Support quality, independent, local journalism…that matters

From just £1 a month you can help fund our work – and use our website without adverts. Become a member today

Laura Anne Jones, who represents the Welsh Conservatives, is one of four regional Senedd Members serving the South Wales East region.

On World Menopause Day I am starkly reminded of my own horrendous experience of severe menopause symptoms last year. Everyone’s menopause journey is different. Unfortunately, I was totally unaware that I had started menopause, partly due to being only 40 and just having had a baby.

Being completely unaware about menopause at the time, I just made excuses for the pain – the anxiety, the exhaustion, the brain fog, the lack of sex-drive, – due to being a “geriatric” single Mum (according to the NHS!) of a baby and a teenager, as well as having a full-on 24/7 job.

Until I started playing ladies cricket late last summer, I had never talked about menopause with anyone, but during car journeys with my teammates around South Wales East in winter last year, my teammates would talk about their experiences and it opened my eyes to the idea that perhaps menopause was what I was experiencing.

The symptoms that I had experienced over the past three years, but had brushed off as other things, escalated at the end of last summer into high levels of exhaustion, brain fog, and flushes – and the pain was on a new level.

It went from a dull ache in my bones to intense agony by Christmas, when I was convinced that I had bone cancer, resulting in me having morbid conversations with my children, convinced this was the end for me, as I lay unable to move on my bed.

Luckily, after seeing a new GP, when describing the pain, I asked if menopause could be a possibility? She thought it unlikely, due to my age and severity of symptoms, but she asked when my mum became menopausal, and following an insightful phone call, coupled with blood test results, it became clear I did have full-on menopause.

I had to put an oestrogen patch on straight away, and soon after, I felt like a dead flower that was coming back to life. My pain subsided, my brain felt clearer, and my energy changed, like magic.

I am so reliant on these patches and pills now, to just function normally, it is a great concern that HRT is in short supply, but I will continue to urge both governments to try to rectify this for the many women out there in the same position as me. I would strongly urge every woman to ask their mothers about their experience, so that you are aware and can start to prepare for menopause.

Much more needs to be done to raise awareness of menopause symptoms, to help women and educate workplaces on how to support their workers and to upskill doctors on how to recognise symptoms.

I hope that my story will help play a small part in raising awareness and make women start to ask questions to friends, family, doctors and workplaces across Wales. No woman should have to suffer in silence. Start talking today. It’s time to normalise something that 50% of our population has to deal with.