Is this the start of perimenopause?

[89redballoons]

I'm 38 and my periods have been all over the place for the last few months:

2.5 weeks of light bleeding in August
2 weeks after it finally stopped, the heaviest period I have ever had, woke up in the night looking like I had murdered someone in bed, was using heavy duty protection and everything soaked through
Then very light bleeding every four weeks until earlier this month
Then this week, 2 weeks after my last light bleed, extremely painful and heavy period again to the extent I'm having to WFH today as I don't trust myself in the office, although actually I just want to crawl back into bed

This was also accompanied by what I realise with hindsight was the worst PMT I have ever had last week. I was really anxious and unable to focus at work, and I ended up missing an important deadline and crying in front of my supervisor about it. Very unlike me, I'm a fairly senior professional.

Ugh. Writing it all out it is definitely the start of peri, isn't it? Is it worth going to GP? Until I had my children, I always had irregular periods (apart from 14 years on the combined pill) and used to being told it wasn't anything to worry about or nothing they could really do.

This is all very similar to my first symptoms that I was entering the 'peri phase'. My periods, for over a decade, were regular, fairly light and manageable with no PMT and just a few normal cramps. At around 39 this started to change. I started getting terrible PMT and mental mood swings accompanied by heavy bleeding and cramps. Then the next month I wouldn't get one at all, followed by a light one the month after and then back to a bad heavy one! They stopped being regular and were all over the place and I had no idea when the next one would show up.

The worst thing though was the increase in anxiety that came with all this. It was off the scale!!! Having never suffered from anxiety before it was debilitating. I also started suffering from low mood and terrible brain fog like my brain wouldn't work anymore and I couldn't retain information and I struggled to concentrate at work and I started to really suffer doing my job everyday. It was awful.

Definitely sounds very much like the start of perimenopause to me unfortunately.