Perimenopause - Oh what fun!

Today I want to talk about something that has been plaguing me for a while. It is something that I feel I am too young to be experiencing. Perimenopause, in other words, symptoms of menopause before the actual "menoapuse". What is so comforting, is the fact that this can last 7 to 10 years before you actually go through "menopause". I am only 42 years old. Doesn't this see awfully young? Since I turned 40 I have been having all of these little symptoms that keep adding up. I have trouble sleeping, headaches, crabby moods, irregular or missed cycles and night sweats. Those are the worst. The past 2 nights I have not taken my Lunesta to sleep as I am really wanting to get off of them. Saturday night I woke up about every hour because I was sweating profusely. The back of my neck and my chest were soaking wet. I would throw back the covers to only minutes later pull them back up because I was cold. This was very annoying because I feel like I could have had a decent night sleep if it weren't for that. My GYN is prescribing me a low dose birth control pill just to level out my hormones. It will take about 4-6 months to level out. I hope this works because my family is going to kill me if I don't change the attitude.