Tired? Overweight? Moody? Might not be 'just being a mum'.

I see lots of posts about people feeling tired, not coping & overwhelmed by motherhood. And lots of comments agreeing and saying, yep, me too, don't worry, you're normal.

Since my eldest was one, I too felt little energy or enthusiasm for my life. I was moderately overweight (despite fairly good eating habits and an active lifestyle) and was feeling constantly exhausted and grumpy. I struggled to contain sudden blinding rages over insignificant things my partner & kids did and felt distanced from them the rest of the time. I felt insecure in social settings and resentful of others who seemed to have their lives so together.

For a long time I thought it was normal too, blaming motherhood, stress, lack of sleep, moving house, money worries, grief. And then I started to think I was just making excuses for being a crap person, partner & mother who just needed to try harder that I was already pushing myself.

But now, I've found out that these things were all symptoms. What was dismissed by myself and a range of health professionals as being 'normal' and only to be expected due to the constant demands of motherhood turned out to be attributable to thyroid disfunction. And incredibly, for me (as for around 90% of people with this condition) a simple, cheap daily tablet has changed my world.

A small and much-ignored part of our body, the thyroid has a vital role in controlling our metabolism & hormone production. Thyroid problems occur mainly in women, especially around middle-age. Symptoms and the point at which they occur are highly variable from person to person, but tiredness, moodiness and weight gain are the most common.

I also had extremely dry patches of skin on knees and elbows, brittle nails, sore joints, shed clumps of hair each time I washed it, felt the cold more, had 'brain fog' and memory problems, was anaemic, felt unmotivated, lost confident and gained anxiety. I was stunned to read a symptoms checklist online and realise how many seemingly insignificant things were really related. And, after being initially sceptical of the medication I was offered, I was stunned how many of these things disappeared once I started taking it.

The sad part is that many affected women (like me) & many GPs (like mine) are woefully under-informed about the thyroid. Despite all the above symptoms, plus a number of miscarriages (also possibly related) my doctors over the years either didn't mention it or later, advised that my results were 'in normalrange'. A specialist in the area that I saw more recently was appalled I had never been treated.

Then as I began talking to others I was horrified to discover this is not an uncommon story, and many people suffer for years before diagnosis. One friend was told by multiple doctors that she was imagining her problems and unsuccessfully medicated for various mental health conditions for years before being diagnosed 'accidentally' during a scan for something unrelated. Another has been struggling with a range of health problems for many years, with some of them becoming quite acute before finally being all connected back to a thyroid issue. A neighbour experienced terrible symptoms but struggled to find a doctor to treat her for thyroid disfunction as her test results were still within the range designated as 'normal'.

So I just wanted to put this out there. Sometimes tired people are just sleep-deprived. Sometimes overweight people do need to improve their diet & physical activity. Sometimes depression & mood swings might be signs of a mental health issue. And sometimes, all of these things may be 'normal' for a mum. But they might also be caused by this one problem, and easily treated. So please, fellow IMs, don't accept a miserable life as 'normal for a mum'.