How is it that despite so many years of tackling every nasty little gynaecological horror known to woman, gathering heaps of highly scientific info about hormones and cycles and unexpected pains, bumps, leakages, mood swings and those horrible headaches along the way ….. the first rumbling hints of the menopause take us completely by surprise?

You can go for years without even hearing about the misleadingly merry-sounding ‘Peri menopause’ until an idle google about those patchy periods and sudden rages – and WHAM!

Why are our friends not talking about this ALL THE TIME? I’ve had enough conspiratorial chats about periods, pregnancies and pelvic floors to cover several lifetimes but menopause, no. Nothing. Wasn’t even really sure what it was. Until it happened.

Is it because all the other stuff was horrible but had a point? A purpose? Yes your stomach feels like it’s being carved in two by a meat cleaver every 4 weeks and you’ve had to mop blood clots off toilets seats and watch your body crumple into mottled layers once the baby is out – but you were a female, very much a female, suffering in the same way as millions of others have before and will in the future.

It is your role and your reason. There is a complicit comfort in this unity of womanhood and womanliness that doesn’t quite work when everything begins to work in reverse.

Are we sort of..done with? As our ovaries shrivel and everything perceived as womanly hardens and melts our features into a kind of androgeny – midway between a sagging woman and dare I say it, a man?

Fear not. Once you finally start looking into this, and if you are like me, this means REALLY looking into this and getting rather cross. Not just becuase the hormones are making you cross but because you will not find the help you need from the medics, unless you are lucky enough to have a specialist at your surgery who actually cares and goes against NHS protocol and offers more than a bog standard box of pills and a sort of sympathetic smile.

I’ll do some posts about my struggles with this shortly. Subscribe and get in touch if you want a rant about this and my help on how to get through it…