DON'T TELL ME I CAN'T….enter a beauty pageant at 48

Lorna Ive reminds us that hitting the menopause doesn’t mean ‘the end’

- EMMA ROSSITER

Strutting down the runway in my floor-length evening gown, I stand up straight and smile. I feel confident, elegant, and feminine – three things I haven’t felt in years, and promise myself to remember this moment forever. Because even though I hit the menopause in my early 40s, my life is far from over.

When I first got my periods, aged 13, they seemed relatively ‘normal’. I finished school at 16 and took a job in London, working in finance. But in my late teens, my periods started lasting weeks and becoming increasingly heavier. My GP assured me they’d go back to normal once I’d had kids .

But by 1997, after my husband, Daniel, then 26, and I had welcomed two daughters, my periods remained chaotic. After having our first son in 2001, doctors advised me to get a hysterectomy to stop the almost constant bleeding, but I was only 30, so refused. Good job, because in 2005 our second son arrived, but over the next few years I suffered various ailments. Nausea, blinding stomach pains, even flaring temperatures – and though all were treatable individually, I wondered if they were signs of something serious.