-
Transition
This weekend I started getting those almost certain signs that my period was imminent, a mere nineteen days after the last one began. That cycle had been nineteen days too, so it was a bit disconcerting to think I’d be spending half of every month in the middle of a period. I had thought that my cycles were alternating between a short one and a nearly average length one, but upon reviewing notes I’d made I found that they have, in fact, been getting shorter as the year has progressed. So it seems pretty likely that I’m going through quite a few anovulatory cycles these days.
I’ve glanced through library books about the perimenopause in the past but nothing really shouted out that this was me. That’s not to say I wasn’t experiencing some of the signs but there was nothing that really felt like it was a change. I guess some of it has been happening so gradually over the years that it’s just a part of passing through the years for me, which makes sense when one considers the constants transitions throughout our lives no matter what age. But I do think I am on the brink of reaching the “thick of it”, so to speak.
I did some online research on perimenopause and it finally dawned on me that what I was reading and what I am starting to experience is exactly what is commonly referred to as menopause. It’s just been renamed a bit more appropriately than in the past. Here I’d been thinking this was yet another catch phrase stage for women to experience. I can only use as my excuse the fact that my brain function isn’t so great these days, one of those actual symptoms of perimenopause.
-
Irregular
I find it very disconcerting that as I am growing older, my menstrual cycles are becoming shorter and shorter. I’ve noticed the following patterns over the course of my menstruating years.
1) Puberty/teen years-I don’t think I kept close track on how long my cycles were back then so it’s hard to see any particular pattern then.
2) Young adulthood, before pregnancy/kids-My cycles ran fairly long, usually 26-35 days and never a consistent length. I hated not knowing when to expect my period then. In hindsight, I at least didn’t have to go through it as often as many women.
3) Post-pregnancy years-My cycles suddenly were closer to the typical cycle, lasting around 28 days, on average. The only exception was after the second pregnancy which ended in second trimester. Those cycles were pretty irregular along with menorrhagia that continued until I became pregnant the third time. My theory for these years is that I was breastfeeding through many of those years and that helped regulate my cycles.
4)Long past pregnancy years-In the last three or four years, my cycles have returned to irregular ones but now tend towards shorter cycles that run anywhere from 19 days (this month) to 29 days. Going only on a hunch, I seem to alternate between a very short cycle and a closer to normal length cycle. I’m not quite sure what to make of that, but it’s interesting.