Perimenopause. How it started.

First, RESOURCES for what perimenopause is:

A month after I turned 40 things started to change. I started waking up at night. Drenched in sweat. Confused. Convinced that somebody cranked the heat. I thought I was sick. I thought I must be having nightmares that I don’t remember when I wake up. It took a few weeks of waking up uncomfortable and cold. Then hot. Then freezing. Then so hot.

Then the weirdness crept into my work life.

Typically fairly unphased by student or university…challenges…(I taught and was the head of a university program at the time), I suddenly found myself bothered and either angry or almost in tears about the stupidest things. And then being upset about situation made me more irritated because I didn’t want to be so frustrated but ALL the feelings were flooding into me and OUT of me and it was SO STRONG.

I will always have to much gratitude for the women with offices next to mine. They are the type of women who support each other personally and professionally. Gracious. Genuine. Willing to share wisdom and lessons learned during the not so fun parts of life.

One particularly hard day when I was almost in tears I stopped in Joyce’s office to ask her if I was going crazy. I will always be grateful for her openness and understanding. She is the first person to tell me that it sounded to her like I was in the early stages of perimenopause.

Goodness gracious I didn’t even know what perimenopause was at the time.

Of course I had heard of menopause and I thought I knew that it was something that happened to women MUCH older than me. That day I learned that the feelings of panic that side-swiped me at the most random times of day, waking up completely soaked with sweat (and needing to change my clothes in the middle of the night – I started sleeping on towels so I wasn’t stuck with wet sheets), and intense – I mean INTENSE – waves of emotion were “normal”.

What I wasn’t ready to hear? Perimenopause can start early (in your 30s or early 40s) and can take 10 YEARS or MORE before your hormone levels are low enough for your menstrual cycle to actually stop long enough to be considered official “menopause”.

Official “menopause”? One year with no menstrual cycle.

Until then? You get to start skipping cycles. Maybe you’re late by just a day or two…or three…or a week or two… Then maybe you skip a month or so. After that you might have regular cycles again for some months, even a year.

Then, BAM, surprise HEAVY bleed-through-your-pants cycle A WEEK after finishing a week-long menstruation so you thought that you had at least three weeks until the next period hit but NOPE !…

…and you’re not prepared and have to ask your dance mom friend if they have a pad or tampon while you’re at an intense night of helping your 9-year-old into all TEN of her dance costumes in a crowded room with almost just as many hair changes…

…and being critiqued by the instructors so that you are ready for the upcoming competition and now you have period cramps and feel gross …

…and damn it you’re 45 years old and NOT new to dealing with your period but now you don’t even know your own body anymore and you just want to go home and clean up and crawl in bed but you can’t and it just SUCKS.

That’s not my only SURPRISE period moment. The second time happened about a year later. While on vacation.

At the Chicago Field Museum (insert face palm emoji). I caught the start of this “early” cycle sooner so not as awful, but still SO embarrassing to have to go around to all of the female guards and souvenir shop staff until I finally found one who had a quarter I could use to get a tampon out of the vending machine in the bathroom. I almost never carry cash and certainly not coins and there were no stores nearby or in the building that carried pads or tampons. Argh. Fun times.

I have so many things and could write for hours. For now I’ll stop, mostly because I need to get up early and get to the gym in the morning because I need to keep my muscles and bones strong (more on that in another post at a later date).

When did you first realized that you were experiencing perimenopause? Was it more gradual? Hit you like a ton of bricks?

Flashes of Change