Making sense of POF

I've had a sore lower back and neck this week. It happened as a consequence of lifting my daughter who is now 20kg. I've been here before and it's getting better. I've kept away from the gym this week and am just keeping to yoga and pilate exercises at home. The yoga stretches are amazing - I can just feel the tension leaving my body when I do them.

I believe that now that I've reached the end of the road with TTC, my body is giving a big sigh. For two years I had a lot of doubt hanging over me around our chances to conceive another baby. Yet I held on, often by my fingernails, and resisted feeling what I was feeling too deeply. It seems my mind and body are in catch-up mode now as I now have this time to process what is.

It is not just the end of my TTC days I'm processing - it is how I got here. It is about getting my head around POF (premature ovarian failure). There is lots of information out there on the Net which I have linked to in former posts. However today I am just going to relay bits and pieces from my own findings.

Apparently I just squeeze into the diagnosis of POF - as it affects women under the age of forty. After forty it's called premature menopause. Around fifty (or perhaps forty-five depending on what you read) it's considered (normal) menopause. It was around 38 that I believe that my fast decline into POF started for me. Ironically this is when we started to TTC our second child and my periods were spacing out and getting lighter at this time. I was still ovulating in our first year of TTC. By our second year of TTC I had no menstrual cycles for months at a time and ovulation was starting to cease. It was during this year (2008) that the menopausal symptoms really kicked in.

From what I've read there could be two possible reasons for my POF: it could have happened spontaneously. Or it was a response to the removal of my left ovary when my daughter was delivered via c-section. It is believed that when surgery is responsible for menopause; it happens very rapidly. The average women going into natural menopause will do so over a number of years. But those who experience menopause earlier in life - either through POF or premature menopause - will do so in a short space of time. Often this means the symptoms can be more severe. So on two accounts - my surgery and my age - I have the evidence that I haven't been going mad these last two years. The severe mood swings and other symptoms were very, very real.

It brings tears to my eyes piecing all this information together. I had a half-diagnosis of POF made but never a full one. Neither my Dr or gyno have tried terribly hard to make sense of where I'm at. So I've just gone with my gut, my own research and the beliefs of my herbalist - which are the same as mine - that I experienced POF because of the removal of my left ovary in 2005.

From what I've read, POF is very often not picked up in young women. Some Dr's - like mine did (the Dr before my current one) attribute missed periods to stress. My former herbalist told me my menopausal symptoms were connected to a hormonal imbalance which she believed was temporary. She prescribed herbs, pills and the like to reverse what was going on with my body in the hope of restoring my fertility. Yet the sad reality with POF is what has happened cannot be reversed. Infertility is permanent. It is said there is up to a ten percent chance of conception for those with POF as ovulation can occur occasionally in some women. But most women are unable to conceive.

I have identified with a lot around what I've read about the emotional impact of POF on women. One article advised that the woman with POF should be sent to counselling as depression was often a likely response to such a huge loss in her womanhood. That was certainly the case for me. The mood swings that I experienced didn't make processing things any easier.

For the most part it has been a shock to find myself in a place in my life I didn't expect to be for another ten years or so. I miss my periods. I have had several dreams about having a period and sometimes still feel as if AF is coming. It's going to take a while to completely get used to not having a monthly cycle. I have a drawer full of tampons and pads that I guess I can either pass on to someone else or discard. The plus side is I don't have to fork out money for my monthly cycle anymore. Yet at the same time it feels bizarre walking past "that section" in the supermarket and not putting anything in my trolley.

On the outside I am often thought to be a lot younger than my forty years. Yet on the inside I feel like a fifty year old women. I am going through the same emotional and psychological changes of women older than myself. Typically these women are on the other side of raising their families yet I am only at the beginning. There is a lot to get my head around.

A friend lent me her folder as she sadly went through POF in her twenties. She lost her infertility at such a young age. I at least was able to have one child before POF happened.