So long old "friend"?

Yesterday I was unpacking after our weekend away and as I put the box of tampax back into my knicker drawer I thought this box of tampax is well travelled, its been to Cereals in June, Yorkshire show in July and here it is now returning from Cambridge at the start of August.  And then I did a double take.  Because this 3 month old box of tampax is still closed.  A quick check on my phone confirmed my thoughts - the last time I had a period was back in May!  Now this may be a temporary blip, or of course I may be pregnant as Emily very hilariously pointed out - I did reply that were that to be the case in a complete role reversal of Catholic families through the years I would be passing this baby off as hers!! - or this may be the real deal and my reproductive years are now behind me.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that to be honest.  I remember the Wednesday evening when I was 14 and I went upstairs to wash my hair to discover that after 2 years of patiently waiting I had finally started my periods!! I remember blowing the dust off the pack of breeze block sized sanitary pads that girls used back then with great elation and finally feeling that I was a WOMAN!  I was deeply pissed off that no more than six months later my sister who was, and remains to this day, 18 months younger than me started her periods too, I didn't want to share this womanly right of passage with her dammit I wanted it to all be about me for once!  

My period was most at the forefront of my mind the 12 months I spent trying to get pregnant.  Using the power of my mind I managed to make it up to 3 weeks late some months, only for it to appear as I walked back from the chemist with yet another pregnancy test we could ill afford.   My sister and her husband, by then parents themselves, were staying one weekend in October 1991, my period was a week late and I was trying not to hope.  We had dinner and I suddenly felt very very sick, rushed upstairs and hurled for England.  I had never felt so ill.  My sister took this as a sure sign that I was with child and insisted that Steve went out first thing the following morning and purchased a pregnancy test, against his better judgement, convinced as he was that I was about to ruin a rare weekend with my sister.  How utterly and gloriously wrong he was!!!  When one night in April 1993 we had dinner and I was violently sick after an Easter weekend spent trying for number 2 we looked at one another with a knowing smile and Tom appeared in January 1994.  (Appeared - anyone who has squeezed a 9lb 2oz human out of their vagina will be enjoying a wry smile at that choice of word!)

Other than that my periods haven't really featured greatly in my life, they came, they went, they arrived unexpectedly when I was wearing white linen trousers, the usual really.  I hadn't really given any thought to how this next stage of my life would affect me, other than perhaps hoping that by the time it came both of my "babies" would have left home and Steve and I would have enough money and enough time to be enjoying life a little.  Ah well.

I am surprised at my lack of knowledge about all this though.  So my periods have stopped.  Am I now officially menopausal about to grow a beard, have terrific sweats and burst into tears at the slightest provocation?  If so, no biggy  the beard and the sweats have been around since last year at least.  Or is that it. Over. Gone. I'm barren, nothing to see here, please move along, menopause done and dusted.  Seriously how can I NOT know this stuff.  And where do I sign up for the HRT?  Do I need HRT?  Will it give me breast cancer?  I am here at, if not a major junction, at least a litter-strewn, pot hole filled layby in my life and I have no idea what lies ahead.  Luckily I like the unknown and prefer change to being stuck in a rut so lets I hope I can embrace "the" change and work with it.  And if not there's always the drugs, right? 

Unless of course I am pregnant and then I'm in deep shit.