The hell of hot flushes and feral teen triplets
SHE’S got brain fog and hormonal rages. THEY flood the house and eat spaghetti at 3am. Actress JACKIE CLUNE’s riotous account of...
DuRIng one sleepless, sweaty night recently, I went downstairs at 3am to find my gangly 15- year- old triplets squashed onto a sofa eating spaghetti.
‘ What are you doing?!’ I asked, exasperated. They gawped at me, confused. ‘ Watching Finding nemo,’ they said in unison, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world to be doing at 3am on a week night.
With no school and no social life available, my teens have gone feral.
Of course, I’m very happy for you if the past four months have been a whirlwind of rustic baking, new languages, and getting rid of that baby weight with Zoom workouts. good for you.
But my days have been hell, and will remain so until the schools reopen. It’s not the isolation — good lord, no. Oh, for an hour of uninterrupted access to the TV and enough bread left to make a modest cheese sandwich.
It’s having to navigate the menopause alongside being a mum of four lovely but hormonally challenged teenagers — a 16-year-old girl and my naturally conceived triplets, born just 18 months after the first child. My ovaries had a hilarious pre-menopausal ‘last hurrah’ at the grand old age of 39.
What’s worse than being locked up in your own house, with no access to the wide support network of like-minded friends, while you sweat all day and then toss and turn all night, courtesy of the menopause?
I’ll tell you what — being locked up in your own home, with no access to the wide support network of like-minded friends, while you sweat all day and toss and turn all night, courtesy of the menopause, and sharing a house with large, noisy, listless teenagers.
Teens who are often grumpy, bored and ratty one minute, then singing at the tops of their voices for hours on end in the shower the next.
Forget those poor working mums struggling with toddlers while simultaneously attempting to work from home — it’s parents of teens who win a special place in Parenting Hell.
I wrote my new novel, I’m Just A Teenage Punchbag, in the halcyon preCovid days. Ciara, the central character, suffers at the hands of her three teens to the point where she reconsiders her future in the home.
My kids are nowhere near as awful as hers, but being with them all the time has amplified everything to the point where I, like thousands of other mums, am wondering, ‘Could I just . . . go?!’
The baby years are tough, the teenage years even tougher — but at least, normally, you send them off to school for seven hours a day, allowing you ample time to peel dried cereal from their bed sheets and sit crying on the floor in front of Escape To The Country.
When the announcement about school closures came, it wasn’t their education I was worried about — it was my own mental health. How on earth would I, and Richard, my husband of 18 years, survive months on end with four teens — Saoirse, Thady, Frank and Orla — in our small, four-bed, terraced house in London?
As well as suddenly feeling like I was in a crowded lift going nowhere, I had just been slam-dunked into the hot, sweaty and irrational waters of the menopause. After an early menopause at the age of 41, and 12 years on HRT, a scan in January revealed a risk of hyperplasia — a thickening of the womb — which can develop into uterine cancer.
This can sometimes happen if you don’t take the progesterone part of the HRT cycle regularly enough. I had sometimes opted to stay on feel-good oestrogen pills, rather than go through the downer of progesterone. I had cheated and now I had to pay.
I had no option but to stop HRT immediately. no tapering off, no soft landing. The optimist in me wondered if the symptoms wouldn’t return after such a long time on HRT. Wrong!
What you never hear about is the fact that those mood swings and hot flushes don’t just pack their bags and leave you for ever — they hang around like muggers in an underpass waiting to pounce once you come off HRT.
Within three days of stopping it, I was opening windows during rainstorms, wafting my T-shirt and screaming at anyone who didn’t put the milk back in the fridge. ‘This pandemic better be over in a
‘ We fill up the fridge — and overnight it again’ empties
few weeks,’ I thought. ‘Or there will be hell to pay.’ Of course it wasn’t. And of course there still is.
The first few weeks weren’t that bad. Then I stopped drinking. The afternoon wine was getting earlier and earlier, and it wasn’t helping with the menopausal insomnia, so I cut right back.
At roughly the same time, the triplets became nocturnal, prowling the house on all-night feeding frenzies, inhaling vats of pesto pasta and instant noodles, then sleeping all day. They only emerged late in the afternoon in time for a massive bowl of Coco Pops.
Four months down the line and we are now in the vortex — just as soon as the fridge is filled up, it mysteriously empties again overnight. Just as the sink is clear of dirty dishes it, in turn, appears to refill like the Magic Porridge Pot. I lie awake listening to the creak of the landing floorboards, wondering how long it will be before they switch on the telly.
They do wash — the shower is always on, with someone in it blaring out aggressive music and not closing the shower door properly so that water leaks onto the floor and through to the hallway ceiling. During the recent heatwave, I was so hot and fed up of shouting that I stood under the leak and let it drip onto my head. It was quite refreshing. Then there’s the washing. Although they are not going anywhere, they can still only wear an item of clothing for half an hour before spilling tomato ketchup or dribbling chocolate on themselves. The high-pitched hum of the spin cycle does at least mask the sound of their constant whining — about having to pick their clothes up off the floor; about having to empty their bins which are full of soft- drink cans and ice- cream cartons; about having to do anything apart from post TikTok videos or play computer games. And the school work. Wow. With schools closed, they have been inundated with online work, none of which I understand, so my attempts to home-school them result in us shouting and not much getting done. One of the many disadvantages of having children so late in life is that I have menopausal brain fog, and it is decades since I studied science, maths or geography. Saoirse, in year 11, has had her gCSEs cancelled, but the triplets are due to be taking theirs next summer, so should be halfway through their important studies. Instead, they emerge from their pits daily to blink mutely at page after page of maths. ‘Mum — I have to name these two axes!’ ‘Colin and Dave?’ I suggest. ‘MuuuM!!!’ ‘I don’t know, I’m menopausal! I can’t remember anything — even when the bins go out, and that happens every week! Why do you think I go running down the street after the bin men in a nightie and wellies on Monday mornings?’
RICHARD is no help. He builds greenhouses for a living and has, thankfully, been able to return to work in time to save us from penury. And himself from a home- schooling breakdown. Schoolwork is my domain and I complain bitterly. Their response is the ultimate put- down to my generation: ‘OK, Boomer.’
I have to admit, I feel for generation Z. Sent home to sit it out with impenetrable online learning platforms, and grappling with an uncertain future, it’s no wonder there are spiralling levels of mental distress in the young.
Does that mean they don’t ever have to wash up, walk the dog or empty a bin? They certainly seem to think so. Perhaps I should take a leaf out of their book and claim Boomer menopause privilege?
If I stop doing everything and let the cupboard go bare, the sink fill up and the rubbish spill over, they will soon realise the error of their ways and understand that a family thrives on mutual respect and cooperation.
But then, who am I trying to kid? If I threw in the towel and collapsed in a menopausal heap by the front door, they’d just step over me to get to the nearest McDonald’s.
■ I’m Just A teenage Punchbag by Jackie Clune (£14.99, Coronet) is published on July 23.