I was in my mid-thirties when symptoms started. I didn’t know it then because perimenopause wasn’t even on my radar. I was in my thirties still.
Insomnia was the first sign. I could no longer stay asleep and I would wake up after 5-6 hours every night. My eyes then started to get dry and itchy all the time. Little by little each year other symptoms began to show up. Things like heartburn, constipation, hemorrhoids, extreme fatigue, even drier skin than I already had. I attributed it all to just getting older. I was becoming the age that these things started showing up after all.
Around 38yo my period became very irregular. I used to have a reliable 28 day cycle every period for my whole life, give or take a day or sometimes two. But it started being really unpredictable. One cycle might be 20 days, the next 52 days, the next 38 days. I started getting hot flashes. I got pregnant and had a baby at 39. I’m now about to be 41 next month. I’m pretty much done breastfeeding but my vagina is drier than the Sahara still. So dry that’s it’s itchy and almost painful. My face fell off a cliff and overnight I feel like I aged a decade.
I always assumed menopause would be a few years long process around age 50. Nobody told me that it would start subtly and last a long time and snatch the rest of my youth from me way before I was ready. This shit sucks.