In the Beginning...

CHOMP. Scream!

It was probably three in the morning. As usual, I was snuggling with my three-year-old, nursing him to sleep. My husband had been “encouraging” me (i.e. pressuring) to wean our child, but I was reticent. He had been a preemie; a NICU-for-nine-days baby who was born by emergency C-section at 36 weeks, 6 days, who came into the world weighing a whopping 4lbs. 11oz., and who needed all the extra mama-nutrients he could get. I had worked so hard to make breastfeeding succeed for the both of us; the smartest minds I knew of said you should nurse for as long as it’s beneficial for the mother/child dyad. I wasn’t ready to give it up.

My munchkin was an IVF baby. We’d had a loss before him, and he was everything we’d ever wanted.

When we’d first dated and gotten engaged, my husband and I talked about “at least” two children, but that was when we were still in our 30s. By the time we finally got lucky, I was 41. I ended up on bedrest for the final 10 weeks of my pregnancy due to intrauterine growth restriction; I lost my maternity benefits from my job because I was just a couple weeks shy of my year anniversary when I had to take FMLA.

Eventually, at what turned out to be my final Maternal Fetal Medicine appointment, they monitored the baby’s heartbeat and said, “Okay, you’re headed to the hospital to have this baby.” “So I can head home and pick up my things?” “No. You’re going straight to the hospital.” Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

My mother-in-law, who had driven me to my appointment (I couldn’t drive, thanks to the bedrest) drove me directly there while I called my husband and told him all the things I’d need him to gather from the house. My own pillow. Lip balm. Lollipops (no red or blue). Comfortable jammies.

I arrived at the hospital, where they took me directly in at labor and delivery, changed me into a gown, hooked me up to wires, and the doctor on call from my practice eventually came in to chat. “It looks like he’s going to do better out than in,” she said, “so we’re going to induce tomorrow.” Which would be August 8.

My husband arrived with all my paraphernalia, walked up to the whiteboard in the room, and wrote “Ocho Ocho” on the board. That was to be his nickname, for his birthday: 8/8. 

Overnight, every time I started to fall asleep, an alarm would blare, and half a dozen people would come rushing into my hospital room, panicked and jabbering. It turned out that each time I fell asleep, the baby’s heart rate would plummet. The doctor came back. “Unfortunately, we can no longer give you a choice; we’ll do an emergency C-section first thing in the morning.”

Then, she calmly said something which chilled me to the bone: “Do you want me to tie your tubes while we’re in there?” I was horrified. “NO!” I gasped. Did she understand how hard we had worked to get to this point? How much we wanted children? If we were going to have any more, it was going to take a great deal more work, and fast. More hormones, more appointments, more needle jabs, more luck. Tears threatened; how could she even suggest such a thing? I was adamant that, of the seven doctors in my practice, she would not be the one to deliver my child.

Turned out I didn’t need to worry — the woman who got to slice me open the next day was the one doctor of the seven I hadn’t yet met.

She was great; personable, kind, didn’t suggest that I should have my tubes tied while she had me split open to retrieve my child. My husband actually watched the procedure over the drape (and later said he wished he hadn’t…) and held my hand while the tugging commenced on my numbed body.

The first time I saw my child was as they carried him past me, not yet breathing, to the station where they would weigh him and clean him up. “Was that him?” I said to my husband, who stood frozen, watching them trying to get my munchkin to breathe. When he finally did, and we all breathed a sigh of relief, they wrapped him in swaddling clothes and brought him to see me for the first time; my husband was allowed to hold his cheek to mine. That was the first touch I had of my tiny baby as the tears gathered.

Then one of the NICU reps came up to me and said, “He’s less than 5 pounds, which means he’s coming with us.” My husband and I looked at each other, and as if by telepathy, decided that he would go to the NICU while I went to recovery, and then they were all whisked away, leaving me to be patched back up and wheeled, alone, empty of baby and bereft of company, to wait until I could feel my feet before they would take me back to my hospital room.

Two hours later, I arrived back in my room. No husband, no baby. Just thinking about it now brings the pit back to my stomach, my breathing becoming shallow, and my cheeks heating; a headache starting and the sadness sinking in. One of my favorite photos, still on my phone, is of me holding my infant son for the first time. The timestamp is 2:07pm. My child was born at 11:02am.

I’m so sad just reliving this memory. Finally getting someone to put me into a wheelchair to take me down to the NICU to “meet” my child. The loneliness of those first three hours. All the buildup to the birth, and then the isolation. And all the while, the words of the doctor whirling through my head: Do you want me to tie your tubes while we’re in there? 

Hormones going bonkers made it all worse.

Fast forward to the CHOMP.

Here I was, three years and a few months later, after all we’d been through to get him to the healthy, happy toddler he was, much of it thanks to the nutrition and antibodies he was getting through me, I was convinced, and being pressured to wean before either one of us was ready was tearing me apart inside. Until that CHOMP.

My kiddo wasn’t nursing as often at this stage; it was mostly when I was getting him to bed. He would fall asleep while nursing, until I could gently extract myself and leave him to snooze in peace. But he had a full set of teeth at this point, and for whatever reason, in his dream (maybe he was eating a cookie?) he bit down. HARD. So hard, I thought he had actually done permanent damage. I went and saw a specialist who did all kinds of tests and confirmed that  it would heal, but it still hurt like mad.

Maybe, I thought, this is the sign we need to stop.

From then on, Mama’s left “boo-boo” was off-limits.

We talked it out, my munchkin and I (as much as you can “talk it out” with a toddler), and agreed that we would save the remaining “boo-boo” just for bedtime. And we did have a few other biting incidents, but none as violent as that inciting CHOMP.

And that’s when the depression really began.

At first, I thought I was just sad that this phase of my motherhood was coming to an end. This particular bond I had with my child, the comfort and closeness only I could give, was going away. But it soon became clear that it was waaaaaay beyond that.

I was despondent. It felt like a heavy weight was crushing my chest every moment of every day. I constantly felt like I was on the verge of crying, or about to strangle someone (not my child, thank god; adults were always the target of my mama-bear wrath). I truly thought I was going insane.

As luck would have it, I was due for my annual check-up with my OB/GYN, an amazing, dry-witted, empathetic young doctor named Ingrid Winterling. When I went into her office for the exam, I broke down in tears, and told her what I’d been going through. I couldn’t handle it anymore.

“How’s your cycle?” she asked me. I told her it was all over the place, completely irregular. I had once been 28 days like clockwork, and now my predictions of when I’d be getting my period were anyone’s guess. I had thought it was because I was still breastfeeding.

And then, it happened. She gave me the side-eye.

“What?” I asked.

She was still giving me the side-eye.

“No…” I started. I was only 44.

She shrugged, and said, “It’s possible. I went through it at 40.”

Menopause????? There was no way. There were more babies to come. I was way too young. Though, if she was finished by 40…

“Let me tell you what’s going to happen,” she began. “Your periods will start getting closer and closer together, and then they’ll start skipping.” She snapped her fingers in a rhythm, like pop, pop, pop. My cycles disappearing. I had never heard any of this. I thought your periods just… stopped one day, and that was it. Ta-da! Menopause! But, nope. “You will have no idea when you’re ovulating, so you’ll have to be very careful, because that’s how ‘whoops’ babies happen in your 40s.”

But we wanted more kids.

So a “whoops” for us would be okay.

“It’s impossible to predict, unless you go through IVF again,” she stated.

When we had gone through IVF, another friend of ours had gone through it at the same time, through the same facility. Our kids were born a month apart; her twins were early, too. When they had done the egg retrieval, she had produced 22 eggs. (She said she felt like a chicken.) When we did ours, we got five. Four were viable, two divided normally. We implanted both, named them “Petri” and “Dish,” and got one healthy, miraculous baby. “Dish” didn’t make it.

I have Celiac disease and a blood clotting disorder, both of which are strikes against me in carrying children. The doctor who had performed my C-section had proclaimed my placenta “medically yucky.” To say that we didn’t have high hopes for another round of IVF was like saying we could win the Powerball twice.

It turned out that, weaning my son had thrown my hormones all out of whack, and at the same time, my body was saying it had had enough of this procreating thing. The perfect storm for “The Change” from Hell.

Dr. Winterling prescribed me Zoloft for my debilitating sadness, and told me to start keeping careful tabs on my cycles. She started me on 50mg of Zoloft at first, and when the sadness was still too much, we found a balance at 100mg a day. I had been keeping careful tabs on my periods, so I went back to my notes and counted. Apparently, my 28-day-guaranteed periods had gone to 25. Then, a few months later, to 21.

The blessed, blessed Zoloft was finally helping my depressive state stabilize. Dr. Winterling now became my “big sister” in keeping me informed about this new phase of my life.

She explained that when we think of “going through menopause,” what we’re really describing is perimenopause, the time leading up to the final cessation of menses. And it’s not even done at that point. You might not have a period for three months, but then you’ll get it again, and the clock starts over. Then you might not have one for six months, but then have a light one, and the clock starts over. “Menopause” actually refers to the one day when you haven’t had your period for one full calendar year.

My most frustrating time was having a crime-scene-level bleeding week after having gone NINE MONTHS without, where I was going through jumbo-sized feminine products every hour. I’ve since heard of women who had to start the clock over again with only a week left to go before their year anniversary.

Why have we never heard ANY of this growing up?

For GenX, the group going through perimenopause and menopause as I write this, it’s because our parents were either Boomers if they were young parents, or The Silent Generation if they were older, and it just wasn’t talked about. Bodily function conversations were uncomfortable at best and outright taboo at worst, and when we left the house at 18, it’s likely that either a) an ovary-owning caregiver hadn’t yet experienced “The Change,” b) said caregiver may have had a hysterectomy long before they ever experienced any symptoms, or c) they may not have been around any longer for any number of reasons.

Luckily, as a proud member of GenX, I can tell you: we don’t keep silent about that kind of BS. If we find out about something that others are keeping from us, you’ll know, loud and clear.

I’m an oldest daughter of four girls. As soon as I received my education from Dr. Winterling, I started spreading the Gospel of Perimenopause to my sisters, my friends, moms at school, the internet, anywhere I could. I joked with those younger than I, “Pull up a chair; let Aunt Marni tell you a story.” I wanted to open up a discussion with all those born with ovaries to SHOUT THIS FROM THE ROOFTOPS. There is absolutely no reason to be silent about this subject. Fully half the world’s population will go through it at some point! Whether naturally or medically induced, whether they have no symptoms or all of them, we need to destigmatize the conversation around what some have called “puberty in reverse.”

How did you find out you were going through perimenopause? And if you haven't gone through it yet, what do you want to know?

I'm happy to start big-sistering the world to make sure no one goes through this absolutely natural transition without being told about it EVER again.