The symptoms were subtle at first. I had insomnia, my heart raced, I was speechless and sometimes said the wrong words. But within a few months it became undeniable. Immediately there were panic attacks, sobbing fits, and that forbidden emotion of middle-aged women: anger. Right after my 40th birthday, I bled for 10 days straight.
Trying to understand these changes, I repeatedly recalled my childhood memories. When I was eight years old, sitting on the orange shag carpet in my living room in Midwood, Brooklyn, my family gathered around a color TV and watched an episode of “All in the Family.” I was there. Archie Bunker was yelling at his wife Edith to make a “change” quickly. As I was trying to understand the plot, my parents laughed as if they understood. That was all my menopause education. But Edith looked like she was in her fifties, so as far as I could tell, she still had a full decade before she needed to “change.”
I called my gynecologist and prepared to explain this abnormality to her in order to convince her that I was abnormal. But the nurse interrupted me and added a new word to my glossary: menopause.
That was the moment I learned that before menopause there is an entirely separate, but somehow related hell called perimenopause. According to the nurse, this indicates that the estrogen in my body is starting to gradually decrease, “which, by the way, can last for years,” she added. She said those last words as if to indoctrinate me into an exclusive invite-only club. I was half expecting to get an ID card.
But I could read between the lines and what she was really saying was: This is when both your body and your mind begin to betray you. I called my girlfriend and after discussing it with her, I decided to give her the bad news.
“Did you know about this?” I asked, wondering if other people were also involved in this secret. I was met with silence. We were all deceived. No one told us.
When I was pregnant, other women bombarded me with advice. Probably because it was supposed to be a “fun” time and people wanted to share it too. But this was different. This was the dark side of women.
I started looking up phrases like “sex in my 40s,” “always angry at my family,” and “pain in my left breast.” Am I dead? ‘When that didn’t give me a satisfactory answer, I started meeting regularly with a naturopathic doctor, researched the benefits of essential oils, ditched vitamins and herbs like an addict, and started using hibiscus, primrose, and milk thistle. I became obsessed with “women’s” teas. , reminiscent of a beautiful blooming flower.
Five years have passed, my son is 44, our son is a teenager, we’re both starting to lean out with hormones spiking, my husband is having a mid-life crisis, and he’s considering letting go of his power equipment business. . And move us to Central America. I started locking my bedroom door. This was a big change that obviously pissed off the whole family, but in doing so, I created a little space for myself to think, breathe, and read for a few precious hours each night, and I was also able to use the increasing amount of air. I was able to adapt. Changes in my body: Longing for complete silence, new sensitivity to smells, dealing with things like sensory overload.
And then, as I began to embrace the autonomy I had craved for so long, a problem arose.
When I didn’t get my period the first time, I denied the possibility, but by the time my second period was due, I was cupping my breasts in the shower to check for pain, or feeling bloated. I started doing it. And after that, I looked at my naked profile in the mirror and looked for visible differences in my body. Was I glowing? I certainly wasn’t glowing.
Google wasn’t helpful. As if God, the universe, or some other divine force were involved in a conspiracy to derail every middle-aged woman, the symptoms of pregnancy are nearly identical to those of perimenopause, including weight gain, breast tenderness, and spotting. It turned out to be the same. I had everything.
My husband was painting the deck early one morning when I approached him with the news. I had been waiting for weeks, and my anxiety, which had always been creeping under the surface, was now becoming an uncontrollable beast. “I might be pregnant,” I blurted out. His brush stopped mid-stroke. I could see his unspoken thoughts floating like specks of pollen in the warm spring air.
“Well, I’ll figure it out,” he said, dipping his brush again.
During my first pregnancy, my tender uterus was labeled “high risk” and I lay in bed for five months. In addition to life-threatening complications for me and my baby, I suffered from both prenatal and postnatal depression that lasted for years. The odds were stacked against me now that at age 45 I could have what is uncomfortably called a “geriatric pregnancy.” Not to mention the logistics. Where will you leave your baby?
Two days later, when I could no longer put off the inevitable, I learned that the blood pressure medication I was taking was too harmful to my fetus to continue without consulting my doctor. . I sat on the bathroom floor early in the morning, squinting at the instructions. While the rest of the house is in a peaceful sleep, you take a pregnancy test. My hands tremble when I peel off the wrapping paper. Brace yourself and wait for the prescribed 3 minutes.
Over time, you wonder if you can summon even the slightest desire to care for a newborn. I get hot flashes in the middle of the night and wander blindly around my bedroom, stripping off my clothes and cursing the air conditioner. subarctic zone It’s not a temperature setting. Just the thought of waking up early from my hard-earned sleep gives me palpitations. I am on not one, but two medications for the following symptoms:do not be in the same room as these drugs, even if you are thinking of getting pregnant..
My friends and I started whispering about our “changes” in book clubs and writing groups and all-too-rare “mommy groups,” and soon we realized that this was a dirty secret we were hiding and that I I realized that we all go through life pretending to keep it together while we don’t recognize ourselves on the inside.
Now that it’s out in the open, my girlfriends are speaking more freely and extolling Botox, fillers, vibrators, and therapy as ways to empower themselves and cope with the past few years. I have no intention of abandoning this tribe of unashamedly honest women for a new relationship with young, lithe mothers who have an endless supply of collagen.
