If you had heavy or painful periods as a teen

[BresciaBike]

did they ease as you got older? My interpretation of heavy is changing sanitary products in a couple of hours and painful as in prescription pain relief + heat (+ exercise ha!) barely relieving the pain, struggling to function or concentrate on simple tasks.

Have issues with my IUS and don't fancy continuing hormone-based contraception. Considering going without and hoping my periods aren't awful.

I'm sure some well-meaning people will want to offer pain relief advice but honestly I tried so so many things. Really, I'd love to know if anyone's periods lightened with age? Is that just a myth?

Myth for me, alas.
The fainting stooped though, so that's good!

Not with age as such, but they stopped being painful after my first pregnancy. My mate from school said the same about pregnancy. We both had to take days off during sixth form because of pain. It was a real nuisance. I went on the pill because I was nervous about being ill during an A Level exam. I’d been lucky with GCSEs.

The pain all but stopped following pregnancy but I'm afraid after I'd finished breastfeeding my last one, they've got unmanageably heavy and now I have the coil

Sadly no. Tried every pill and treatment there was over the years - things would work for a few months then the flooding and horrendous period pain would start up again. Only surgery helped which completely sorted it and I finally got my life back.

After pregnancy it resolved. Same for my mum. I'm hoping it will be the same for DD.

I went to my GP at 15 for painful periods and he said having a baby would ease them!! I'm now pushing 50, never been pregnant and they're still painful but I'm not sick with them now.

Mine didn't get any better 😢

No, they continued well into my thirties - pain so strong only opioids worked, threw up a couple of times as well.
At 35 I went on the pill (Yasmin) mainly for my acne and that sorted my period too.

That's interesting! Too late for me now, but do you mind my asking what surgery it was? Was it related to endometriosis?

Another one who got better after pregnancy. Still occasionally heavy and PMS is off the charts but the pain is so much better. Now if I feel anything I just have a paracetamol and it actually makes a difference!

Having now been through labour 3 times with no pain relief I can honestly say that my periods as a teen and in my early twenties were more painful and unbearable. I used to end up writhing in agony on the floor, with vomiting, diarrhoea - no pain killer ever touched the sides.

Pregnancy would be quite an extreme measure. I may need to get this coil out and try something else. Think I'll need to speak to GP or sexual health. Ugh. Being a woman SUCKS sometimes.

Yes, a GP in the 90s told me they should improve when I got over 25 or with pregnancy. They did improve gradually as I approached 30.

More helpful was the GP who told me to alternate a double ibuprofen dose with coproximal (since withdrawn). Proper pain relief helped a lot. As did an osteopath advising me to lie on my front with a pillow under my tummy/pelvis. Almost unbearable at first but really helped.

I should have been investigated for endometriosis given my symptoms.

No. They got worse and more painful, especially after DC. Then I had fibroids, I was on prescription iron for years along with tranexamic acid & mefenamic acid. Tried coil, pills etc. was under gynae for several years then finally begged for a hysterectomy in my early 40’s.
Turns out I had endometriosis….that two years earlier they said I didn’t have.

Much better after having a baby.

I mean it’s possible that it was also age because I had about a 7 year gap with only 1 period during that time because of pregnancy and breastfeeding and then it was different. So could have been a combination of pregnancy or time or one or the other. Hard to know.

I do feel for you OP. It’s utterly miserable and people who haven’t experienced it don’t realise how debilitating something that’s supposedly “normal” can be!

No. Horrendous until perimenopause.

Turns out after various tests it was fibroids and polyps - numerous and quite large. I had a uterine ablation which sorted things completely. They had been very reluctant to do the surgery before I was 40, as it puts paid to having children (I don’t have any). I was so desperate to feel normal and not be anaemic and regularly fainting (which I had been literally from puberty), that I practically ran to the surgery.

Sadly no. My only respite during my 30s were three pregnancies and subsequent BF each time.
Early 40s I thought, fuck this, then the Mirena coil ever since.
I appreciate the hormones involved though and so possibly it wouldn’t help you. It’s shit really.

Mine got better, and I've not had kids. Mine were so painful sometimes in my teens that I was physically sick. I missed one of my GCSEs when the pain kicked in about half an hour before the exam.

I was on the pill for most of my twenties and thirties, and came off it a few years ago. My periods have been much lighter and more regular compared with how they were before the pill. In the last year or so I have been getting quite bad pain, but only for a couple of hours on the middle day. I take a co-codamol when I feel it coming on and that tends to nip it in the bud.

I don't know if it's related, but I used to have cysts on my ovaries, and they've disappeared now.

They didn't really get better between teenage years and 30 but I got better at managing the pain with mefenamic acid and a TENS machine (and while I had the Mirena coil I didnt really have periods at all). Then I got pregnant and my period didn't come back until 10 months postpartum. They are less painful now, but I am still breastfeeding so I don't know if that will change again when we eventually stop.

I'm 33 and periods as awful as ever. Came off the coil in December as I believed it was causing me problems. I'm booked to have it put back in next week as anything is better than my periods.

I'm more d 40's and my periods are so much less painful now. They were awful when I was a teen, taking the contraceptive pill helped at that time.

i had very heavy and painful periods up until about 2 years ago, they used to last 5 days and always be a week late, so basically a longer cycle.. now they just about last 4 days and comes dead on time every month. I’m almost 36…

No but I have endo & fibroids

Another one where pain got better after pregnancy, but unfortunately just as heavy.

They did get lighter after I'd got my iron levels up. I read somewhere that low iron is a vicious cycle - you get heavy periods, makes your iron stores low, low iron can contribute to heavy period, you're now stuck in a cycle of heavy periods. I can't now find the source, annoyingly!

But anecdotally, my periods have got a lighter since my iron levels moved to above 50. Suggest you check your iron levels and use supplements to get them above 50 (if your gp agrees).