to get pregnant again, at one point seriously enough to buy ovulation tests to try and figure out when my fertile period was. Although I continued to get a sense of disappointment each month it never turned into something obsessive or upsetting. I guess that by now I had reached an acceptance that that part of my life was done and I was too old to conceive again, but the whole menopause thing still felt a long way off. So when I failed to start bleeding last Thursday I was more confused than anything. I have been laid up in recovery from a minor op since my last period so I knew there was no way I was pregnant. It felt a little sad because it might have been nice to think, even for a day or two that I might be pregnant, if only to laugh with relief when I discover not.

Being utterly ignorant on the subject I decide to look up the symptoms of menopause. We've all heard rumours about the hot flushes but I think that comes much later. I mean I am assuming that they don't just stop dead one day, I assume there is some kind of warning. And I find that basically as the hormone levels start to drop your cycle will do all sorts of funny things: get shorter or longer, get heavier or lighter, miss months at random, and most significantly cause 'floods' and other unpleasant side effects. This is what confirmed it because I experienced my first flood last month, a very nasty experience, sharply painful cramps followed by a faintly humiliating uncontrollable rush of blood that I was not in a position to deal with.

So here I am, trying to kid myself that I am not that old. Being a parent has been the most important thing in my life ... is that sad, I'm not sure, far better than some mere job having that status I suppose. For a long time it was my self-definition. I feel melancholy, and nostalgic for the smell of a tiny baby and all the beautiful bits of parenting. Part of me wants to rage against my hormones for not letting me have one last bite of the cherry, but I have always vowed to grow old gracefully and if time is up then who am I to argue with nature.