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You carry a spare pair of trousers in your bag now. Just in case. You sit near the door in meetings and check the chair when you stand up.
Your period came twice this month. Last time it lasted eleven days. Before that, it skipped two months and you started to think it was over.
You're not broken and you're not imagining it. Your cycle lost the hormone that used to keep the schedule.
▬ What is actually happening A regular period depends on ovulation. When you ovulate, your body makes progesterone, and progesterone tells the lining of your uterus when to stop building and when to shed. In perimenopause, more and more cycles happen without ovulation. No ovulation, no progesterone. Estrogen keeps building the lining with nothing to tell it to stop. When that thick lining finally sheds, it comes out heavy, long, and on no schedule you can predict. That is the flooding. That is the eleven days. |
▬ What the research shows 91% of women aged 42 to 52 had at least one episode of bleeding lasting ten days or more over three years. Close to 78 percent had three or more days of heavy flow. Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN), 1,300+ women. BJOG, 2014. |
This is not rare. It is the norm, and almost nobody warns you. Here is the part that gets missed: heavy bleeding drains iron, and low iron feels like exhaustion you cannot sleep off.
▬ What to do tomorrow Not a cleanse. Not more coffee. Data and a blood test. | 01 | Track it starting today Write down the start and end date of every bleed, and on heavy days, how often you change a pad or tampon. Three months of this turns 'it's been weird' into evidence a doctor cannot wave away. |
| 02 | Ask for your ferritin Ferritin measures your iron stores. If you are bleeding heavily and you are exhausted, ask for it by name at your next blood test. A normal blood count can hide low iron stores. |
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Your energy may not be fading. It may be leaking.
See a doctor promptly if you soak through a pad or tampon every hour for two hours or more, bleed after sex, or bleed at all once a full year has passed without a period.
Your body is not malfunctioning. It is changing the rules, and you are allowed to ask for the new ones. |
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