Taking My First Steps into Perimenopause

And struggling with all the emotions that come with it

I got my period yesterday. You wouldn’t think that would be an event worth noting, except that it marked the end of a 12-day cycle. Yep, twelve days. Not even a full two weeks.

I wish I could say this is unusual but I’ve had two-week cycles more often than not over the past year.

It’s exhausting. I feel like I’m stuck in a cycle of bleeding and bloating over and over again. I still get the hormonal highs, thank god, but in the beginning of my cycle now…perhaps because there is no middle anymore. Am I even ovulating at this point? When do my ovaries have the time in 12 days? Or are they pushing out an egg every other week in a desperate attempt to get me pregnant?

I don’t know anymore.

I woke up yesterday feeling physically run down. I had cramps all morning — pretty bad ones — and I wondered if I was just having a rough ovulation. I do get cramps at that time, sometimes…though never quite so bad.

But by 11 o’clock, I’d discovered that I was bleeding. Again. Nine days after my last period ended.

After almost a year of completely unpredictable periods, seeing that blood sent me into an emotional sink hole. I couldn’t believe it. Are the days of my normal 26-day cycles over forever? Is this the end of the road?

I know that a woman’s cycle starts changing in her 40s. I know that perimenopause is the really, really long road leading to the huge transition of actual menopause.

And I can see that I’m on that road.

Most of the time, I’m okay with that. But sometimes, it hits me that my chances of carrying a child (a dream I had for most of my life) are probably nil. The likelihood that I could even get pregnant at my age and with my cycles like this, let alone carry that child to term, is negligible.

This is it.

As I stood in the kitchen yesterday, crying and bleeding and making myself tea, I realized how ridiculous my response is. Do you know how much I want to get pregnant at this stage in my life? I don’t. I really just don’t.

I don’t want to share my body anymore. I’m finally finding my way back into it for the first time since I was 12. I’m already struggling with hormonal shifts that sometimes knock the wind out of me. I don’t want to endure the hormonal shifts of pregnancy. And also…the thought of giving birth just seems goddamn perilous at this stage in my life. I get exhausted and terrified just thinking about it.

I don’t think I want to get pregnant anymore.

But…I did want it. I wanted it very badly at a certain stage in my life. And the one time I was pregnant — long before I was ready — was one of the most beautiful experiences I’ve ever had.

There’s something about the possibility of pregnancy that I cherish. The idea that I could have a baby if I wanted always felt so powerful to me. I need that hope.

As illogical as it sounds, saying goodbye to the Mother phase of my life even though I no longer feel so strongly pulled toward that role, is very, very sad for me. I don’t want to let go of the possibility that it could happen. That I could somehow achieve that dream that I had for so long to be a mother, to carry around a happy, kicking infant in my belly, to feel the primal power of the female body in the act of birth, to feed a baby from my breast, to raise a child who looked like me and my mother and my grandmothers and…

It feels devastating to let go of that. I cannot even put it into words the sorrow I feel when I try to wrap my mind around the reality of never getting pregnant, giving birth, or raising a child of my own body.

There’s something about the possibility of pregnancy that I cherish. The idea that I could have a baby if I wanted always felt so powerful to me.

And yet, I see the absurdity in this sorrow, having just stated how much I do not want to get pregnant.

A decade ago, it would’ve been my privilege to wrestle with car seats, wake up at 4 a.m. for a sick child, haul my brood off to school each day, endure their screaming and roughhousing after dinner, set aside my writing in order to spend time with them.

But today…am I more selfish? Or just tired? Because I don’t particularly want that.

I’m so grateful for the simple life that I have in which I am free to do what I want when I want. I can sleep a solid 8 hours without disruption. I can buy myself a treat at the end of the month because I don’t have to worry about the orthodontic bill. I can go to the grocery store at 8 p.m. when it’s nice and quiet there and not have a child screaming at me because they are hungry or bored or want me to buy a sugary cereal that I’ll happily purchase just to get them to calm down.

Why should I be sad to lose these things that I don’t particularly want anymore?

I think I am mourning the ghost of the life that I wanted. I am mourning the daughter I lost and the daughter I wish I had had. I am mourning the supportive partnership I so deeply wanted. I am mourning the house we would’ve lived in and the dogs who would have tracked mud throughout it.

And I am mourning the passing of a major part of my life: my life as a fertile woman. I’m passing into the third and final chapter. The Crone years (if you don’t mind the term — I don’t).

My life and body are changing, moving toward another ending and beginning. And damn, just like they said, it happened so quickly.

I shared my feelings with my sister yesterday. She, two years younger, said she understood. Her own body has changed remarkably in the 18 months since she turned 40.

“I have six kids,” she said, “and it still makes me sad to think of losing my fertility. To move out of this phase of my life. Raising babies was the happiest part of my life.”

I am mourning the passing of a major part of my life: my life as a fertile woman.

There was some comfort in that statement — that even if I had had children, I would probably still be sad to see the end of my fertility. For some reason, it didn’t occur to me that this is an emotional transition for all women, whether you had children or not.

“I think it’ll be great, though,” she added. “You know we’re gonna be badass crones.”

And I agree. I already fantasize about my journey to and through cronehood in which I will be freer and freer with every step to explore my own passions, my own preferences, my own needs. I can travel. I can sleep in. I can have sex in the middle of the day.

But I think it’s going to take some time to fully embrace this new phase of my life. I suspect that’s quite normal. Perhaps that’s why nature made it such a long process.

It’s a big fucking deal, after all.

I’ve already started making peace with my reality. I recently gave my old clothes and toys — the ones I was saving for my own daughter — to my nieces. What use was it sitting in a box in my garage?

I’ve started dreaming more about working remotely — like from Scotland or Denmark — for a few weeks at a time so I can see all the places on my (non-sexual) bucket list.

I think it’s going to take some time to fully embrace this new phase of my life.

I don’t often think about cribs and pacifiers and onesies anymore. If I want love and cuddles and milk-breathed babies, I just pop over to my sister’s house.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m ready to see the end of my cycle. That doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to the day I stop ovulating and stop bleeding. That doesn’t mean that I don’t grieve the loss of the daughter I wanted so badly or of the life I thought I would have.

It’s annoying, I’m sure, to other people. This vacillation between my acceptance of being childless and my sometimes downright panic about menopause. Younger women say, “If you want to have a baby, just have a damn baby.” Women my age say, “Why don’t you just adopt?”

It’s not quite that simple. I’m excited about this new phase in my life. And I’m not. I’m sorry, but both are true. And on any given day, one of those feelings might be truer than the other.

It’s not a yes. It’s not a no. It’s something in between because that’s where I am — the “in between.”