The Perimenopause Husband
Perimenopause Bloating: What Her Husband Should Know
We'd get takeaway. And once it was eaten, she'd say it.
This isn't good for me. I'm already feeling bloated, and now I've just eaten this rubbish.
It was a regular comment in our house. More so in the early days, before either of us knew it was perimenopause.
Is bloating a sign of perimenopause?
In our house it was one of them.
Always feeling bloated is on the list of what I watched her carry. It sat right beside the kitchen scales: measuring her food, doing everything right. Bloated no matter what she ate. She wasn't slacking off. Her body had stopped answering.
On the way through to menopause, her body is going through a hormonal, biological change. Her stomach is one of the places it can show up.
Bloating has plenty of causes, though. If it's new, if it won't settle, or if there's pain with it, that's one for a doctor or a specialist in this field. It might be something else, and she deserves to know which.
What did I miss?
Back then, I heard the second half of the sentence.
The takeaway. The rubbish. It sounded like a comment about the food, so that's where it went in my head. A bit of guilt over a takeaway. Everyone says that.
Not everyone says the first half, though. I'm already feeling bloated.
Already. Before the food. That was the news, and it went straight past me.
Why does she blame the food?
Because the food is the one part of it she can point at.
Think about where she is with her body by then. Uncomfortable in it, while she's doing everything she can. Weighing her food. Feeling like her body won't respond to any of it.
Then the takeaway turns up, and for once there's a reason sitting right there on the table. Of course she points at it. It's easier than saying she's felt like this for no reason she can name.
The takeaway was the last thing on top. It was never the whole of it.
What do I say when she says she's bloated?
Here's one of the tools. There are plenty.
Answer the first half of the sentence.
Leave the food alone. Don't defend the takeaway. Don't agree that it's rubbish either. Both of those keep the conversation on the plate, and the plate isn't the problem.
Answer the bit she said first. The already.
Something as plain as, you've been feeling it all day? Then let her tell you, or not. That's hers.
Most days you won't say anything about her body at all. Say nothing about it unprompted. That rule holds. This is for when she raises it herself, over a takeaway. Hear the half that matters.
Does it get better?
I can't promise you that, and neither can anyone who hasn't seen her.
What I can tell you is what I hear in that sentence now. Not the food. Her telling me how her body has been feeling, in the only words that were handy at the time.
That's a lot easier to answer properly once you've heard it.
Start With the Weather
The Weather Report is the two-page guide to reading these days: telling a storm warning from an overcast day from a fog day, and knowing the one thing to do in each. Free, on your phone in thirty seconds.