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We want to talk about all things periods and how they affect our daily lives as chemists at Oxford. We would love to here your views and opinions:
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Periodically, the podcast that covers all things periods and chemistry!
Each week, over this series of six episodes, we here at the University of Oxford will be taking a deep-dive into just how periods have affected us in tutorials, exams, labs and just generally studying at undergrad. We want to talk about how periods can sometimes just get in the bloody way!
Periodically is funded by the Royal Society of Chemistry Equality and Diversity fund.
[00:00:00] Lottie: Periodically is back for season two. We are still going to be talking to you about all things periods and chemistry, but this time we have a twist. This year we are very grateful to welcome guests onto the podcast from all over the UK. In our next six episodes our guests will be talking to us about their experiences with menstrual and reproductive health, where we take a deep dive into topics ranging from endometriosis, pregnancy and the menopause, to name a few. Our guests represent a wide range of experiences and are at different points in their career and we hope this will shed light on the impact that menstruation can have at all points in our lives. We still continue our quest to find out and talk about how menstruation can sometimes just get in the bloody way. This year we'd like to thank the RSC Inclusion and Diversity Fund, the University of Oxford Chemistry Department and the EPSRC funded OxICFM CDT for supporting the podcast.
[00:01:00] Felicity: Hi, I'm Felicity.
[00:01:01] Josie: Hi I'm Josie.
[00:01:02] Felicity: And we are both third year chemists at the University of Oxford and today we are very excited to be joined by Dr Sarah Rawe and Kelly Britton. Thank you both so much for making the journey to record with us today, especially to Sarah who travelled all the way from Ireland. So I will let you both introduce yourselves.
[00:01:19] Kelly: Hi, I'm Kelly, I'm a DPhil student in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford.
[00:01:24] Sarah: So hi, I'm Sarah and I am a lecturer in chemistry in the Technological University Dublin.
[00:01:30] Josie: Today we are going to be exploring both Kelly and Sarah's experiences of having children alongside a career in academia, as well as their journeys of both the menopause and menstrual health. Just as a warning, we will be discussing miscarriage, mental health and suicidal thoughts as part of this episode.
[00:01:45] Felicity: So to start with, can we ask you both to talk through your journeys of balancing a career in academia with pregnancy and childcare?
[00:01:53] Kelly: It's tough, but I think from my sort of experience, I didn't get the opportunity to go to university after school. So, being able to come and do this now, later in life, slightly more unconventional than most, it's, I don't know, like part of me is just, I'm so, like, I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled to be here and I tend to sort of, I don't know, I sometimes feel like I'm a child, like, who's just been let into a sweet shop every time I walk into the lab or do anything, because I'm so excited about the fact that I am here, and yes, it is difficult with a child and my son is nine at the moment and he has his own sort of like challenges that he's trying to work through. So sometimes trying to balance, being in the lab and then suddenly having the school phone you up because something's gone wrong at school or you know, and it's having a meltdown and stuff like that. So having that type of thing can be quite difficult. One thing I would like to say with that is that I've just been very fortunate to have a very supportive supervisor and group as well. You know, so when I've had to like rush out and people can then, deal with my experiment or superviser has always has been very understanding of that, if you know and so that's made a big difference and I know that a lot of people aren't fortunate enough to have that, where I'm just very lucky. Yeah.
[00:03:16] Josie: Did having a child impact your decision on applying for the PhD? Did you have any worries about that?
[00:03:22] Kelly: So interestingly enough, I, it was having a child that made me decide I had a... the way I like to sort of put it is I had a career crisis when I had my son. I suddenly, I was, at that point, I didn't have a degree. I was working in customer services. I didn't feel like I'd fulfilled my true potential and then I had him and it was just like a big eye opener. Like I just was like, is this where my life is right now? And so that was that point that I decided, that I was going to try and do a degree and the only way that I could do it at that time was through the Open University so that I could remain in work. So it took me six years, part time, so I was able to work alongside that and I mean, I hope that I also like, my son now growing up and seeing me doing what I'm doing, I kind of really I hope that I'm going to inspire him. I mean, he absolutely hates homework at the moment and things like that, but you know, he also has met like, my group members and people that are like, I've been on my sort of study journey and he adores them and so I'm hoping that all of that was also actually then just going to help inspire him as he grows.
[00:04:32] Josie: Yeah, that's really lovely. It is such a shame that in academia, with the way the system works, it's hard to balance having children and your career. It almost must feel that you have to choose one or the other and Sarah, you have also had experience with balancing your career and pregnancy. Could you tell us a bit about your story?
[00:04:52] Sarah: I'll start with the good stuff first. Yeah, so I have one child, I have a son he's now 14 and it was a dream pregnancy and I had no issues with my pregnancy at all and I think that may have blindsided me a little bit to what was coming down the line for me. I was 35 when I got pregnant so I'd already done a couple years of a postdoc, I had started my lecturing career, I had, I think four group members, three or four group members in my research group when I fell pregnant, but I was close to that borderline geriatric mother borderline, which I imagine a lot of people are by the time they, they've gone through their degrees, PhDs, there's probably a lot of people in that situation thinking to have their children a little bit later once they're established. Everything went really fine, even the epidural worked well. So, I, it was a very easy experience. My shock then when I found myself sort of alone in Ireland with a baby. I didn't have any experience of babies or child care at all. I've not grown up around young siblings or anything like that. My parents are in the UK, so I felt very much on my own and very isolated for a while, because I'd been working I didn't have a huge group, I mean, I knew my neighbors to say hello to, but I didn't have a huge group of friends outside of work. So yeah, it was a real sort of learning curve and how to adjust from not being an academic all always thinking about chemistry and work and teaching to then thinking about this lovely bundle of joy in front of me and adjusting to that different sort of lifestyle. So yeah, very steep learning curve was very difficult. I was fortunate in some ways because my partner is also a chemist at a university in Dublin, a different university in Dublin and actually in the same area of chemistry as well. So he was able to take my students on and run group meetings with them and kind of just do the day to day sort of oversee and make sure they could carry on while I was on maternity leave. I'm not sure how that worked. would have worked otherwise, but anyway, I'm sure we'd have worked out something, but that was just a really, I suppose, fortunate coincidence there for us. So I suppose in terms of what happened there, it was very straightforward, difficult, challenging and I didn't think anything of it.
When it really became challenging for us was when we tried to have our second child and then unfortunately it didn't go so well for us from then onwards so about probably 18 months after, we started trying for a second child. I was lucky in that I never had a problem getting pregnant, so that wasn't the problem. But I had my first miscarriage at about 8 weeks we went for a scan and they told us that the foetus didn't look the right size, but maybe, everything was okay and we just got our dates wrong. We knew we didn't have our dates wrong, so we knew it was just a waiting game then and yeah, I had a miscarriage at 12 weeks the first time there and unfortunately my body seems to be quite good at being pregnant, so I wasn't able to expel all the womb lining and all of the remnants of that pregnancy naturally. So I had to go in for my first medical procedure there. Yeah, that's not something I would recommend to anyone, unfortunately. So that was my first miscarriage. and then we decided a little while after that, that we would try again. Miscarriages are fairly common and you'd be surprised, actually, the story comes out, I would tell a few people how many women a generation or so older would say to me, yes, I've been through that before. We don't talk about it very much as women, but as soon as I mentioned my experience, there were lots of women who could share that experience as well. Then around that time I also found out there was a genetic issue in my family. I can't remember how that, how I found out about it, but I was sent for a test, a blood test and I found out I had something called a Robertsonian translocation. It's a really common genetic condition. It's sort of one of the most common causes of miscarries in terms of genetic conditions. It's when a couple of your chromosomes are fused together. So I have the right amount of genetic information, but unfortunately I can pass on double the amount of chromosome 13 to a child and that child would then be born with Patow syndrome, which is a very serious condition. Babies born with Patow syndrome don't generally live out the year, but you're much more likely to miscarry before that happens. So it didn't stop us trying to conceive. It was something we knew about. You've got about a one in 1, 000 risk of miscarriage. with that. So then I carried on trying again and unfortunately then I had my second miscarriage shortly after that and in this case, something else turned out. This was a partial molar pregnancy. So I don't know if you guys know what a partial molar pregnancy is. What that means is that two sperms have fertilised the same egg. So they've got double the amount of paternal genetic material as they have maternal. That's obviously not a viable embryo, a partial molar pregnancy. is kind of cruel in a way because the fetus develops and the placenta develops. So you feel like it's a normal pregnancy. But then again, my body didn't expel the products. It was only when they looked into doing the procedure on me and they analysed the tissue, they found out it was this partial molar pregnancy. There are some abnormalities you can see on the ultrasound and things as well and unfortunately for that, it carries the risk that the, that you can leave some cells behind that are abnormal and they sort of grow like cancerous cells, if left unchecked. Now that's unusual, but it does mean they have to follow you and your hormone levels for about six months after you've had that partial molar pregnancy, just to make sure that you're not having these abnormal hormone levels and those cells haven't remained in your womb and can cause those conditions for you. That was difficult because unfortunately, and anyone who's had a miscarriage knows this, that you go in for your treatment in the same place where everyone else is going in to have their baby. So walking into a maternity hospital every few weeks to have your blood tests passed, all the people having very healthy, you don't feel jealous, you just feel sad. So yeah, that was pretty hard, followed by a third miscarriage, which fortunately was normal in a miscarriage sense of the things. You know, at that stage we'd become pretty pragmatic about it, I'm not saying it wasn't hard dealing with the first two, it definitely was, but we had sort of faced our issues. Yeah, we have these conditions happening to us, it's unlucky, we're gonna maybe have more miscarriages than the average couple, but we really wanted a second child, so we're going to persevere, we're going to get through this and I really felt quite strong at that point, yeah, I can do this, I've been through it all now, I can face this and my third miscarriage was very normal, thank God and I was able to deal with it at home, I didn't need any medical intervention and almost after that I was like, yeah, I'm now impervious to this, I'm going to be fine, but unfortunately my fourth miscarriage I had to have another medical procedure and this is the one that went really wrong for me. All I really remember about waking up was the amount of pain I was in and I've never been in that much pain in my entire life. I basically woke up screaming and it kind of felt like I was in a movie, in terms of I was screaming and people were rushing to me and it turned out that there was a small hole, a small perforation in my uterus from the procedure and in fact it was so small, that's why they hadn't detected it. It would almost have been better if they'd gone through and they'd known they had done that damage, but unfortunately they hadn't spotted it at the time, so it was spotted, as I said, when I woke up from the anesthesia. Yeah, it's a small hole, I was bleeding, it was a lot of pain and then I just sort of remember they had to, there were things beeping, monitors beeping, they had to tilt the bed to let the blood run to my head, they were calling for units of blood, you know, they were calling for adrenaline and so on. So I knew, This is pretty serious at this stage, they had to sort of cut off my bra in case I needed to be resuscitated because I was wearing an underwired bra and then the sort of the last thing I remember is being rushed down the corridor with the lights above your head, into surgery again so they could fix that hole and sort out the internal bleeding. So I have quite a large scar from across my pelvic region now where they obviously had to go in there and then they had to sort out that hole and I think that was the end for me in terms of trying again, pregnancy wise. There was a lot of trauma around that, a lot of counseling. So, for me, I just couldn't find the strength after that to try again and then I just had to maybe change my focus. I took a career break for a couple of years, which I had been, I suppose intended to do. It had always been on my cards and I'll be honest, with a child at home, trying to run a research group, trying to lecture as much as I did. I had been thinking that, trying to have babies and miscarriages and stuff, it was getting too much for me. So whether this had happened or not, I suspect I would have taken a career break of some sort. But yes, I took a career break and then, I got to spend some time, you know, as I decided I was only going to have one child, it became really, important and it shouldn't take this, but it became really important to spend my time with him while he was young because I was never going to get that experience again. So fortunately I was able then to be at home with my son when he went to school and do that journey with him through school and I was home with him most or a lot of his preschool life and then through his early schooling and then I was part time after that. So that was the only way I could get my work life back. I'd also recover my mental stability, I suppose, after all that trauma and the counseling and yeah, so it was a difficult time.
[00:14:39] Felicity: Thank you so much for sharing such a personal and I'm sure very difficult story. So these very traumatic experiences that you had led you to take a career break. So how do you feel this career break impacted you both personally and in your career?
[00:14:56] Sarah: I'll be really honest and say how fortunate I was to be in Ireland. Ireland is a really nice country in that way to work and it's still very family centered, so there was never an issue with my career break. My head of school was extremely supportive and always had been, I mean, I had to tell him all the way through all the things that were happening and he'd always been very supportive of that and very understanding. The other thing that I have there that I don't think you have in the UK anymore is essentially permanency. So that gives you a huge amount of security in your job to make decisions that I don't think I would have been able to make in the UK and I wonder whether I would have even stayed in academia in the UK. The thought here that somehow you could make the decision, well, maybe I'll just pause my research for a few years while I focus on this, which is where I'd got to. I'd had four students and I was down to the last student who was doing very well and was about to submit her thesis and I was like, right, I'll just pause here for a bit, take this career break. I don't think that's a decision you could have made in the UK, or if you had, you would have been really worried that you wouldn't have a job in a few years time. So, that says a lot for about women working here compared to women working in countries like mine, where that is a possibility.
[00:16:13] Felicity: No, it's really interesting to hear your reflections on the difference between Ireland and the UK because there's obviously a big shift that needs to happen here.
[00:16:20] Josie: As well as these challenges you've both faced surrounding childcare and pregnancy, you've also experienced symptoms of perimenopause. Could I ask you both to talk through your experiences of this?
[00:16:31] Kelly: So it was about a year ago. I was just starting to experience like all these different sort of symptoms. I was like lethargic. I'd lost motivation, the tiredness thing was definitely like, it was a huge one. I found myself just being angry all the time. I'd go home and my, I'd have like such a short fuse with like my family and so a lot of these sort of like things and then I was talking to a friend of mine, we actually would go for a walk around university parks at lunchtime and I was talking about all my, what I was going through in these feelings and she said to me, she said, Oh, she said, have you thought that about or, consider that you might be perimenopausal and I was just like, what? I had literally never heard of it. I mean, I knew of, I've heard of menopause, but I didn't know what perimenopause was and she then gave me a link to a website where you could go on and you could have a look and you could, answer some questions or see, and things like that and I was, I couldn't believe it. I just kept thinking, I've always felt like I was, I tried to understand what's going on. I've always, especially from my childhood with a mother who used to make it seem like periods were really like, very quiet, don't, nobody ever discusses it and stuff like that and I was adamant that it was not going to be like that for me and my friends and for anyone else, so I was shocked that I didn't know what this thing was and, so I looked it up and even though you're, there's certain ages that they sort of expected to have it, it can happen at much younger ages and even people in their twenties can experience it which is also makes me wonder why like, we don't ever find out about it, we haven't been taught about it or anything like that. So anyway, I went to my doctor and I said, Oh, I think I might be perimenopausal and she looked at me and she was a bit like, wouldn't really expect it, you know, I'm 42. So like, it could very easily have started, but I had to come off, I'm at the time I was taking the progesterone only pill, the pop, which meant that I didn't have periods and it was the best time of my life. Anyway, I had to come off the pill because obviously one of the biggest signs of telling whether you're a perimenopausal or menopausal is any sort of changes to your periods, so being on the pill, that wasn't going to help. So I had to come off of that and then I had to do some blood tests and then blood test again six weeks later and other tests and things like that to monitor hormone levels and things like that and I went back and you know, to get my results and she was like, no, hormones are all completely fine, everything's fine and she said, but what I do think we need to talk about is that these symptoms are also, the same sort of symptoms that you would experience if you're suffering from anxiety and it was literally just about, like you could, list the two different things and they would be exactly the same and I suppose that started to make a bit of sense because my personality is I'm not diagnosed with anything, but I have a lot of traits that, I'm a serious overthinker, I'm a bit of a perfectionist, I spin too many plates and I get a little bit obsessive about things, so the fact like, for example, now this, my career at this point, it's an obsession, a little bit of an obsession, but it also was something that has got me through some very difficult times. But when I first started my degree, I lost my mom quite suddenly. We found out that she had cancer, but like, she like literally was riddled with cancer and we thought she had about two months to live and she actually had two weeks. So that all happened really quickly and actually I found the studying just helped me get through it all, so it became very therapeutic for me and so that's kind of where that obsession has also, I think it's sort of manifested from that and then a couple of years later I then lost my dad, but we're still studying. So it, and it kind of just kept spurring me on to just keep going and so, yeah. So I suddenly found myself in these situations where I would suddenly get very excited about something and I would work very long hours and I would, I'd go home and I would still work on admin stuff till late and things like that and trying to help my son do his homework and do all his things that he wants and then as he started now, like towards last year, we started to realise that actually, he's also got these traits that, he's sort of getting into trouble at school quite a lot and his teachers were phoning me all the time in the lab, telling me about little things that had happened and basically just really low level disruption, but it was quite constant and I was getting very stressed about it. It was really and I don't think I at the time, appreciated how much it was actually stressing me out and like, I generally have a very, I can do attitude and I was like, I'm not going to let this get me down. But obviously, it does eat away at you somewhere along the line and it just got, yeah, it just got really bad. There was a couple of things that just sort of happened, small things. I suddenly became very, like, really hypersensitive. I can remember, like, trying to get back on the train back to Reading cause that's where I live and somebody was just really rude to me, like on the train, and I just burst into tears and I cried all the way home on the train and all the way back on my bike, cycling home on the other side and then I just, I didn't want to do anything. I didn't want to get up in the mornings and that was a huge shock. I've never felt like that, you know, I'm a happy person. I'm an energetic person, I'm a I can do person, this was really scary for me. You know, so when I thought it was perimenopausal, I was like, Oh, go and let's go and find out what this is, and it came back as anxiety and I was like, Oh yeah, okay and part of me was actually relieved because it was like, I don't mind. She was like, how do you feel about, going on medication? And I was like, yes, bring it on! You know and I was like, okay, I get that like a lot of people don't like to, and that's absolutely fine. My mom was one of those people. Like she literally would not take medication for anything and I suffered for that, so again, one of those things where I'm like, actually, no, I'll have this help, yeah, thanks very much, you know, the first few weeks, Sertraline was absolutely horrendous, but I was told, it gets worse before it gets better and literally now I'm loving life again and so I was just, yeah, like the part of me just felt like, I don't know whether I want, I mean, initially I wanted another child as well. I didn't want to, I was an only child and I hated it and I always vowed that, I would never only have one child and at the moment I only have one child and I intend really now only to have one child. But knowing that I have that choice still, I mean, obviously I'm much, much older, but I also feel like nowadays, actually, a lot of older people, women are getting much older and having children and that's becoming more normal and that, but just knowing that I have that, possibly have that choice you know, makes a huge difference. It's not like, I don't know, being perimenopausal or menopausal feels like you reach a checkpoint in your life and so, yeah, I'm not sure that I'm ready for that yet.
[00:23:49] Felicity: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing all of that, Kelly. It's interesting hearing you talk about menopause as a checkpoint in our bodies that we can't return from because it reminds me of puberty, which is something that is really widely spoken about in society now, which is really great, but it makes you wonder why menopause is so unknown, even though it's another massive transition that half the population are going through. So Sarah, you've had quite a contrasting experience. so can you tell us about your journey of realising you were going through the menopause?
[00:24:19] Sarah: Well, I was, I am a little bit older than Kelly, so I'm at the other end of my forties. Very close to the other end of my forties, not long left. I guess in some ways the story is similar, is that I didn't realise what was happening to me for a long time, having been through all of the previous issues with fertility and pregnancy, I was quite tuned into my menstrual cycle and so on, so I suppose my first clue was I started getting a little bit irregular. It wasn't even irregular, my cycle maybe went from being 28 days to 30 something days and I was like, well, that's a bit weird, but it would only be every so often and it was happening at a time, I was still part time working, and then we went into the lockdown for COVID and then I was really busy at home because we still had all our lectures to do and so I thought maybe it's a little bit of stress, everyone's at home and COVID's happening and yeah, so it took me a while to clock onto that it was perimenopause, but I suppose the irregular bleeding, the irregular periods, and then just some feelings associated with depression, feeling really low mood. I could see my son was getting older and about sort of I suppose about eight, nine, he started becoming a real daddy's boy rather than a mummy's boy and it was a bit of a transition for me to see that. I started feeling like I was very much in the background at home. I had felt like the primary carer for my son up until that point and there's never any tension with me and my partner, he's very good. So it wasn't an argument, it just had been natural. My son's attention had been on me, I had been part time etc, and it felt like that was shifting now during COVID. My son and his dad would be downstairs doing his schoolwork and I would be upstairs, so we were sort of, even though we were in the same house, it actually felt like I was more distant from them. So I had sort of this feeling of being pushed into the background, this feeling of depression, my cycles were becoming irregular and I went to my doctor, who I don't see anymore, but is a male doctor, was a male doctor, and I said, it's starting to feel like life is all a little bit pointless and in particular, that I feel like I'm a bit pointless. What's the point of all of this? And he just said, well, that's how we all feel at your age and I was like, oh, okay. Which now makes me think how traumatized he must be or what he must be going through if he thinks we all feel like that, but anyway, I guess had we not been in COVID, I would have still been going to work as well, that would have been an extra pressure, at least I didn't have the commute and things like that. But it was getting worse, I felt like I was putting on, I was putting on weight. I was tired. I stopped sleeping. I didn't really have like, hot flushes or anything like that, so that's what I was sort of looking for, just like, oh, that must be the symptom. But anyway, eventually I sort of pushed through and the symptom that really tipped me over the edge, I said, right, I'm going to the doctor, I'm going to insist now, was I started to have really dry eyes and it felt like I had sand in my eyes all of the time, particularly when I was tired and it was so irritating. I was putting like hot water compressors on, they're like going for loads of bath shots, nothing was working. I had the gels. I was like, Oh, this is ridiculous, this is so uncomfortable. So it's funny how you have this sort of, all these tiny things. I think women just put up with so much sometimes, all these tiny little niggles we have, we just power on through. That was the one I was like, right, that's just crossed a line. I'm not prepared to live with that one and I saw a female doctor this time who said, well, this could be perimenopause, certainly with your periods now being much more irregular. At that stage, I'd missed a couple of periods as well. So she put me on an estrogen pill actually, oral estrogen and some progesterone at that stage but then she signed me up for a menopause clinic that's in my GP practice which is great because if you can see a specialist you need to, I don't know what the situation is here, there's not loads of specialists in Ireland and people are now being trained because I think menopause is coming up more and more as a health issue that women want to deal with and want to talk about. So I guess I got lucky in that clinic was being established at that time. So, she put me in there. It took me about three or four months to get an appointment and then I'd have my blood tests done and everything. So, it was confirmed then that I was perimenopausal. I don't think anyone was really in any doubt, but I was moved to the gel then. She said, the oral estrogen is terrible. So I hadn't really been feeling much better and when I was talking to you guys preparing for this podcast, you were asking me about symptoms and I said, Oh, I remember keeping a list of symptoms. So I went back, it was actually three months into my original treatment, my oral and I had this list, like, a page long of all the things that were annoying me at the time. So it wasn't working very well for me at all, but she put me onto the gel and then the oral progesterone. That certainly started to feel like I was turning the corner, but unfortunately I'm progesterone sensitive. So, the anger issues were terrible. I remember nearly making my son cry one day and he's pretty robust and there's not a lot I can do to make him cry anymore and I just lost my temper at him, and I was like, OK that's a line and I can't be doing with that. But the other thing I had associated with the progesterone was deep, dark feelings of depression when I was taking it and feeling really like this life is pointless, that I have nothing left in this life and walk around going, the things you convince yourself, my son will be okay, everything will be fine, I'm not really necessary anymore and that's how I felt, like I just wasn't necessary and I don't even feel like that and I suppose I had the sense to realize I only felt like that about midway through the progesterone. It's a 12 day cycle and about day six and seven, I would feel this real sort of bottomless pit of despair. So anyway, I went back to the doctor and she said it's not uncommon for women to be very sensitive to progesterone and in fact turns out to be one of the most common reasons women give up on HRT. It does take a while to get settled into what's going on. what suits you best. So she changed the way that we administer the progesterone. She has slowly increased my levels of estrogen to I'm finally what a year and a half into my treatment and I'm feeling normal again now and it's only really now that I'm feeling normal again that I realized how bad it was when I wasn't feeling normal. So I would say loads of women my age have started talking about this now and as soon, you know, you start saying something, then someone goes, Oh, actually, I've had this experience and we've started to share these experiences now and it's amazing that when you do talk about it, you can share these experiences. and other women coming up to me then saying, Oh, I heard you're taking HRT. How's it going for you? I was thinking of going to the doctor because I'm not feeling great, but I don't know there's anything really wrong with me and I don't have any symptoms and I'm going, what symptoms are you looking for? They're looking for the hot flushes, right? If you don't have that, you can't be menopausal and I'm going, well have you stopped bleeding? And they're like, yeah and I'm like, that's a pretty big clue that your perimenopause will go to the doctor and get seen and I'm very conscious as well that I'm seen by the doctor, I pay quite a lot to see my doctor. I pay more than I would, in Ireland you always pay to see your doctor, but you pay more for a specialist clinic. So I have to pay a little bit more than you would see a doctor and I have to pay that regularly, I have to pay for my prescriptions as well. So I'm very conscious that I'm I have that money behind me that allows me to do that and that women from different parts of society, perhaps less fortunate in terms of their finances, just probably even wouldn't address this, they just power on through it and I think that there's definitely equity issues there as well and I'm fortunate to be able to treat myself or have myself get treated, so...
[00:32:06] Josie: Thank you so much for sharing your symptoms. I think it's really important to talk about the more uncommon symptoms as well, because I was telling my mum that I was doing an episode on the perimenopause and she didn't even realise what it was and she's actually going through it now and this made her realise like when I was talking about the different symptoms and everything, so I think it's good to start the conversation so maybe other women will realise because you don't really get educated about it like in school or anything.
[00:32:36] Sarah: My GP is actually really good in that way that she'll have conversations with me and one of the things they. I don't think they really know when perimenophobe starts or when it finishes necessarily, there's not a lot being done, healthcare has been very male biased and so we're only just starting to see these sorts of issues really taking the forefront.
[00:32:56] Josie: I think it can last up to 10 years apparently, which is crazy.
[00:33:00] Felicity: Yeah. When you were talking about, like, going through COVID and your symptoms kind of blending with other parts of your life, because my mum had a similar experience in that she was losing sleep and she was thinking maybe I'm just really stressed, maybe it's that point of my life where I just start, my children have left home, maybe I'm, but actually, like, she got put on HRT and after, like, a year and a half of experiencing quite bad mental health symptoms and other symptoms that maybe you wouldn't initially associate with the menopause and she feels so much better after going on it so it's really like highlights how important it is to talk about all the symptoms and everything.
[00:33:35] Kelly: I'd have to agree with that because I think one of, being a daughter, especially my mom never spoke about it, so that's definitely, I think it's probably a generational thing, like I mean, even just the way she used to talk to me about periods, I can remember we would go into the shops and she would come and whisper to me, do you need things? And I would look at her and I used to really love doing this to my mom, shame, sorry, but I would walk a few meters away and go, oh look, the tampons are here, but initially she wouldn't even let me use tampons as well, she was absolutely adamant that, she used to think that like, oh, if I use tampons, I'd no longer be a virgin or something and all the stuff that, and you grow up believing it took for a while. But I used to horse ride and there's nothing worse than horse riding with a sanitary towel as you're riding along and you're in a riding school with a lot of other people and you can feel this pad working its way up the back of your jodhpurs and you're thinking any minute now it's going to pop up back and I lost it with my mom at one point, I really lost it and I was like, I don't want to use my jodhpurs. pads anymore, I love my riding and it's like, I can't not ride for a week every month, because of it. So I forced the issue onto tampons and then yeah. But like that conversation, those conversations, we never had those sort of discussions.
[00:35:01] Sarah: I remember the tampons or the sanitary products had to be in the cupboard just in case the men saw them.
[00:35:07] Kelly: Yes!
[00:35:07] Sarah: Like, what would happen if they walked into the bathroom and saw tampons there? Like...
[00:35:13] Kelly: My box now at home is on the, is right next to the toilet, it's not hidden, my son has gone in and he's like, Oh, what are these? And I'm like, those are tampons and he's like, Oh, what do you use them for? And I've told him and I've explained it to him, you know, and he's been like, Oh and he walks out, but he is and we'll keep having that conversation because as he gets older, he will become more understanding and I think it's, you know, I'm also, very conscious of him learning that, we also have uncontrollable emotions throughout the month and I think the more people understand and respect that, that also just makes life so much easier as well, rather than people just labeling you a ratty something or other, every now and again.
[00:35:58] Felicity: Yeah.
[00:35:58] Josie: I think it's really good that you're educating your son because in school we were separated out into boys and girls and only the girls were taught about periods but the boys weren't. But the girls were taught about the boys issues which is like so unfair, so yeah, it's important that everyone's taught about it, I think.
[00:36:14] Felicity: Yeah and I think it's really amazing that you were able to break that generational kind of thing that you learned, because I think a lot of people don't do that and it's so easy to absorb those teachings that we have from our parents, but it is so important that, you know, going forward we do talk about these things because otherwise children absorb that periods are something to be ashamed of, something to not talk about, something that are gross and a secret.
[00:36:39] Kelly: Yeah. So to some extent I appreciate being a bit of a rebel child, cause I think that's where it just, it was because of that, that all of this became normal for me.
[00:36:48] Felicity: Thank you so much for listening. In particular, a huge thank you to Sarah and Kelly for being such fantastic guests. We have learned so much from you and your experiences, and I'm sure our wonderful listeners have too. We hope you've enjoyed our discussion around balancing academia with the perimenopause and pregnancy. If you're interested in learning more about Periodically, then you can find us at www.periodicallyoxchem.wixsite.com or follow us on social media @periodically_ox. Tune in next week for our next episode.
[00:37:18] Lottie: Again, we'd like to thank the RSC Inclusion and Diversity Fund, the University of Oxford Chemistry Department and the EPSRC funded OxICFMD CDT for supporting the podcast.