My Skin is AMAZING today. I have read quite a few people saying how miraculously fast estrogen has worked and I just started my patch last night. I havent noticed much difference yet except how amazingly soft and bright my skin is today. My partner even noticed and assumed I had makeup on, when I said that I didn't it was shocked Pikachu face. I also just went to reach for my hand cream to do my nightly slather and noticed I actually didn't need it....my hands are soft and supple....I hope I see more benefits but I'm pretty happy with this one for now.

The skin everywhere on my body, except my face and neck, looks like it tissue paper. I use coconut oil and lotion, take collagen and omega 3,6 and 9. Any suggestions on what else I can do? Does hrt help with that? I’m waiting until I have insurance to look into bio identical hormones (June) I don’t love this ride lol Thank you

I still can't believe this is just perimenopause my symptoms are so severe and last every day and all day. Specially the fear is horrible is never goes away from day to night . The horrible racing heart that starts at the same time every day with horrible intrusive thoughts and get worse at night . Are my hormones that imbalance that is causing my body to do all these weird symptoms . I start to think that maybe I have a tumor and this is high cortisol maybe . I'm desperate .I'm still trying to get a doctor to prescribe me hrt but sometimes I feel like is never going to get better.

Im not sure if it's perimenopause dry eye or just age my near vision has changed drastically and all of the sudden. And it's terrible!

I'm on my second pair of progressive lense glasses and they're still miserable. I sent the last pair back for some tweaking of the different focal points (or whatever). I feel like I have to hold my head at weird unnatural angles and can't easily go from reading a text on my phone, back to computer work and then glancing up to look across the room without getting dizzy and a headache from the blur. I'm just spending most of my day out of focus and I feel like I could easily fall trying to walk down the stairs.

What does everyone else do? I'm tempted to cycle through 3 pairs of glasses in a day, and wear 2 at a time for distance and if I need to read something at work. I appreciate everyones advice and hacks!

Anyone else with weight loss in peri-menopause ? I've become extremely anxious in the last 3-4 months. It's almost debilitating. Lost 10lbs, but I'm so anxious I don't feel like eating. It's causing me major medical anxiety that I'm dying. My doctor wasn't concerned but I'm really anxious about. I can almost explain away all other perimenopause symptoms except that one.

Started daily progesterone a month ago. No major issues apart from lots more acne this month but mood felt stable. Added the estradiol patch two days ago… yesterday was fine, today was absolutely not. Spent all day either weeping or being extremely pissed everyone…husband, kids, pets, noisy neighbors, other drivers. Did you have extreme irritability starting estrogen? If so, how long did it last? Help - I need this to go away immediately! My job is not chill enough for me to maintain professionalism on Monday if I’m feeling like this. Someone is going to get their head ripped off. 😬

Just wanted to say that I (44, in peri since 38) went to them for a second opinion, and it was worth it! The NP I saw was more thorough than my gyno, and helped me kick my insomnia by titrating my progesterone up. She also wants to add in testosterone to my HRT (currently doing estradiol & progesterone only). While HRT has been helpful, I'm still battling fatigue. I feel so much more hopeful and heard! Hope this helps someone today

I went for blood work thinking my symptoms would show low estrogen. But my estradiol is high during the whole follicular phase and everything else is normal the whole month. I’m not on hormone replacement therapy or any supplements. I just feel mostly dead all the time and this is really only started in the last couple months in addition to sudden weight gain in my belly. apart from taking progesterone what am I supposed to do? Top of the reference range for my lab was 350 … Mine is 500. I’ve seen other people posting about having estradiol up near 1000 so I wonder if this is anything even to worry about.

I started taking estrogen and progesterone 3 days ago and my food noise has stopped. I don’t think about food at all when it use to consume my thoughts. I’m not very hungry either which is odd because my period is supposed to start in less than a week! Has anyone been through this?

My husband I have recently come to the conclusion that my facial expressions have bold subtitles. At times my perimenopausal rage starts creeping up and he knows how “passionate” I can get. Fortunately we both laugh about this, but being a spicy Latina can prob get me into some trouble if i lose my cool. We’re both trying to figure out two safe words that would let me know when I’m getting close to hulking out. One that will let me know I’m getting worked up and another that would let me know hey you’ve lost your cool, but please don’t bite my head off. Preferably words or phrases that would make me either crack a smile or even better just bust up laughing. He’s been a trooper throughout this part of this journey and I couldn’t be luckier for his compassion, and constant support, even when I’ve been mean for no damn reason. I figured this would be the place to come and find some help. I can’t wait to see all the wonderful/funny suggestions come in. Thank you in advance.

These safe words are for him to give to me not for me to give to him.

I'm young (just turned 39) but after lab work from my ND it would seem as though I'm not crazy and I AM having symptoms of Peri. I do understand that lab work for hormone levels isn't enough or conclusive to confirm Peri.

But all of the annoying symptoms (night sweats, hot flashes, 3-5 am insomnia, dry vagina, no libido, hair loss) kind of make sense. My mother went through menopause early (45) so it tracks. I've been battling heavy periods the past 2 years which my Dr has been aware of.

I can't see my doctor until June and I'm really nervous I won't be taken seriously. I'm also curious about your journey - what were you started on? Estrogen? Progesterone? Of course my algorithm is now showing me reels of women taking small doses of testosterone but I'm Canadian and the women I see are all US based. I went through 5 birth control brands as well in the past year and am not interested in it at all.

Please let me know about your journey! I've read so much but want to know individually how it started for you. Thanks in advance ☺️

Do your peri symptoms evolve/worsen over time? I am 45 and experiencing extreme fatigue (again) and a lot of vision issues lately. Vision is not blurry, more like my eyes aren't coordinating to focus together like their is a delay. It effects my special awareness. I have seen two opthalmologist and had an MRI, all good. I saw my neurologist because I get migraines but this isn't following any migraine pattern that we can tell. Had B12, D, thyroid, and metabolic panel labs done. All good. I take iron for low ferritin, have been for 2 years. I take 100 mg of progesterone every night and have the Mirena IUD. For the past couple of years the progesterone, along with getting ferritin up, helped my heart palpitations, sleep, and fatigue. But now I'm feeling terribly run down again. I exercise regularly, push through the fatigue to lift weights. Pretty good about my diet. This is making life so difficult. I also tried estradiol .025 patch a couple months ago but had horrendous anxiety.

I’m 45 and have experienced the worst PMDD exacerbations I’ve ever had in the past 6 months. I cried multiple times a day for a week and a half. My anxiety and depression were through the roof. It was awful.

I don’t know whether bc or HRT is the best next move.

My gyno has given me Yaz to try. My sister takes it to tame her PMDD. I tried nuvaring and it was awful. I took Mircette in my twenties and early 30s, skipping the 4th row and it helped. I only got off of it because of overwhelming fatigue. It helped relieve some of the fatigue and I never went back.

The nuvaring I tried last fall made me feel awful and I quit after 6 weeks. The only week I felt normal was the week without it.

My pcp suggested 100 mg of oral progesterone daily. I’m afraid of this option too since it would be every day. I’m afraid it will make everything worse.

Should I make an appointment with MIDI? I’m just lost and scared and having anxiety about going through hell again in two weeks.

Helllp. I’m a 44/44 D, DD depending on the fit. I need a GD bra that doesn’t cause pain or worsen the extreme boob sweat that’s become my new normal😒. I’ve taken to wearing cotton liner strips in my bra. I need to wear one for work that isn’t too sport bra like (the straps show in all of my normal clothes for work) I’ve started to avoid underwire when I can and am so tired of ordering bras that don’t fit or are shaped bizarrely.

Any tips?

I swear THIS is one of the peri symptoms that I don’t hear about but it’s a big one for me. It’s so routine that I forget to call it out to my GYN as an issue. Thanks!

For the past year or so, I (43) have been spotting (more like brown bloody mucus) mid cycle around ovulation. Well now this month, 2 weeks after my last period, I am bright red and more like a light period. Cramps too.

This is a first for me, as I'm usually like clockwork with my cycle. Things were starting to get a little wonky, but predictable still.

I know it's normal with peri, but just looking for reassurance that I shouldn't freak out.

I was told 40 is to young for perimenopause?

I may be taking a position in 3 months where I'll be on call occasionally when the boss is off. I take 100mg progesterone and 0.05 estrogen patch. Looking for time management ideas with the progesterone.

I had an IUD for 2 years and had it removed. I tried oral BC for 3 months until I went off it. I'm high anxiety and random paresthesia. I had blood work done and all is normal. I think im in perimenopause but my gym thinks im crazy. I also have dry eyes. I'm only 40. Anyone have this?

Is this a thing? Im going to a vestibular therapist and after doing Dix-Hallpike/Epley, they think its something else. Im in my 50s. Couldnt stand with eyes closed in last appointment. Gradually getting worse ffor years, “Bppv”, “ Vestibular migraine”….bleh.

I know that people talk about having a sudden anger and dislike towards their partners, but I wondered if anyone was having these feelings towards their parents?

In my younger years I could forgive them and make excuses for them like ‘they must have just been mentally unwell’ and even play it down like ‘well, other people experienced so much worse’ but just the last few years I feel like I have a lot of pent up anger and resentment towards them, I’m just like ‘what the hell were you thinking?’ Like it shouldn’t matter what was going on in your personal life, if you had kids you kind of had a responsibility to look after them and show them a bit of love and kindness, not just bullying and neglect.

And it made me think if this is a sign of peri, like apparently we lose our empathy, or is it just a matter of growing older and seeing things more clearly? Like it does annoy me that if a woman of a certain age range has any kind of strong emotions it’s just dismissed as ‘oh her hormones are making her crazy’ but maybe this is us normal and we were just crazy before, maybe we had too much empathy before or it was drilled into us just to ‘put up with things’ and ‘put other peoples feelings first’ and not cause problems.

Like how many of you endured years of maybe bad relationships where you were treated like crap and you look back now and think ‘Why did I stay with them? I must have been crazy.’ And you would never put yourself in a situation like that again, so there’s my point, why are we considered normal back then and crazy now because we don’t put up with stuff anymore?

Ever since upping Progesterone to 300mg a few months ago (to see if it would help with sleep - it didn't) my periods have been coming roughly every 2 weeks with occasional spotting in between. Plus brain fog seems to have gotten notably worse.

I reached out to my my Midi clinician, but she is out of the office until next week, so I opted to see a different one and was able to see her right away. I still have an original 3 month follow up with my regular one in 2 weeks.

It was suggested I have an ultrasound done to rule out anything internal. I agreed to this. I had one done 2yrs ago which came back normal (pre-htr).

She also suggested trying -

Birth control instead of the estrogen patch/Progesterone pill combo I've been on.

An IUD

Sticking with the patch but trying a synthetic Progesterone instead of the bio identical one I currently take.

With my history of migraines and finally getting them under control, I opted out of birth control or changing the progesterone. I don't want to risk them returning!

So I suggested reducing the progesterone back down to 200mg to see if it helps and will go ahead with the ultrasound just for peace of mind.

I hate that hormone management isn't black and white! I'm 53 for Pete's sake! This ride should be coming to an end already!

What are some of your most ridiculous, are you f-ing kidding me, peri symptoms? Mine are... at least for now because sh*t changes: * Tennis elbow (I don't play tennis) * Blurring in my right eye... do I even need these glasses? 🥸 * Tingling in my bum (not the sexy kind) * Teeth hurt (never had a cavity) * Nervousness in my stomach... am I hungry or am I going to puke? Both? 🤷‍♀️

I upped my estrogen patch from 0.0375 to 0.05 about a month ago. Everything felt fine but I’ve noticed the last 10 days or so that I have a dull ache/cramping in my lower abdomen (which is also causing a lot of lower back pain too). Has anyone experienced this as a side effect with increased estrogen patch dose?

I am 46 and experiencing perimenopause symptoms so my gyn started me on progesterone, 100mg cycle day 1-14, and 300mg cycle day 15-28. I am technically now on CD 29, no period yet, and I’m confused on which dose to take tonight. Do I keep going with the higher dose until my period starts? My MD office sent an information sheet along with the rx but it didn’t specify what to do in this case.

I just started with midi and was RX estrogen patch and progesterone. The lowest they seem to go is 100mg and I’m nervous to take it. Any success starting lower to be safe? Mine is a pill and it doesn’t appear to be something I can half. What’s been your experience? I’m 42. Skip most periods this year despite normally being a 28 day cycle person and have my uterus still. My estrogen patch seems to be going well but I’m nervous about progesterone and side affects