Menopause...

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I'm 48 years old now and I don't know if I'm supposed to be getting menopause yet. I don't know if I'm perimenopausal or anything. I mean are there any tell tale signs of it.

My cycle is the same as it always was. I'm regular and my period is the same as it has always been.

Is there an age when it has to happen. Would I know by now?

Can anyone tell me of their experiences of either themselves or family members.

I can remember hearing stories of menopause when I was younger but none of this seems to be happening with me.

Well, I'm too young for menopause, but judging from my mom...

The biggest sign was irregular periods. When I first started my period, mom always had her first day of menstruation 1-2 days before me (I've heard it's common for women/girls living together to sync up). It was handy, because I tended to forget and she'd remind me. But then she started to go out of sync with me - late periods, missing periods, etc. She also had hot flashes, but other than that I don't remember much symptoms. Eventually she stopped having periods at all, and around the same time the hot flashes stopped.

Not every woman has menopause at the same age. If you're still regular, you're probably someone who is slower to go into menopause.

Yeah thank you. I shouldn't really be worried about it but I get impatient.

I'll just relax about it and let it happen when it happens. It just thought it should be happening by now.

You can get your hormones checked, especially FSH, tested right after a period. If the level is high that means menopause is close. I'm 49 and still regular. I do feel that my hormones are lower than when I was younger. If you know when your mom had it you can have some idea.

My cycles remain regular, but they are definitely shorter and have heavier initial flow. I'm near 50. I have a color coded chart of my cycle lengths since there onset and they went from 26-36(!) days to 25-32 days to 24-30 days and now to 22(!)-28 days. I have two friends my age and both are also having shorter cycles with heavier flow. One has "skipped" a cycle (40- or 50-day cycle) twice in the past year and other has "skipped" 5-6 times in the past two years. I am expecting to have a "skip" cycle soon myself, but I am not holding my breath b/c my mom believes her side of the family had late menopause. I read an anthropology about menopause and it's a cultural experience as much as it is physical. For example, hot flashes are common enough in men and young women, but some cultures drum it up in older women while other cultures don't take much note. I haven't noticed hot flashes or increased agitation any more than before, just the shorter cycles and heavier initial flow. BTW - at first I thought a medical incident caused my short cycles, but I looked back and could see that it wasn't sudden, it had been slowly but steadily shortening over 35 years...

Yes the cycle length baffles me.

A few years ago I went down to a 21 day cycle and my flow was really light so I thought it must be perimenopause. However just recently I have gone back to a full 28 day cycle with a "normal" flow lasting 5-7 days with no cramps. I don't have hot flashes or mood swings or even a dry vagina. I'm also up to date with my cervical screening as well.

I suppose I'll just let nature take its course.

Thank you for your input guys and good luck with everything.

I have a hunch that no two perimenopause experiences are exactly the same. Some things may change quickly, others may sneak up on you--or away from you--and some "symptoms" may not occur at all. (FTR, I hate the way so many people talk about periods and menopause as if they're diseases. Yea, western medicine./s)

I'll be 54 next month.

In my case, I started having night sweats in my 40s (they stopped years ago) and it wasn't until I was in my early 50s that my actual schedule began to change--lighter spotting for 5 or 6 days some months, shorter heavy ones, or occasionally none at all. I was always extremely regular, so those few months were really weird. I have yet to experience hot flashes, but I swear I've had a few cold flashes. The cramps that only birth control pills had conquered in the past got MUCH worse for a few months in 2018 or so (laid up all weekend--thank heaven it didn't happen M-F!!) before they disappeared completely. I got really dry for a little while and my discharge became white, which concerned me a little until I learned it was normal--and not a yeast infection. Last year I went for 11 months without a period at all, then *bam.* I had a one-day period that mimicked all the qualities of a regular 4-ish day one, as if my pelvis had been sped up! I'm 11 months into a period-free zone again, so I'm hoping this time it's for real. I don't like the uncertainty and I'm ready to donate my surplus tampons!

I think it's important we stop treating women's biology as some shameful little secret, so I'm glad you asked. I hope I haven't shared too much.

It always surprises me when I hear women say that the menopause seems to be like a taboo subject.

I don't have much good to say about my upbringing but the one thing that I can say was a positive is that I seemed to be surrounded by women who talked quite openly about the menopause (or "the change" as they called it then).

I didn't actually know what they were on about back then. It was more like this mysterious thing that was happening to them where all of a sudden they would go bright red (hot flashes). I would watch captivated as they would go from white to bright red like a lobster and then they would talk about this thing and I knew it was something of great importance just by the way they would talk about it.

I always knew that this was a special thing that only happened to women as they got to a certain age and that one day it would happen to me.

It's never been something that I have been ashamed or embarrassed to talk about and it certainly is not a taboo subject either.