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).

I am 63 and still waiting for my mum to tell me about periods. Very few mentions, but she insists on calling them “monthlies”. I’d also like to know where my three children came from. Maureen at junior school told me that the man puts his willy in the lady’s bum. At 89, I’m pretty sure she’s gone through the menopause but she’s never mentioned it.

i, of course, was completely the opposite, told my kids too much and too early.

When you watch programmes like Call the Midwife you realise what a shit time so many women had and it wasn't that long ago. Lack of contraception, social attitudes, no abortion or after pill. Women were expected to just get on with it within this conspiracy of silence. I was 11 when my brother was born and my mother had shoved a big encyclopedia type book in front of me to show me a diagram of a foetus. She never told me about periods and when it happened she got me towels and a sanitary belt. I had no idea how long it was going to happen. I didn't know what to do with the used ones. I think I used to store them up wrapped in newspaper but didn't know where to put them. This was the late 1960s. She never spoke about anything like this.

Oh god, the sanitary belt!! Mine said the same thing. It was the 80s when I started mine and they had invented tampons by then I think. I said no way to the sanitary belt. I wasn't a horse!

It used to stretch and bounce as you walked 😬

Nothing growing up. My grandmother would have been mortified by talking about "women's issues" other than with a doctor. My mum will discuss it a bit now I'm going through it myself but it's clear that a lot of her unexplained health issues at my age were in fact peri.

Tampons??? No no no, those were for married ladies only!

✨nothing✨

Nothing. However I talk to my daughter.

I feel like I have always known that menopause transition could be tough. I must have heard that information from dozens of directions: school, society, tv shows, casual conversation, people I know talking about their own lived experience, novels, plays, stand up...

One of my grandmothers died when I was 15. She was begging for Jesus to take her. If she had anything to say about menopause, it was secondary to her other health woes. She was crippled by arthritis, I suspect I've inherited that weakness.

My other grandmother was young then her husband died & I think she just had other priorities, still raising her own kids. When one of my cousins had a hysterectomy a few yrs ago I found out that her mum (my aunt) and my gran both had heavy periods & hysterectomies too, at similar point in life.

My mother mentioned once that she decided not to take HRT. I don't think she cared about menopause, otherwise, and didn't have anything else to say. She was still dating people until she was at least ... 58? (died not long later).

Absolutely nothing…it wasn’t ’a thing’ back then. I’m 61 and really only started hearing about this since I joined Mumsnet about 10 years ago. I’d already ‘gone through the change’ (as my dear old mum called it) so don’t really have any experience of what this might entail (mine was very sudden due to a full hysterectomy when I was 45).

Nothing here too. The word has never been uttered between me and my mum. She would also say it was nothing, a total breeze, barely noticed it. In fact it's only now I look back at what must have been her peri-menopause I can understand why she went basically insane during my late teens and early 20's and totally imploded her career, marriage and life. I'm quite terrified of going through it the same way.

It used to twist and catch your labia in it! really hurt... one of my mates told me about Lilets and how to use them, gave me a couple and oh the freedom and relief.

Tampons were around in the 60's if not even earlier, they weren't considered an option for young unmarried girls though!

Nothing. But she always says that it was something she was lucky enough not to really be affected by. I have no memory of her having any of the usual symptoms. We talk about it now.

I understand some women have an awful time at menopause and they have my sympathy, but it still doesn't make me want to discuss it ad nauseum. If someone wants my advice abput hrt etc I'll happily give it, but I don't want to hear someone moaning on about each symptom they have.

It's like others holiday photos. Fine in small does if it's relevant, but you really don't want to see the whole album.

Oh God yes my mother was a nightmare when she was late forties/early fifties. We thought she was so peculiar and seemed to have taken leave of her senses. A friend told me her mother kicked the tv in ! Looking back, it all makes sense.

Perimenopause is a fairly recent term.

I'm 70. I was unaware of the term perimenopause being used in my late 40s. It didn't exist- there were a few books around then on women's health and it was just starting to be used. It wasn't mainstream terminology for many more years.

I had left home by the time my Mum was menopausal when she was 52-ish. I moved a long way away so only visited every few months.

I do recall her complaining of hot flushes usually when she was in the kitchen!
She had them into her 80s but told me (many years later) that her GP would not give her HRT at 60. Considered too old then.

All her friends referred to 'the change' and some were on antidepressants or sleeping tablets for decades.

Plenty. I was in my late teens when my mum was in peri - she talked a lot about hot flushes and getting dry skin, and how she needed to take certain supplements and do certain things differently now.

But both my parents were from medical backgrounds and always very upfront about that kind of thing.

My mum also gave me a book that explained how to attach your sanitary towel to a belt! And to not going swimming at your ‘time of the month’ There was also a wedding before any sex was discussed and no contraception covered..
I think the book was written in the seventies this was late nineties. I learnt more from Judy Blume.

Absolutely nothing, was never mentioned.

You poor thing. Your Mum sounded very out of touch.
what you describe your mum saying (or not) sounds incredibly dated.
All my friends were using tampons in the late 1960s.

Perimenopause? It didn't exist as a thing in my DM and DGM's time. It was just menopause and it was something that people didn't talk about. I went to a GP less than 10 years ago and told her that I thought I was in perimenopause and she hadn't heard of it and just told me that I was too young for menopause and sent me away.

Edited to add - this was my Mum in the late 1960s. Tampax were not widely used in my circle.

I thought you meant that was what your mum told you in the 1990s, giving you a book written decades earlier. My school friends were using tampons in the late 1960s.

To clarify my mum gave me a book in 1967. I first tried a Tampax in 1970 in a toilet at Sat job with someone reading the instructions from outside 😂 in the staff room .