My period is back. Yay.

This is a very vulnerable post. I mean, all my posts are vulnerable.

After having my son, I thought I’d be breastfeeding for six months, then he’d move onto solids with formula. But our plans are only ever our plans, until God puts His stamp of approval on them.

When my son was four months old, I was diagnosed with stage 3 thymoma cancer, and things took a serious turn from there. You can read more about that season in my earlier post, Becoming in the Middle of Healing.

Chemotherapy. Surgery. Then radiotherapy. I won’t bore you with the details — you already know how that went.

Chemotherapy is harsh on your body. It is no respecter of the good cells and healthy organs alongside the ones it’s meant to be fighting. One major thing it affects is fertility — and of course, I wanted more children. So what were my options?

The one thing I didn’t speak about much at the time was induced menopause. At first, I was offered the chance to extract and freeze my eggs. Unfortunately, that procedure would have been too strenuous on my body at that point.

Instead, I was offered an injection called Zoladex. It’s typically given to pre-menopausal women to halt oestrogen production — either to treat hormone-sensitive breast cancer, or, in my case, to help safeguard the ovaries while enduring chemotherapy.

I was injected in my stomach every four weeks, in the hope that it would protect my ovaries, and that one day I’d be able to give MJ a sibling.

Menopause, oh menopause. The symptoms were very real.

Hot flushes. Night sweats. Muscle pains. I could go on.

I endured this for eleven months. I started thinking, yep, that’s it — I’m fully in menopause.

The feeling that I may never have another child began to settle in around month ten. I know they say it takes about twelve months for chemo to fully leave your body, but I was impatient.

And then, in the middle of July, my period came back — out of nowhere, and with a flood of emotions and pain.

I was grateful.