After my first daughter was born, I kept waiting for things to go back to normal.
Naive, I know, but back then I thought that in three months or maybe six if necessary, I would start to feel like myself again.
And when that didn’t happen, I assumed quite logically that there must be something wonky happening with my hormones.
I was older, the word geriatric right there in the notes of my chart, after having a baby at 35. Naturally, like any modern woman would, I jumped to the conclusion (during one particularly delirious sleepless night scouring the internet) that birth must have kicked off the menopause pre-party a little early.
I made an appointment with my OB, a very nice young doctor, and told him directly and assuredly that I believed I was entering Perimenopause. “Why do you think that?” he asked. “Because it’s been five months and I hate my husband’s face,” I said. (This was actually something a friend had told me she was experiencing, and I remember feeling a sigh of relief - it wasn’t just me! And if it wasn’t just me, I had permission to admit this to a healthcare professional.) Truth be told, it was not just his face (he has the best face), but most people’s faces, most of the time, which I found intolerable. The only face I wanted to see was my daughter's. I kept this extra detail from my doctor (it seemed a bit damning). “Also,” I added, “I just feel horrible and exhausted most of the time.” He laughed, gently, but still he was chuckling, and this all felt pretty darn serious to me. “Must be nice,” I thought, “to find it all so funny.” You don’t have anything to worry about, do ya? He tried to calm me down with the old “you just need more sleep.” I was confused by this, “of course I needed more sleep,” I thought (doesn’t everyone).
It was not perimenopause; the blood work proved this.
Over the past eleven years, whenever I feel “strangely” exhausted, or have bouts of insomnia, gain ten pounds (inexplicably), or feel excessively sweaty or irritable, I think to myself, “it’s got to be the hormones, it’s definitely happening this time! If I’m in a really special mood, I think “maybe it’s cancer” because this just can’t be right.
The blood work still proves me otherwise, and my doctor says things are “all quite normal.” I definitely need more sleep, but doesn’t everyone?
When’s the last time you “felt like yourself”?