redbird | Is this perimenopause? (Reply)

I got my period last night. For the tenth time in 2016. That's ten in 8.5 months, and the last one in 2015 was in the last week in December. This period started two weeks after the last, which was two weeks after the one before it, and three weeks before that. And the periods are about as long as they had been when they started about four weeks apart, so I have been bleeding a significantly higher percentage of the time in the last year or so. ("or so" because I don't feel like getting up, grabbing my phone, and looking at the Evernote file I am tracking this in.)

I haven't been having bad cramps during these more-frequent cycles, but it's messy. Also, somewhere along the way my subconscious learned to wake up if a tampon needed changing; I would rather have to do more laundry than be waking at 5 a.m. and then trying to get back to sleep. And I probably wouldn't actually need to do more laundry, since I'm using a sanitary pad as well. (This doesn't make any apparent difference the part of my brain that is waking me to deal with this.)

ETA: What I'm mostly wondering is, what's likely to happen from here? (I am fairly sure the answer to "and can I do anything about it right now?" is no, but if there is something, I'm all ears.)