What did your mum or grandmother tell you about perimenopause?

[TheUmberKoala]

I've been having a long-overdue conversation with my mother about her experience of perimenopause. She's in her 60s now. When I asked her what anyone had ever told her about it growing up, she said her own mother had once told her: "It happens, it's a phase."

That was it. Five words. For something she lived with for years.

My older sisters are approaching that same age now, and I've been thinking about how much of this silence is generational. The dismissal, the lack of anyone passing down practical knowledge, the way the topic just wasn't discussed at home.

I'd love to hear from this group: what did your mum or grandmother tell you about perimenopause growing up? Was it spoken about at home, or was it taboo? And for those of you who've been through it (or are in it now), what do you wish someone had actually told you?

Not looking for medical advice or anything to buy. Just curious about the inheritance, or the lack of it, and how families pass this knowledge down (or don't).

Very little from Mum and absolutely nothing from Gran.

I’m peri now and have fought to get HRT early (I have another condition that can cause early menopause) but what I was going through before it I can now see this was what Mum went through and wasn't linked to it at the time, without a doubt the anxiety, panic attacks etc caused her to drink more excessively, become really dependant and die young.

My mum didn’t even tell me about periods, much less menopause or perimenopause.

Same here. I’ve just found out through a blood test that I’m nearly at the end and I didn’t even know I’d started.

I was told about periods. I was 13 when I had my first one ( early 1970's)

Menopause was never mentioned. Peri menopause is only something I have heard about in the last few years on here.

Nothing. They would not have understood the word. DM had a hysterectomy anyway, but grandmothers would have never even considered discussing such a thing, and certainly wouldn’t have had a word for it.

Stuff like this was never spoken about.
When I was 12, a packet of sanitary towels and a belt - yes I'm that old - were put in my drawer, "For when you need them". No explanation given.

Perimenopause definitely wasn't a thing then.

I had horrendously heavy periods in my early 40s which led to a hysterectomy. These were dismissed by my mother as a piece of nonsense because she'd just had 2 heavy periods then that was that and was too busy working to bother about stuff like that.

Nothing, she didn't go through it. She had a hysterectomy and a salpingo-oophorectomy at the age of 29.

Nothing. Not a sausage.

Both my grandmothers were dead by the time I was 21 so even if they had tried to talk about it I probably wouldn't have listened anyway.

My mum is completely hopeless with anything like that, when I was about 10 she gave me a book from the church bookshop about puberty, it did teach me the biological basics but also gave me the firm impression that you had to be married to have a baby. Physical impossibility for unmarried women. Morning sickness was "all in the mind", feeling ill or being under the weather is a moral failing.

Absolutely nothing.

Nothing. I’ve only heard of perimenopause in the last couple of years. I was aware of menopause and I assume that my mother, now in her 70s, has experienced it but she’s never mentioned it and I’ve no idea how old she was when it happened for her.

Nothing, because it wasn't A Thing......and, arguably, still isn't because its just a word that medicalises normal changes in middle age. Maybe the old attitude of just getting on with stuff was better, because it stopped women becoming quite so self-obsessed!

I can work out when my mum went through menopause because I know she had a hysterectomy when I was 14, so she’d have been 46. Like others, periods, sex & menopause were not discussed. At all.

I’m currently peri menopausal & say whatever I need to say in front of my 14 year old DD & my older DSs. It’s a part of life, not a dirty secret and - as a 50 year old going through various tests for suspected cancer, it would be so helpful to know what experience my mum had & why she had a hysterectomy!

It wasn’t called Peri menopause was it ? That’s a new thing. You just had the menopause. Now we’re more aware of the difference and the effect the decline of hormones has on the body.

My grandma never mentioned the menopause. My mum had a difficult time and ended up having an emergency hysterectomy and was then on HRT for over 30 years. But my mum and other female relatives only ever talked about the menopause - I had never heard the term ‘perimenopause’ until I started using Mumsnet, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard it used anywhere else.

My mum didn’t experience many symptoms, so I didn’t hear anything about it at all

Absolutely nowt here too

Same here. It was never mentioned.

Nothing! I asked my mum
about it a couple of years ago and she said she didn’t really notice anything, and appeared surprised I was on HRT.

Neither of us have mentioned it since!

Re perimenopause - absolutely nothing, I don't think my mum considered it a thing.
Re menopause - all I was ever told by my mum was that periods stopped and hot flushes started!
Whereas my own experience has been so much more than that.

They just stuck them all on Librium and Valium 🙄

Absolutely nothing from my Mum. I was a late baby (she was 40, unheard of in the early 60s). The only inkling I ever got was when we had a row when I was a teenager, I ran round to my friends house crying and her Mum said 'your Mum is at a funny age'. I had no idea what she was on about.

For many women that's fine, they can just suck it up and power through.

But for others, menopause is really hard. In the past, those women would have been on barbiturates "for their nerves". My MIL has pretty serious osteoporosis partly because she had a hysterectomy in her 30s and nobody suggested HRT. Sucking it up doesn't really work for vaginal atrophy either.

It's not about medicalising changes. It's about giving women the information they need to know what options they are to make things better for them, if they need it.

Nothing as it definitely hadn't been invented before my Nan died in 1977 and my Mum just had the 'odd hot flush' and then became menopausal (which was used to describe everyone 'going through the change'). I run hot all the time (have since I was a child) so my only symptoms were slightly disturbed sleep and my periods stopping completely over a 2 year period. Gone completely at 55.

Exactly the same as mine. I remember she just said it lasts 10 years and she went to her bedroom alot and stayed there for hours.

They were sent away " to get a rest for a while" or stuck on pills. Before that they were put in sanitariums . I hate this nonsense that it's all new and previous generations just got on with it - the poor sods.