Moms over 35 and non-returning periods?

[Mommel]

Maybe this is wishful thinking... but I was wondering if there are any older moms who went right from pregnancy and BFing into menopause and therefore never got another period.

Hey, a girl can dream, right? Almost six months and holding...

[claras_mom]

It took a year for my periods to come back the first time; about that after my second. Dd1 was born when I was 40; I'm closing in on 48 now. Been breastfeeding the whole time. I'm pretty definitely in perimenopause now. Fun times.

[lsmama]

Hello.  With DD1, mine came back 10 mos pp.  I was 34.  I'm 37 now and still no AF 13 months pp with DD2.

[goldenwillow]

Interesting, right! 

Mine came back 20 months PP.  I have had few cycles since and the last was 6 days late, I am never late and I am not pregnant per store bought tests.  I am 36 and had my son at 34.  Nursing on demand still since birth.  Somewhat confusing for sure. 

Never even thought about pre-menopause.  Humm? 

[claras_mom]

Goldenwillow and others, my ob/gyn said the best predictor of when you might hit menopause is when your mother or sisters did, though that only provides a very general guideline. Most women will start peri-menopause sometime in the late 40s, but of course it can be earlier. After the first, he did say there's no way of predicting when periods will return or if they'll be the same--in frequency or anything--as they were prior to the pregnancy. When my periods came back after dd1, for months they were super light when before they'd been relatively heavy. I'd always been very regular (28 days on the nose); they were less regular after.

Right now, low estrogen is probably causing v. dryness, but as long as dd2 is nursing, there's no way of telling how much of that is breastfeeding-related and how much of that is menopause-related. The hot flashes, however, are most certainly not breastfeeding related!

[Mommel]

Are you sure that hot flashes aren't related to breastfeeding? I've been getting a lot of those, but so have the other nursing mamas I know... maybe that's just post-partum hot flashes? That is very interesting... also, still no period despite feeling like I might get it soon.

We are doing BLW though, so he only gets solid food once a day and breastfeeds at will, which I guess keeps my supply up and the hormones up too?

On a side note, I keep getting "What are you feeding that kid? He's HUGE!!" so I guess he's okay. LOL People get really freaked out to know that I'm basically just breastfeeding him. We've only done solids for the last two weeks, so all that growth is from breast milk. It's amazing what our bodies can do to feed these little buggers, huh?