Katie Price has candidly shared her concerns about potentially experiencing the menopause. The 46 year old former glamour model has been battling sleep issues and cold sweats, leading her to suspect that she might be entering this new phase of life.
After a doctor warned her that the menopause could be imminent within the next few years, Katie discussed her fears with her sister Sophie on her podcast, The Katie Price Show.
“I’m not sleeping at night and I’m normally a really good sleeper, so something’s going on,” she confessed. “So I’m just going to get my blood test because maybe I’m having an early menopause, I don’t know how it all works, but I’m still having my periods.”
She also mentioned waking up in a “wet with cold sweat” before her periods, causing her to question if she was “going through the change”. Earlier this year, Katie received some sobering news about her fertility during her IVF docuseries, Katie Price: Making Babies, which was filmed in 2023, reports the Mirror.
The series followed Katie and her then-fiancé Carl Woods as they visited the Agora fertility clinic to explore the possibility of having a baby via IVF.
Gynaecologist and medical director Dr Carole Gilling-Smith informed Katie that she only had a “couple of awake eggs”, and her hormone levels indicated that she would likely start the menopause within a few years.
“For Katie, the first sign of ageing is coming from her ovaries and that is a big blow and something some women find hard to accept,” Dr Gilling-Smith commented.
Katie has candidly shared her feelings about ageing, saying: “There is a feeling that you’re no longer attractive. That is a sort of unsaid, unspoken feeling that women will have.”
She’s been vocal about her wish to expand her family, considering options like surrogacy or IVF, and is currently in a happy relationship with her MAFS UK beau JJ Slater.
As a mother of five – Harvey, 22, Junior, 19, Princess, 17, Jett, 11, and Bunny, 10 – Katie might find the menopause particularly tough, a concern intensified by her ongoing pursuit of motherhood and her well-documented history of cosmetic surgeries aimed at maintaining a youthful appearance.
In a recent interview, she confessed that despite undergoing over 20 cosmetic procedures, she struggles with self-image: “I certainly don’t think I’m beautiful,” she revealed. “I look at old photos of myself and think, ‘Urrrgh! ‘” Interestingly, she also mentioned that there are no mirrors in her house.
Niki Woods, a menopause expert, explained that worries about ageing and fertility are common as women approach perimenopause and menopause, especially for those who still hope to conceive naturally.
“Katie is 46 and the average age for a woman to go through menopause – counted as a year of no periods – is 51 in the UK, so I would think it very likely she’s in perimenopause,” she said.
“One of the challenges for women is that when we enter perimenopause we still feel young, but those of us born in the 70s and 80s were brought up thinking of menopause as an ‘old lady’ thing – and of course society associates youthfulness with female attractiveness.
“For women like Katie, who appear to put particularly strong emphasis on appearing youthful, and/or on their ability to have children, it can be especially emotionally challenging.”
Katie has faced a tough road in her quest to have a child, with doctors informing her that her chances of conceiving using her own eggs are less than 1%. In her IVF documentary, she openly expressed her anxiety that her partner Carl might leave her for a younger woman due to her fertility issues.
“I’m now paranoid that he won’t want to be with me because he’ll want a kid,” she confessed on the programme. “And he’ll think I’m so much grief that he’ll go and get someone younger and set up a family.”
She later confided in Carl, admitting, “I feel you’re going to leave me.”