Life stages

The same body, different requirements. This section covers what actually changes at three points where the advice on offer tends to be thinnest.

Why organise by stage at all

Most of this library is organised by subject, which is the right way to find an answer to a specific question. Organising by stage answers a different question: what is worth knowing now, and what should not be dismissed as normal for this phase of life.

The phrase "normal for your age" causes a large amount of avoidable suffering. Some things genuinely are normal: a longer arousal time after menopause, irregular cycles in the mid forties, a few weeks of soreness after a vaginal birth. Others are common without being normal, in the sense that they are treatable and should not be endured: urinary leaking at any age, pain during sex, a bulge in the vagina, persistent itching, and heavy bleeding that causes exhaustion.

The first year after birth

The postnatal period is described in most systems as six weeks, which reflects the administrative calendar rather than physiology. Tissue healing, pelvic floor recovery, hormonal change, sleep deprivation and the return of periods all play out over months. The first year after birth page covers what recovery normally looks like, which symptoms need to be raised rather than tolerated, and the specific warning signs that need urgent attention in the early weeks.

Pelvic floor recovery has its own page, because it is the area where waiting is most often mistaken for management. See the pelvic floor after childbirth.

The thirties

A decade in which several things converge: cervical screening becomes routine, contraception needs often change, fertility questions become time sensitive for those who want children, and symptoms that were dismissed in the twenties, particularly severe period pain, deserve to be investigated properly. See sexual health in your thirties.

After fifty

The dominant change is the effect of sustained low oestrogen on genital and urinary tissue, which continues rather than settling and which is treatable at any point. Alongside it sit screening that continues, infection risk that does not disappear, and a set of assumptions about age and sex that are unhelpful and largely inaccurate. See sexual health after fifty.

The through line

Two things recur at every stage. The first is that symptoms in this area are consistently under reported, with delays measured in years rather than weeks, and that the delay is usually caused by the assumption that nothing can be done. The second is that the treatments are, in most cases, unremarkable: pelvic floor physiotherapy, topical treatment, a change of contraceptive method, an examination that identifies a skin condition. The gap between the burden of these symptoms and the modesty of what fixes them is the reason this library exists.

Last reviewed: September 2026