Already, this morning I have checked the following:
● Sleep quality
● Heart rate
● Blood pressure
● Temperature
● Pain levels
● Whether or not I’m ovulating
● Cravings
● Discharge
● Skin and hair health
● Digestion
● Medication
● Water intake
● Steps
Why, you may ask, has monitoring my health turned into a full-time job?
The truth is, if I want to have a second child (and I very much do), it won’t be as straightforward for me as it is for some women. I have written before about the fact that I am not in a physical position to go through another pregnancy, so in order to grow our family we will need a surrogate.
As I turn 35 in a few weeks, I want to freeze my eggs and embryos as soon as possible to give us the best chance. To be able to go through the process of having my eggs stimulated and then retrieved, I need to be in great physical shape, so for the past two years I’ve been tracking everything to within an inch of its life.
Luckily for me, I’d been tracking anyway because I wanted to understand my health better after having my son Leo. I’d been so unwell for so long, I wanted to make connections between the horrendous symptoms I was experiencing – hot sweats, intense mood changes, delirium, low blood sugar and headaches – and the time of the month, because I felt they were clearly related (despite no one taking this seriously).
I could feel these huge chemical surges around ovulation and menstruation that would cause excessive bleeding from my backside, too. I also suffered amenorrhoea (lack of periods) for more than a year, even though I’d never had the opportunity to breastfeed.
I needed to find answers.
Louise at 16; she was put on the pill while at boarding school
Learning to understand my body has been eye-opening. For many years I had no clue that your hormones affect pretty much everything (we women go through a lot over the course of a month!), from energy levels to sex drive, from the physical to the emotional.
Let me take you back to the beginning. I was put on the pill at the age of 14 when I was at boarding school.
There wasn’t much discussion, it was just an option that was given to everyone at the medical centre and most of us schoolgirls just copied our peers without really thinking about it. There was no reason for me to be on the pill as I didn’t have any issues with unusual periods or skin problems, but god forbid a pupil at this prestigious public school got pregnant – that would have been a disaster. Of course the irony was that we were at an all-girls school so there wasn’t a huge need for any of us to take contraception.
As a consequence, I spent the next 12 years on hormone replacement medication – from the combined pill to the progesterone-only pill to implants in my arm – with very little understanding of what was going on in my body.
While on the pill I had a few terrible relationships, which, looking back, were probably disasters because I was never really attracted to the men I dated; I had no interest in sex, it was just something you were expected to do. My libido was so non-existent that I genuinely considered whether I might be asexual.
Then, aged 26, two things happened: I decided to come off the pill and I met Ryan. Out of nowhere I developed this huge sex drive! It was like nothing I had experienced before – as though my whole physiology had changed. I felt alive and had so much energy; suddenly I felt like a normal person. The main thing, though, was that I was unexpectedly and hugely attracted to the opposite sex for the first time ever. I realised that was what it was meant to feel like to fancy someone – it felt like an actual hunger for him!
Louise Thompson with her son Leo, who turned three in November
This awakening had a ripple effect – my confidence grew, I felt generally healthier and happier. Interesting side note: Ryan is the complete opposite of any of the partners I had when I was on the pill. Would I have been attracted to him had I never come off it?
In the almost-decade since this revelation, my body has been through a lot – trying to conceive, pregnancy, Leo’s traumatic birth and its ongoing effects on my health – and I’ve become more and more in tune with my body. And yet, even now, with all my hard-won knowledge, I still don’t manage to plan life around hormonal ups and downs.
Even as recently as January, I had a photo shoot at a point in my cycle when I felt out of sorts, bloated and unattractive, which in turn made me feel self-conscious. It took all the energy I had just to try to perform. I wish I’d had the nerve to ask to do the shoot a week later.
Sound familiar? Many of us women have to be at the top of our game all the time, despite the fact that, for a quarter of the month, that can be a struggle. For as long as I can remember, ‘hormonal’ has been used as shorthand to dismiss women – ‘Oh don’t mind her, must be that time of the month’. Would it be so bad if we all became a bit more aware of what’s going on with our bodies?
It would help us plan our lives better, for a start. We could do the things that take a lot of energy on the days we’re most likely to be feeling our best. Instead we are taught to mask pain and get on with it.
Looking back now at my 14-year-old self, it seems astonishing that, while we know hormones have such a forceful effect on every part of our lives, no one explained that to us schoolgirls.
Twenty years on, though, I’m finally in the driving seat of my own life. After haemorrhaging in childbirth, then coping with the post traumatic stress disorder that followed, all while navigating multiple chronic health conditions, my body has often felt like a puppet with someone else pulling the strings. So I may be a slave to my tracking app for now, but having the tools to monitor my health has given me back control. And, hopefully, it will also give me (and Ryan and Leo) the baby we dearly long for.
