Dangermouse,
Your observation might have a lot if truth indeed!
I am 45 now, started peri I think in my early 40ties. I had always had very heavy snd painful periods as a girl, but they suddenly improved when my first child was born at 31 years. They became light/normal, no pain, no nothing! Such a relief! This continued all through my thirties until now these past few months (i am on HRT since 43) when the cramps and PMS returned. So sad about that!
I think I was quite firtile all my life but at 36 I had quite a hard time conceiving . I had to take additional Utrogestan for about a year before our second daughter was conceived. In retrospect I think I might have started hormonal fluctuations at that time although periods were regular.
In short, I find now while on HRT that I do better on lower dose of E although too low broght about anxiety and bad mood. Too high also made me bloated, jittery, unsettled, unhappy. I am struggling now to find the right balance!
Where I live in Bulgaria you can go to a private lab and request to be tested even if you are not referred by a doctor. So ideally, if you want, you can track hormone levels throughout the month! One test ( four hormones -LH,FSH, E, Prog) will cost about 20£. Not impossibly expensive but I don't see a point of doing it. Rather, what I have done is test these four hormones on day 3-4 of each cycle. This tells me how I feel versus where my hormones are.
When I do this, I go for the test and then take my morning HRT pill. I have found out that if I take it before the test, results come back very scewed. I do it because I have been cutting my pills in half for the past 3months to alleviate bloating and letargy that I experienced in Dec/Jan.
Sorry, got carried away. Balancing is soo complex, isn't it?
Milamam
