Menstruation, Dysmenorrhea, hormonal psychosis, cramps, anaemia, and whinge

[ailbhe]

In my teens, I was maaaaaaad. Wild and wacky. And recovering from A Colourful Childhood, the complex and frightening custody arrangements about my parents' legal separation (no legal divorce at that time!), depression, irritable bowel syndrome, dysmenorrhea, and really not liking the idea of getting drunk (though I remember with varying degrees of pleasure the few times I did drink alcohol as a teenager, they were definitely atypical). Oh, and I was suicidal a lot of the time, but that started before puberty.

Every time I ran away from home, or exploded a relationship in my own face, I had a period start just a few days later. They lasted for 3-20 days on average, and started 21-48 days apart. I didn't try to predict them, but I did record them, on and off.

Then I went on the pill for YEARS and it was WONDERFUL and although I still had cramps that made me collapse in public and fall off buses into the gutter and so on, it was nothing like as debilitating as the other. Then I came off the pill and started trying to get pregnant, and gradually I got sicker and sicker, though that could have been the series of jobs in which everyone got really ill, not just me, and my periods were more and more regular and predictable, and then I got pregnant, and was weller and more marvellous than ever in my whole life and also pregnant and full of joy and indigestion and mad cravings for raw red meat on the bone.

Then I had a baby and when my periods came back (fast) they were shorter and less painful and more predictable and so on than EVER. And my ovulation signals got clearer and clearer. And when my baby was 18 months old I got pregnant again, and then the bayb was born, and that was almost three years ago now, and I'm wondering...

Are my hormones resetting?

I've just had a hideous period, 11 days long, so heavy even Rob noticed, which left me anaemic and ill. Before ovulation I felt unhappy, ugly, and very slightly suicidal in a habitual kind of way, not an intent kind of way. At ovulation I was in agony and feverish, and now I'm sick and headachy.

It might just be swine flu. But I'm somewhat frightened that it might be Proper Periods again. I don't want to do that again.

Comments

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

Go on the pill? Run it full time, with no menstrual breaks?

The right one shouldn't interfere with lactation. It's medically safer to be on it all the time, and not come off it, than it is to do the 21 days thing...