As our culture shifts, more and more women are getting pregnant in their 40s - more than double the number in 1990 - while conception rates are falling among women in their 20s and 30s, according to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS).
This phenomenon of later motherhood is causing a collision between postpartum and perimenopause, bringing huge physical and emotional challenges for women that I believe we need to talk about.
The average age of women at menopause onset in the UK is 51.5 years old, with most women hitting menopause between 45 and 55, but 1 in 100 women experience menopause before they turn 40.
My own mother went through menopause at 40, the age that I am now. I have a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old child and I am just starting to see the changes in my menstrual cycle and its effects on my energy levels and sense of inner balance.
It’s a scenario I’m seeing more and more in my women’s health practice but as usual in the realm of women's health and wellbeing, very little is being discussed publicly about it.
It’s so important for us to get this conversation out into the world. We desperately need women themselves to have a better awareness of this ‘collision’ and what it means for them emotionally, hormonally and physically.
Women are forming more of the workforce so we need employers to be informed, considerate and understanding of this reality as well.
Women bring so much to the world of entrepreneurialism and executive teams, but we are being forced out of workplaces due to lack of support as we navigate these big transitions in our bodies.
To address this issue, I believe we need to explore two key questions:
What are the implications for women transitioning through menopausal changes when it is likely they will also have young children at home?
What does this mean for our bodies, her hormones and the unspoken emotional load she undoubtedly carries?
No one can prepare you for the shock of motherhood. Often no one has ever spoken to you about how hard it is. Similarly, no one can prepare you for the rollercoaster ride that menopause takes us on in mind, body and soul.
These two major dramatic events in our bodies and life are without doubt some of the biggest transitions that we will experience.
It can be so easy for us to fall into the trap of perceiving them as failures in the design of our bodies.
It can be so easy for us to paint the picture of the doom and gloom that we might face as women through these periods of our life.
But after 20 years of working in the healthcare space, I know that this is not what we need to hear.
Women's bodies are already over-pathologized.
What we need as women navigating these transitions in our lives and the collision of them, is a deep understanding of the emotional journey that these entail. We don’t want facts and figures on hormone decline and other gruesome images that get painted for us.
We are well used to that.
Becoming a mother and transitioning through menopause are rites of passage - in fact, they are sacred rites of passage.
They are significant transition times where we experience profound changes in our whole body.
In modern times, we have lost the art of collectively honouring and supporting women through these transitions and it is leaving women feeling alone and vulnerable to a range of mental health issues, which are well reported.
Rites of passages mark a time when we are energetically going through an identity death and rebirth period, and the key emotion that is associated with this time is grief.
Both the transition to motherhood and the transition to menopause are deep emotional re-attunements, and the collision of them requires a deeper depth of compassion to navigate.
In my practice, I have found it of great benefit to help women to understand this gigantic rite of passage that they are journeying through - especially if they are experiencing the ‘collision’.
i find that women and myself included are then able to surrender into these transitions with more reverence, more ease and more compassion for themselves.
And when this happens as a conscious process, our whole being changes.
We are able to accept help more readily, we are able to rest with more ease, we are able to tend to our own needs with more love. We are less stressed, less anxious and this helps with all the symptoms we might be experiencing in our body - from pelvic health to hormonal rage.
Postpartum, perimenopause and menopause collision is a new territory that we as modern women are having to navigate, not speaking about this is leaving women in despair, isolated and depressed.
Let’s bring this conversation out into the light of day, let us allow more women know they are not going crazy, they are not alone and they are not broken.
We need to hear from more women about what this collision is bringing up for them in their lives so we can better understand how to support them.
Let this be an invitation to you beautiful woman, if you are reading this and your head is nodding along, allow this to be an invitation to love yourself deeper, honour yourself deeper, and care for yourself deeper than ever before.
All that your body needs is space to rest and sleep, space to be nourished and space to feel what you feel, without judgement, without shame and wholly supported by those around you.
We don’t have the facts and figures for what this would look like in a woman’s body yet, but let’s collectively move towards it.
You were never meant to do this alone.
Let us know if this ‘collision’ resonates for you, and what your experience is of it, this is a new conversation.
Lois x
E: loisbickerton@googlemail.com
Lois has been a holistic physiotherapist for nearly 20 years. She works with and supports women through all stages of their life with womb and pelvic health.