It just dawned on me today. I have no clue why I hadn't realized it before. But now all the pieces seem to fit nicely into that jumbled up 5000 piece puzzle that is my life. I have been trying to figure out what is with all of the tantrum pitching, screaming, arguing, fighting, crying and thumb-sucking for months and I was at a complete loss...until tonight.
So I pulled my thumb out of my mouth and wiped my tears, so that I could focus my eyes on the monitor and figure out why in the hell I'm no longer emotionally capable of dealing with these stinkin' kids (at least like I used to deal with them.) And you know what I found out? Oh, it isn't pretty.
I
Am
Perimenopausal.
OH! THE HUMANITY!
No, it's true. I'm stuck in that in-between stage where life has finally balanced itself and I'm an amazing, supermom, able to multi-task writing, cleaning, homework, cooking, shopping, scrubbing down the fingerprints (and friggin' footprints) off the walls and still manage to be showered and looking hot by the time the husband walks in the door.......and where your menses stops and you are labeled OLD.
I guess with most women it may be easier to diagnose (you know, as though it's ever easy to diagnose.) But see after my fifth baby (who was 10 lbs 5 ozs) they found thousands of little fibroids. Those were apparently the spawn of the Mutha Fibroid (henceforth known as MF) that was lodged with lots of little tiny veins at the back of my uterus. So, removing them surgically was too dangerous and I have issues with depo-provera so we decided that even though I was only 33, I'd gotten a whole lot of mileage out of that uterus and we had that sucker pulled out through my c-section scar, which, coincidentally, also had a lot of mileage. (We had it bronzed and put it next to the baby shoes on the mantle.)
Anywho, since I haven't had a period in more than ten years, menopause is totally NOT something that's on my mind. Except that for the last two or three years, I've been feeling really hot. Like, disgusting, fat, sweaty, guy wearing a snowsuit in Atlanta in August hot. In fact, most days while I'm on the computer, I totally feel like this:
So, I knew that I must totally be depressed or something so I did what any woman stuck in a foreign country with four teenagers in the house in the middle of the night would do. I Googled for self-diagnosis. But I think that this one is pretty spot on. Here's where I read perimenopause.
Actually, I already had an idea that I was going through this. However, what clicked in the so-called mind today was that PERIMENOPAUSAL WOMAN + THREE TEENAGERS + ONE ANGSTY PRETEEN = An awful lot of rampant hormones in my house.
And that's when I went out into the desert to dig a large but shallow grave to get rid of the teenagers.
NOT REALLY. But I did fantasize about it briefly. I digress.
So, what now? It's after midnight, so I'll probably just resume the fetal position and suck my thumb while I cry myself to sleep tonight. But I'll probably research some sort of herbal/natural remedies to help me just not give a shit anymore and go back to blowing off the sassy and angsty pubescent hormones. In the mean time, I have empty soda bottles full of water in the freezer and I'm not putting away my summer clothes for the winter. I'm just throwing a couple of cardigans into my closet for days when my body starts acting like it's got some damn sense.
They say that the average age for menopause for American women is 51. Guess I've got a few years to go.
But at least I understand what's happening to me and that I don't need to make that reservation at any mental health inpatient facilities just yet.
So I pulled my thumb out of my mouth and wiped my tears, so that I could focus my eyes on the monitor and figure out why in the hell I'm no longer emotionally capable of dealing with these stinkin' kids (at least like I used to deal with them.) And you know what I found out? Oh, it isn't pretty.
I
Am
Perimenopausal.
OH! THE HUMANITY!
No, it's true. I'm stuck in that in-between stage where life has finally balanced itself and I'm an amazing, supermom, able to multi-task writing, cleaning, homework, cooking, shopping, scrubbing down the fingerprints (and friggin' footprints) off the walls and still manage to be showered and looking hot by the time the husband walks in the door.......and where your menses stops and you are labeled OLD.
I guess with most women it may be easier to diagnose (you know, as though it's ever easy to diagnose.) But see after my fifth baby (who was 10 lbs 5 ozs) they found thousands of little fibroids. Those were apparently the spawn of the Mutha Fibroid (henceforth known as MF) that was lodged with lots of little tiny veins at the back of my uterus. So, removing them surgically was too dangerous and I have issues with depo-provera so we decided that even though I was only 33, I'd gotten a whole lot of mileage out of that uterus and we had that sucker pulled out through my c-section scar, which, coincidentally, also had a lot of mileage. (We had it bronzed and put it next to the baby shoes on the mantle.)
Anywho, since I haven't had a period in more than ten years, menopause is totally NOT something that's on my mind. Except that for the last two or three years, I've been feeling really hot. Like, disgusting, fat, sweaty, guy wearing a snowsuit in Atlanta in August hot. In fact, most days while I'm on the computer, I totally feel like this:
So, I knew that I must totally be depressed or something so I did what any woman stuck in a foreign country with four teenagers in the house in the middle of the night would do. I Googled for self-diagnosis. But I think that this one is pretty spot on. Here's where I read perimenopause.
Actually, I already had an idea that I was going through this. However, what clicked in the so-called mind today was that PERIMENOPAUSAL WOMAN + THREE TEENAGERS + ONE ANGSTY PRETEEN = An awful lot of rampant hormones in my house.
And that's when I went out into the desert to dig a large but shallow grave to get rid of the teenagers.
NOT REALLY. But I did fantasize about it briefly. I digress.
So, what now? It's after midnight, so I'll probably just resume the fetal position and suck my thumb while I cry myself to sleep tonight. But I'll probably research some sort of herbal/natural remedies to help me just not give a shit anymore and go back to blowing off the sassy and angsty pubescent hormones. In the mean time, I have empty soda bottles full of water in the freezer and I'm not putting away my summer clothes for the winter. I'm just throwing a couple of cardigans into my closet for days when my body starts acting like it's got some damn sense.
They say that the average age for menopause for American women is 51. Guess I've got a few years to go.
But at least I understand what's happening to me and that I don't need to make that reservation at any mental health inpatient facilities just yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment