Older women and how they remember the menopause

[TroubledRabbit]

Just been chatting to my lovely, trained as a nurse, mil whose daughter is struggling with cancer treatment. Apparently she's struggling to sleep and I said, 'it must be hard with separating side effects from the menopause'

Quick as a flash, MIL declared she, herself, had no symptoms and sailed through so it was unlikely to be that.

I've been with DH a long time, Mil was 55 when I met her and a bit broken, not much fun, understandably weighed down by the previous ten years of high need elderly parents, teens and working.

DH remembers her debilitating migraines. her lack of humour in those days.
Since retirement she's fitter, more relaxed and good company.

Any thoughts?
Is this just simply as we age we don't want to think of our chubby toddlers as middle aged, starting to sag adults?
Has mil got such a firm grasp of the Grip that carried her through that tough decade that she cant, even now, put it down?
My own menopause, not discussed with mil, has been such a nightmare that I'm intrigued that the quick answer was 'sailed through'.

Ha ha I'm getting really annoyed at this thread and then have to ask is that because I'm menopausal?!

I do know that women in their 40s or thereabouts carry the whole fucking world. Small children, teenagers, elderly parents, work, feeding everybody, suddenly becoming invisible and realising that society only valued them for how sexy they were when they were younger and how efficient they are at bloody everything now they're older and have had a lifetime of making sure everyone else is all right.

I don't claim to be 'sailing through' menopause but it's kind of a coincidence that being in your 40s is bloody shit as well.

I remember my mother having a difficult menopause back in the 1950s. She talked about it, other people talked about it, women understood the symptoms all too well. My mother worked full time as did many of my friends' mothers. There are so many ridiculous sterotypes about previous generations of women on here.

Im 65 and my sister 62. We were both dreading the menopause because our mother had a terrible time. She was still on HRT in her 70s. It was a relief that all we ever had were a few hot flushes.

It's difficult- for me, stress has always manifested as insomnia, since school, so experiencing it now could be menopausal, or it might just be not coping with some work stuff well. Plus brain fog is a natural consequence of lack of sleep. Also, anxiety, depression and so on, could be a natural and rational reaction to living in a crap world - covid, Ukraine, cost of living, climate change etc. Plus many of us will have personal stresses around children, elderly parents, relationship, work, housing, finance, health...

Physical symptoms like periods becoming totally unpredictable are part of peri, I'm sure. But achy joints? My ankles have always been problematic since bad sprains in my 20s, so I can't be sure. I just do yoga most days to try and keep flexible. And unless I start taking HRT and find that makes a difference, I'm probably not going to know.

And the reason for mentioning all that, is because earlier generations wouldn't have had the option of HRT, and so wouldn't have necessarily been able to pin particular symptoms on perimenopause, especially as it wasn't openly talked about.

My DM was on HRT but she was so horrible throughout my life I don't think it was the menopause.

I was fine initially and then it all went wrong. I'm now on HRT and feel like my old self.

@EBearhug why do you say menopause symptoms were not talked about? It is true that the "change of life" was the common phrase used in my experience of discussions in the 1950s but that doesn't mean it wasn't talked about. A male dominated medical profession would not have had much to offer in terms of support or medication, but women privately supporting other women was perhaps more common as a result.

'Change of life' that's definitely one of the phrases used. And 'sailed through it' also comes up regularly, not muddled through or I lost a decade.

I love Mumsnet, I came here in 2003 trying to work out what baby stuff was essential, what was just marketing. Now I'm here, wading through the menopause, supporting teens, friends, sils, etc women have always talked, always worked, always got on with life.

I think the annacdote is important, the memory of individuals. The specialist Menopause Forums are pulling in funding and cohorts for proper rigerous research, giving us the data to back up the hunches that come from listening to different groups in different places.

With more women in academia, we'll get more 'facts' , more 85% of working age women were employed outside the home in 1865 type facts but it will always need the individual stories to flesh that out.

You can barely turn on the TV or radio or open a newspaper or go online these days without an article about menopause. Plus one of my relations, born around 1920, didn't have the vocabulary to describe her symptoms when she got uterine cancer, and she was an educated woman who had a degree and seven children, so I don't think veiled references to "the change" (or "the curse") is quite the same as the knowledge we have these days.

Apart from a few soaking night sweats, I can honestly say I more or less sailed through it. Evidently I was very lucky.

One of the strongest parts of the feminist groups I was part of in the 70s was the emphasis on sisterhood and understanding the experiences of older generations of women. I sometimes think from what I read that those values have been lost more recently. Is that true do you think?

Yeah, am sick to death about every ailment past mid forties being blamed on the menopause. Am also fed up with the shite being peddled on TikTok and Insta that past forty, you should just expect everything to fall apart.

Here's my hypothesis @HilaryThorpe and I've just seen the Crucible at the National so it will be influenced.

I think women have always confided within their generation - information about abortion, health, etc
But at different times, less across generations. Partly because of an age old distrust of older women (witches) , partly because of fear of being politically or through religion out of step (eg China in the Mao years ) UK 70s feminism did try and shake things up.

My mum says her mother, rural upbringing, religious in a social rather than belief way would never talk about periods or sex, left her to gather information from friends or Marie Stopes.

Both my DM and Nan think they sailed through. Really everyone else had to adapt to their increased anxiety. Nans manifested in a blunt refusal to engage with anyone in the medical profession and to make her world smaller, she died prematurely of late diagnosed cancer, DM gave up work and became entirely dependent on her husband in her 50s and now has early onset dementia. I don’t have the luxury of “sailing through” I have too many responsibilities now, I chose HRT.

Older women who say they sailed through but are developing dementia and osteoporosis really didn’t. I hope younger generations demand HRT to avoid this fate.

I think we're all bored of that @Mojoj. I'm incandescent that the last two GPS I've talked to have mentioned Davina's blasted programme rather than the NICE guidelines.
But I think the pendulum is doing a necessarily large swing because the bottom line is, there's a complete lack of research.

Here's my favourite research fact, the guidance for drinking during pregnancy in 2007 was based on a small study of pregnant Glaswegian alcoholics who were drinking a minimum of a litre of spirits a day. How can you advise women about a glass of champagne or a G&T whilst breast feeding if that's your only study at the time.

As a fiftyish woman the narrative that if I am bad tempered or get headaches, then that must be due to menopause, is rather insulting and sexist too.

I totally agree.

(sorry Davina if your reading, love your menopause work, just sorry you've become the headliner. I like the way you acknowledge the shoulders you stand on)

My late DM said she sailed through. Tbh she had awful heavy periods so I can see it would’ve been a relief.
I think the experience differs for everyone, surely. I’ve never had a hot flush but I have other symptoms. HRT to be started soon.

I was done and dusted at 45 but remember hot flushes, especially at night when the bed would still be scorching when I got back into it after hopping out to the bathroom. I didn't have any other manifestations, thank goodness, mainly because I walk a lot and spend a lot of time outside. My sister had a similar experience.

I also started periods at ten and a half, short cycle and very heavy and painful. Menopause is a cause for celebration for me.

I was put on estrogen blocker after breast cancer - OMG I was suicidal du to the Alzheimer’s I was convinced I’d developed. Didn’t want to inflict years of care home visits on my DC.
turns out it was the medication.
I’ve also recently heard several women acquaintances in their late 40s talk about their health problems -anxiety etc.
Some people suffer menopause problems some don’t - but a fall in estrogen can definitely cause symptoms.

Old people forget these things. My father recently said that he didn't see the problem with boarding schools, never did him any harm. I then reminded him of how awful he said it was, how he never forgave his mother for sending him and how he refused to send me to one when my mother wanted rid of me! "Oh, yes."

I think some women do sail through it. Many like me have horrendous times (I went into early menopause aged 37 due to autoimmune issues, I’m 42 now and have been on HRT since). However, I do think we know a lot more about symptoms of menopause compared to older generations - they often tend to just think of hot flushes and periods when actually there is so much more to it than that. I think my Mum would be one of those who said she sailed through it and actually she had dry skin, dry mouth, dry eyes , terrible anxiety, insomnia etc - all symptoms of menopause.

I think you are right about talking to older generations TroubledRabbit. You could talk to your own generation, but in the end you could not do much about it because there were no treatments and you just had to get on with it. My grandmother (born 1880s) and her five sisters all lost at least one of their children. That was the state of medical knowledge. HRT eventually arrived for menopausal women, but had a bad press and was then discouraged because of dodgy research. Women today are not better informed because they are more intelligent or have different attitudes; they just have more medical options available.

I also think comparatively speaking I had an easy menopause. A few hot flushes but not debilitating, warm at night for a couple of years and anxiety in the night (but I had a dad with Alzheimer’s and a dependent mum).

That was it.

DH might say I was difficult to live with, but I didn’t find myself difficult 😉