12 things I wish I'd been told about the Big M

I was going to title this “For Women of a Certain Age” but I realised that that was making assumptions, and the one thing we've learned about assumptions in the reproductive health sense is that we cannot make them.

I'm writing this nervously too, knowing that anyone googling my real name (potential employers, for example) could in fact find themselves here, men or women.  I hope that the fact that I'm writing under a pseudonym, and that I'm writing about intimate women’s issues, will let them know this is not for them, and turn them away now.  NOW!  Because this is a warning of TMI (Too Much Information) for pretty much everyone.  When I tell my husband what I'm about to tell you, he covers his ears and makes loud noises.  So hopefully, that warning will turn anyone else away too.  Though my husband isn't usually so lucky, as my response is “if I have to live it, you at least have to hear about it!”   These are things women share, privately, in the kitchens during dinner parties, or in cafes, or on the driveway after lunch, or in the bathrooms at work amongst other women of or approaching a certain age.  These are not things we share with men.  They know it happens.  But they don’t really want to know.  Consider yourself warned.

I know this isn't a No Kidding related post.  But I feel it sits better here, in a community that is predominantly women, that is knowledgeable about our reproductive systems, and that is accustomed to talking about things that are generally considered to be TMI.

Twelve things I wish someone had told me about the lead up to menopause:

1. Men don’t understand what you’re going through.  They’ll have a rough idea, based on general knowledge and bad jokes on American TV sitcoms.  And the truth is, they don’t want to know what you’re going through.  I try to tell my husband some of the TMI details, and he covers his ears and makes loud signs.  My response is “if I have to live it, you have to hear it.”  Don't get me wrong, he is sympathetic.  But until it happened to me, he had no idea.  And would rather not know.
   
   
2. Weight will arrive.  It will sneak up on you, and it is difficult to shift, even though I exercise regularly at the gym.  I always thought that was a cliché.  Um.  No, it’s not.  Don’t let it sneak up, and don’t assume you will be able to get rid of it in the way you did even a few years ago.
   
   
3. Emotions will go up and down like a yo-yo.  Again, because you’re feeling them, they sneak up and don't seem so unusual.  I - finally - managed to recognise the mood changes, and reel them in a little.  Fortunately, this aspect seems to have abated recently.  All I’ll say is that my husband’s a saint.  (Shh.  Sometimes.  Don’t tell him.)
   
   
4. Our reproductive parts, having already caused many of us such grief, might just quietly go to sleep and turn out the lights without a word.  But equally, as a dear friend commented to me recently, some of us might find that our parts are not dying down quietly, they're going out screaming. Loudly.
   
   
5. And this is the thing no-one ever tells you.  Well, no-one ever told me.  I wish women were warned, because I have tolerated this for too long.  I have been dealing with regular chainsaw massacre-like events.  The nine hour flight to Singapore was no fun, and I was nervous for weeks in advance that on our South African safari the lions would smell blood and attack!  (Fortunately, for once, timing was on my side and attacks were averted.)  Having googled a little, I tolerated this because I thought it was normal.  It is common.  But it is not necessarily normal.  And there are degrees.  So talk to your doctor, because …
   
   
6. There is medication that can reduce the carnage, and make your life more tolerable.   Actually, this is relevant for anyone, no matter what age, who might be similarly inflicted.  I am going to talk to my niece about it.  I don't think she knows.
   
   
7. Living in a hot climate might help.  When I was in Qatar and Jordan last year, at 40-plus Celsius, I didn't even notice if I was having hot flushes.  (OK, that’s not a serious one, but it was good not to notice them!) There are degrees of hot flushes too.  Sometimes they're just a gentle flush of heat.  Other times, it feels as if you're suddenly thrust into a sauna.
   
   
8. They estimate that up to 80% of women have fibroids by the time they reach menopause. Many women have them, but as they have no symptoms, they're not even aware of it. Fibroids can cause major problems - heavy bleeding, pain, frequent urination, etc.  We've all heard of the stories of people growing huge basketball-size fibroids.  But what I didn't know was that even one or two can do a lot of damage.  And they grow and multiply quickly in those last ten years before the Big M. That pregnant-looking belly may not just be down to mid-life weight gain.
   
   
9. Most importantly, if I was back in my early 40s now, I would do things differently.  In particular, I would get my FSH checked every year or two, to see where I was in the process.  I would certainly get it checked if I noticed disturbing changes.  Why didn't I? Because I didn't realise that it would help me know if my symptoms are normal, or whether further investigations are necessary.  My gynaecologist said that my FSH indicates that everything should be over by now.  Yet, up until about six months ago, I was still reasonably regular.  But apparently that wasn't normal.
   
   
10. Talking is good.  In fact, talk to your older female friends, your mother, your aunts, older sisters.  Find out what was normal for them, so you get an idea about what might or might not happen. Some of them will tell you just to wait and it will be over.  Don't listen to them.  Talk to your doctor instead.  It might be the case that you can just wait.  It might not.  (Not, in my case it turns out).
    
    
11. Listen to women who are going through this, understand, empathise, and learn.  But please don’t compare your own sterling health/regularity with theirs, even if you want to be over it too.  (I'm not sure if I did this myself or not, but I wish I'd thought about it).  If you’re not having difficulties, don't be pleased with yourself.  I've had a number of people do this and it makes me feel broken and judged and old before my time (even though it is not, apparently, "before my time") all over again.  (One woman's comments - about how "normal" (or the implication being, exceptional) she was because everything was continuing without change at a couple of years older than me - took me right back to the dinner table conversation we had had years ago when she and her husband were asking about my ectopic pregnancy, and he said proudly, smugly even, "my wife, she has no problems.")  The best reaction was from a friend who said "I want to hear it all.  I'm following you in a year or two, and want to be prepared."  She may not have any issues (she's not that much younger than me, and so far so good).  But she listened.
    
    
12. Remember that ultimately, it’s just another transition in life.  One I was not looking forward to, but one I realise now is no big deal.  One that will give us more freedom than we, as women, have ever had.  Think about that freedom, what it means, what we've put up for months, years, decades, and what we can - when we’re ready - cast aside, both physically and emotionally.  It is not an end, it is a beginning. I am now ready, and I am welcoming it. Nothing is ever simple though.  Changes for me, it seems, will come surgically next month. To be honest, I can't wait.

Staying young

“My kids keep me young” - a comment I have often heard from parents.  It is a comment that makes me cringe, that smug implication that a parent is by definition more youthful than me, that assumption that I am old before my time, that I can't relate to the youth of today, because I am not a parent.  It’s a comment we have probably all heard, and I know that those of us without kids have often wondered, and sometimes blogged, whether not having kids has either prematurely aged us, or at least prevented us from keeping up with "kids these days."

As I mentioned in a previous post, over the last month or two I have had my 21 year old niece (and her cousin who is around the same age), staying with us for a few days here, a few days there, as she’s been exploring the country of her birth.  We’ve always been close, and can pretty much talk about anything.  So having her in the country for so long has been a joy to me.

I was thinking about our relationship, and realised that maybe I am able to relate to her in ways the mothers of my generation* might not be able to relate to their daughters, simply because they have that generational mother-daughter relationship, a relationship full of responsibility, of power and authority (whether intentional or not), of duty and guilt, of role behaviours, of punishment and reward.  Whereas our relationship is, I like to think, much more that of two people who have decided they like each other.  We don't slot into generational roles. We talk openly about life and aspirations, and about things that she feels unable to share with her parents.  Seeing her off at the airport the other day, I joked about “our generation.”  And she corrected me –whilst I’m the same generation as her parents, she doesn't include us in the generational stereotypes she applies to her parents.  She feels we understand her and, I think, the world she lives in.  (Which is not to say she doesn't think we're ancient! She is 21 after all.)  Or at least, I think she feels we make an effort to understand her.  And she knows I don’t have any judgements or expectations of her behaviour, and that I’m there for her, to support her, in whatever she decides to do in the future.  All I want for her is for her to be happy.  I don’t have any “standards of success” she has to live up to. She doesn’t have to worry about disappointing me, in the way she might fear disappointing her parents.   Our relationship simply doesn't have that "parent filter."  And so it feels more equal.  Age doesn't come into it.

And when I think about my own lifestyle, without children, I realise that I don’t live my life any differently now than when I did when I was 30.  We keep up with technology because it is something my husband and I are interested in.  And we don’t have children to rely on to reprogramme the TV, or fix the laptop, or set up the iPad, like some of my friends whose knowledge of technology has stalled since they had children.  We have to do it ourselves, or not at all.  And “not at all” is not an option for us.  Likewise we stay aware of modern music – I work out at a gym and see the music videos on the big screen as I sweat; we keep up with all the modern movies and TV programmes (OK, we might not have known who Shaun the Sheep was until my sister/niece introduced us, but I can live with that as I chuckle away at Glee or The Big Bang Theory); and we try to remain very aware of the world.  It is an attitudinal thing – not having children has nothing to do with staying current, being aware of modern society, or enthusiastically embracing new technology.  In fact, not having children is a great motivator to stay current.  Because if we don't, we have no-one to drag us back into the 21st century.  

But having a 21 year old around has also made me feel very old. Explaining (as I mentioned in a previous post) to her that 1998 was not the dark ages in terms of social policy, and trying to get her to understand that in many ways I fear that young woman have less freedom now than I did in the 1980s or 90s, has made me feel positively ancient.  Try telling a 21 year old that 15 years is not a long time, let alone getting her to understand that the 1980s were relatively recent!  I've felt very middle-aged; I feel as if I’ve aged 10 years in just the last two weeks.  In ways, it has been a rude awakening.  Is this how my friends with kids feel? Without children around, I don’t have that constant reminder that I am no longer young (until I look in the mirror, that is).  I don’t have the label “mother of adult children” or even scarier, “grandmother” as some of my circle have already.  I don’t look at my children and remember them as babies or their first day of school, and feel the intervening years.  I don't feel the passing of time in that way.  I just feel the way I feel, as old or as young as I feel on any given day. I feel just like I did when I was 30.  And that is quite liberating.

* I know this is a gross generalisation, and I can think of at least one friend (also a blog reader) who seems to have a very candid relationship with her daughter (of the same age as my niece).

Grey lives of continual sadness

It is surprising how one simple blog post can raise so many issues for me.  The exchanges and issues raised as a result of Mel’s post about Befana reaffirmed for me why I love blogging.  We were all able to have a dialogue across posts and in comment sections, coming from very different perspectives, often agreeing and sometimes disagreeing.  I completely agreed with Mel’s approach to the punishment/reward attitude towards infertility.  It is something that is so hard to deal with at times, especially when you are one of the ones who were never "blessed."  I found support and understanding amongst some of the commenters on Stirrup Queens who shared their thoughts on the use of this word.  I won’t go on about this, the worthy/reward/punishment issues,  because I’ve written about them before, in many different posts, but perhaps particularly when trying to address the question “Why?”

But we’re not a one-opinion group and we all see things from different perspectives.  And this is evident by Mel’s comment that she was  "not too concerned that (her daughter) believes that all people without children live grey lives filled with continual sadness."  (And yes I understand that this was perhaps in comparison with the more sinister punishment/reward issue.  This is in no way a criticism of Mel,who has always included the No Kids group in her community.  It is really more a case of me going through a thought process from a different point of view).

I guess, being without kids, we find ourselves so often stuck in the middle - we want and seek empathy for our losses, for what we can’t have that so many take for granted, but equally we don't want pity. The thought that people think we live grey lives filled with continual sadness hurts.  And it hurts because we know that people do think this.  And perhaps it hurts here particularly because we know that the others in the the ALI community, those either celebrating (sometimes smugly) that they managed to get their children, or those still praying that they don’t end up like us, probably lead the bunch in assuming that we live lives filled with continual sadness.  After all, they’ve been through the fears we’ve been through.  They’ve endured sadness and loss and fear of their own.  They recognise that we have endured a loss.  As the no kidding amongst us often say, we know that we are the their worst nightmares.  We know therefore that there are those amongst them who must think we live grey lives filled with continual sadness.  And of course, there is the general population, who tend to believe that our lives are sad and unfulfilled and selfish if we don’t have children.  And if people feel this way, then they are pitying or judging us.  They are unable to see that in time we are able to walk in the sun again.  That we can still make valuable contributions to society.  That happiness does not equal children.  But it means too that we are often left walking this path alone.  

And so once again, I put this out there to reinforce the fact that society in general needs to stop making so many assumptions about what we must have to be happy.  The perfect job, the big house and the fancy cars are not important to me, but I know that there are plenty of people who think that if we have that, we should be happy.  I have a brother-in-law who once told me that his definition of success = money.  (I laugh at that now, and feel quite sad for him that his definition of success is so narrow.)  And there is of course the general assumption that to be happy, we must also have the perfect partner, and 2.2 kids.  But I’ve met plenty of people with the “perfect” partner and 2 kids, who have been miserable inside.  I think we all know, people are happy and fulfilled living a wide variety of lifestyles.  Recognition of that, furthering awareness of the reality of our lives, and acceptance of people who take different paths, is one of the reasons I blog.

Regular women: a follow-up

Conversation about the use of the term regular women got me thinking. First, it became evident that the description regular woman had at least two interpretations.  One was that it simply meant a woman (ie normal human) compared to a witch. This is perhaps what young ChickieNob meant.  After all, wise as she is, she is only eight! 

The second interpretation was my assumption that it was assumed that a regular woman was one with children. I find it interesting that my mind still automatically went to the “regular woman = woman with children” interpretation, with the other side of the equation obviously that those of us without children are irregular, abnormal even. Why did I automatically think this?  Well, first because I’m not eight and don’t believe in witches!  

The fact that I immediately went to this interpretation seems to bely my own insistence that I see myself as a regular woman.  Perhaps I don’t.  After all, too often I have discovered that the way we interpret others’ comments is often the way we think about those issues ourselves.  I see it often – the slights we see mirror our own darkest thoughts and biggest fears.  

Do I think I’m a regular woman?  I’m not sure now.  But I know that I want to think of myself and all my readers without kids as regular women.  Because if we think of ourselves as regular women, then hopefully others will be able to do so too.  And if that ever happens, then we’ll no longer feel quite so isolated, quite so irregular, so abnormal, so different.  And I have a very strong desire to be freed of that stigma, of that ostracism.  I have a strong desire to feel accepted and legitimate.  Perhaps that’s why the words struck me so strongly.

Nature/nurture and general ignorance

Mel's post prompted me to think about how other people view adoption.  On the one hand, we are barraged with comments along the lines of "just adopt."  On the other hand, we have people who make judgements and view children and relationships differently if they know they are adopted.  I suspect there are family members who feel that way about donor eggs too.  I wrote this post in 2009, and think it's worth repeating here.  I'll have more to say at the end.  Here it is:

Over the last few months, I’ve found myself frustrated over comments from people about members of their family. They have used family with quotation marks – “family” because they have included people in it who have been adopted. (Spouses were also not included as “family” but that in itself has not bothered me). Every conversation about the wider family has included a variation on the phrase “but of course don’t forget that J and D are adopted.”   I know that these people have strong feelings about this, and have included provision in their will for grandchildren “of natural issue” only.

It brought me to that age old question, what makes a family? Is it the years spent together, the shared experiences, love, arguments, traditions? Remembering the Christmases when Uncle Robin drank too much, or Auntie Evelyn’s beautifully-iced Christmas cake, or Yvonne and James wrestling, or the games of French Cricket on the lawn? Or is it simply the shared blood, the shared DNA, that ties us? The fact that we can look around and see that we share the Rose hips, or the R noses, or that I see my mouth on my nieces’ faces.

And how important is that blood? It is only important in consciousness. If you know that someone doesn’t share your DNA, do you look at them differently, in that awareness? If you are not aware of the lack of any genetic connections, wouldn’t you love them as deeply? Don’t people manage to find or imagine physical or emotional similarities to ensure they’re included in the family? Aren’t family trees full of children who don’t have the fathers that are recorded or assumed, coming from different blood? Or these days, family trees will include children from donor eggs or sperm, whose genetic links are to another family tree entirely, but who have been loved and raised through this one, whether the wider family is aware or not that they don’t share DNA? Aren’t, too, family trees empty of those who should be there, the children who are lost to that branch, unacknowledged because of indiscretions, shame and stigma, or simply lack of knowledge of their existence?  So why should these blood connections seem to be so important? And why do I mind so much that they are?

I suspect that this has hit me hard on a personal level, because our particular branch of the family tree ends with us. Adoption or other alternatives were always a possibility for us, not having any children of “natural issue.” I am furious at the thought that if I had adopted, people would view my children differently to those of my sisters, or of my husband’s brothers. The fact that they would be seen as second class citizens, not true members of the family. Would they feel the difference? Would it scar them? It makes me wonder whether child J and D, mentioned in the first paragraph, are aware of how some members of their family see them. I hope upon hope that they are not.

So why is it that I still flinch when I think of the bare, lonely branch on a family tree that ends with my husband and I? Why should it matter? Whilst I mostly feel accepting of my life without children, of my death and beyond, it does annoy me that this still has emotional power over me. Is it the desire for some form of immortality that makes blood so important? And isn’t that based on a deep-seated fear of being forgotten, a fear of ending? And isn’t that based on a feeling that you have not been enough in this life? Done enough? Been loved enough and loved enough right back? Is it based on a fear that we have not made a difference in someone’s life? Or that we have not changed the world after all?

Perhaps I just need to get over myself. We all need to get over ourselves. Simply being here has changed the world, and made it a better place. A kind word can make all the difference to the right person on the right day. Delight in someone’s writing, their work, their smile, their garden. Loving and being loved, whether by family or friends, near or far. These are not unimportant things. They should be, and are, enough.

The person I referred to in that post is my father-in-law.  Yes, I obviously harbour a deep resentment towards him as a result of these comments!  The ridiculous thing is that he is so ignorant of reproductive technologies that there are some grandchildren who could easily be the wonderful result of IVF or donor egg/sperm.  I don't know, and as I said here, it's not my business.  He loves them (as do I) - they are good students, very active, athletically-talented, and fun kids.  Everything he wants in grandchildren.  And that's all that matters.