What were your early signs of menopause/early menopause

[Rubyshoes12]

Can you please let me know your early signs of starting the menopause

chronic itching and soreness down below and a feeling like I had ants crawling on me- plus night sweats.

Not sure but SIL is currently 45 and is batshit crazy, horrible, I mean really really horrible, snaps at her family members, rages about, making everyones life an absolute misery!

Ha ha. Yes. Exactly this.

@ButtSurgery just HRT starting stopped all hip and feet pain in a week or two.
I didn't have grinding though and it's best to get it checked anyway. I was early/mid 40's just thought it was ageing silly really I should have gone to the GP. I didn't connect the dots until I had started HRT and realised it had all gone.

I think my very first symptom I didn’t even twig until much later. It was using tampons - they started to feel painful. I can remember thinking they must have changed how they were made and trying various brands before I gave up! I couldn’t understand why when I was flooding for England, it felt like I was dry. I also couldn’t take the same pressure as previously in foreplay and didn’t twig on that either. In sex as well, I’d assumed I was as lubricated as I previously was when very aroused and would be shocked when I wasn’t. It seems really silly now, but I genuinely didn’t twig.

My biggest symptom was no longer wanting to do everything for everybody. I'm so bored of food shopping, cooking, cleaning. I am the stay at home person so this does fall upon me but, my god, I'm so fed up of it. I wish everyone was independent and just got on with it, but unfortunately if I don't remember to do things, get things, no one else would. I'm just done with it all.

Bone pain, total apathy and brain fog for me. It has taken 14 months and a private consultation to get onto the right HRT regime for me and it was only when I started testosterone that things noticeably improved.

Thanks everyone, after reading all those replies I’ve come to realise I’ve been putting up with a lot of those symptoms coming and going. I didn’t think it was peri as I haven’t had the hot flushes that are so well known. The exhaustion and crap memory is definitely getting gradually worse.
I’ve just put all those odd symptoms in a long list on my doctors online triage form to hopefully get appointment sometime soon.

Severe PMT