The midlife squeeze: When caring for your parent and menopause collide

You walk into a room and forget why you're there. You wake at 3am and can't get back to sleep. Your patience is shorter than it used to be, your energy is unpredictable, and some days you feel foggy, anxious or simply unlike yourself.

At the same time, Mum needs you to make another appointment. Dad can't find the paperwork. Your phone rings during a work meeting. Someone needs something, and quite often that someone is not you.

For many women, caring for an ageing parent happens at exactly the same time as perimenopause or menopause. Add work, family, relationships and everyday life, and it is not surprising that this stage can feel overwhelming.

Sometimes the problem is not that you've suddenly become less capable. It is that there is an enormous amount happening at once.

Midlife can become very crowded

By your 40s and 50s, there is a good chance you already have a fairly full life. You may be working, supporting teenagers or adult children, maintaining a relationship, managing a household and thinking about your own health and finances.

Then a parent develops dementia or begins needing more support.

At around the same time, perimenopause can bring changes to sleep, mood, concentration, energy and your ability to cope with stress. Symptoms vary enormously between women, but when they are significant, they can affect work, relationships and day-to-day functioning.

It can be difficult to work out where one thing ends and another begins. Are you exhausted because you're caring? Because you're not sleeping? Because of menopause? Because work is intense? Because you're trying to manage all of it simultaneously?

Often there isn't one neat answer.

Sleep can become a particular problem

Poor sleep can be difficult enough on its own. Caring can make it even harder.

You may wake because you're hot, because your mind starts running through tomorrow's list or because you're listening for the phone. Perhaps your parent called late and you are still trying to work out whether what happened needs action in the morning. Or maybe you're simply so used to being on alert that your body doesn't seem to switch off properly anymore.

Then you start the next day already tired.

That matters because sleep affects almost everything else: concentration, memory, mood, appetite, decision-making and patience. A repeated question from Mum can feel very different after a decent night's sleep than it does after several nights of waking at 3am.

This is also where it is worth being careful not to write off every symptom as “just stress.” If menopause symptoms are affecting your sleep or quality of life, talk with your GP or another appropriately qualified health professional about what support or treatment might be suitable for you.

Your health deserves proper attention too.

Brain fog can feel especially frightening when dementia is in the family

For women caring for a parent with dementia, changes in memory and concentration can come with an extra layer of fear.

You forget a word you know perfectly well. You lose your keys. You open your laptop and can't remember what you were about to do.

For someone else, it might simply be an annoying foggy day. When you've watched dementia affect your mum or dad, it can trigger a very different thought:

Is this how it starts?

Stress, disrupted sleep, mental overload and menopause can all affect attention and memory. If you are constantly juggling appointments, work, family responsibilities and your parent's needs, it is hardly surprising that your brain occasionally feels full.

That doesn't mean you should ignore changes that genuinely concern you. If you notice persistent or worsening problems with memory, thinking or everyday functioning, it is sensible to speak with your GP.

It does mean that every forgotten name or misplaced phone does not have to become evidence about your future.

You may have less patience because you have less capacity

Perhaps you used to be able to take Mum's repeated calls in your stride. Now the third call in an afternoon makes you want to turn your phone off.

You might feel guilty about that and wonder why you are becoming so impatient.

The answer may be less about your character and more about your capacity.

When you're sleeping poorly, dealing with hormonal changes, working, managing family life and carrying responsibility for a parent, there is less room left for everything else. Things you once absorbed without much difficulty can suddenly feel enormous.

That doesn't necessarily mean you need to become more resilient. It may mean there is too much on your plate.

Sometimes the most useful question is not, How can I cope with this better?

It is, What could be reduced, shared or changed?

Your health can quietly become the least urgent thing in the family

This is one of the easier patterns to fall into.

Mum's specialist appointment gets booked, while you keep postponing your own GP visit. Dad gets his prescriptions filled, while you realise yours ran out last week. You remember every screening appointment your parent needs but haven't rescheduled the mammogram you cancelled three months ago.

It makes sense. Your parent's needs may feel more immediate, particularly when dementia is progressing or there are safety concerns.

The trouble is that your own health starts to become something you'll deal with once everything else settles down.

There may never be a neat moment when that happens.

Caring can last for years, and the demands may change rather than disappear. Looking after your own health therefore has to happen alongside caring, not after you've finished doing it.

Looking after yourself doesn't need to become another project

When you're already stretched, the last thing you need is another elaborate wellbeing routine to maintain.

Sometimes looking after yourself is much more ordinary than that.

It might mean making the GP appointment you've been postponing, asking about symptoms that have been interfering with your life or taking the medication you were prescribed. It might mean eating lunch before you reach the point where you're shaky and irritable, getting outside for a walk, or asking somebody else to take Mum to an appointment this week.

It may also mean saying no to something that genuinely does not need to be done.

These things aren't glamorous. They are simply ways of making sure you do not disappear completely from your own list of responsibilities.

There is no prize for handling all of this quietly

Women in midlife are often very good at carrying things. Work, children, ageing parents, relationships, appointments, logistics, other people's emotions and the endless small tasks that keep family life functioning.

Being capable can make it easy for everybody else to assume you're managing. It can also make it difficult for you to recognise when you aren't.

There is no particular virtue in reaching the point of complete exhaustion before asking for help.

You are allowed to say that this stage of life is a lot. You are allowed to seek treatment for symptoms that are affecting you. You are allowed to need practical help with caring. And you are allowed to make decisions that protect some of your energy for your own life.

Your parent's health matters enormously.

Yours does too.

Where to begin?

Think about your own health for a moment, rather than your parent's.

Is there something you have been postponing because another need always seemed more urgent? A GP appointment, a screening test, a conversation about menopause symptoms, a dental check or something else you keep meaning to deal with?

Choose one and put it back on the list.

Your needs matter too.