We will all have different stories to tell, I think. You should talk to a doctor about it because there can be problems hidden behind a menopausal facade. My mother observed symptoms like this when she was 44, her periods stopped fairly suddenly and she felt different, a bit moody, very tired and then noticed some weight gain. She finally went to the doctor after some months, to be told she was 6 months pregnant. With me.
As we get older our fertility wanes. By the time we're menopausal, we're almost infertile. Almost. But there are still enough people out there who fell pregnant, thinking it was no longer possible. If your period is so irregular that you're not sure if you've already had your last one say, six months ago, then you CAN'T assume you're no longer fertile. You never know when one last straggling egg wakes up sluggishly and decides to make one last hurrah. You will only know about it two weeks later IF it doesn't get fertilised in the meantime.
My best friend has been on Depo shots for years. She's older than me, hasn't had a normal period for years, her youngest child is 30. But last week she got a period. Not enough to be full-on, she said, just enough to be a blasted nuisance and remind her she still needs to be careful.
I had to go on HRT because for me, periods weren't tapering off but instead were turning up too often, for too long and were far too "enthusiastic". It was a sudden onset for me - I had normal cycles which you could almost set your watch by, until I turned 50. Then everything went crazy. I also was rapidly becoming anaemic and since I can't take iron, I had to make it stop. I had no "bouncing off the walls" symptoms, the HRT was only needed to shut the heavy periods down which they did, like shutting off a tap. It was that fast - I took the first tablet and got relief within a couple of hours.
But there were problems which began to show up - my previously perfect blood pressure began to rise. So after nearly 2 years, I talked to my GP. Surely the heavy period problem had passed? It was a peri-menopause issue, maybe it was time to see what the lie of the land was (hormonally) now? So she made me wean off the HRT and although while weaning off I had a couple of rather heavy periods, I had nothing of the scale I'd had before. And since weaning off, I've had one period like my friend's last week. That was almost a year ago.
I never had PMT and maybe that's why I haven't had any hormonal moodiness. But I think I'm noticing some "tropical moments" beginning. It's hard to tell, I do have some other health problems which could be disguising it.
So in summary - get yourself checked out. You COULD be in peri-menopause which lasts a varying time before you go into full menopause. In the meantime, you DO need to take precautions against the outside change of getting pregnant. It DOES happen and because of how things are now, it is much more difficult to predict. If you go on HRT it fixes a lot of the problems but do keep an eye on your blood pressure.
There are other issues such as the health and condition of your tissues, your youthfulness in various parts of your body (bones, for example) but there are ways to deal with this too including topical hormones and calcium supplements. Again, you need help to know what to do in your particular case and to make sure you're not dealing with a subtle nasty.
It does stop. When really depends on your body. Talk to other females in your line of descent and find out how things were for them.
If for some reason you do not welcome peri-menopause and want another baby, now is also the time to discuss things with your doctor, while there is still an outside chance. Some hormonal tweaking may be required but it can be done.
Think back to when it all started for you. Think back to how it was for you and how it was for other girls you knew. As different as you all were form each other then, it is as different now, each of us form one another. And yet we all have to go through it each in our own way and we can sympathise with the things we share in common.
Welcome to the sisterhood!
Marg