Yes, I know, I can literally hear the eye rolls from people of a certain generation, tut-tutting as I type and indeed when I mention baby brain to say my mum, I can hear her thoughts…
We never had baby brain in my day.
That’s true to a point. While the phrase baby brain was not around in her day, or my granny’s day or her mums day, you can bet your arse they all had bouts of baby related fog and forgot stuff or did the stupidest of things thanks to their pregnancy hormones.
Don’t take my word for it though, there’s even been study’s done on it. And according to some Aussie boffins, pregnancy does indeed cause absent mindedness, fluffiness and forgetfulness.
But’s not hard to see why. First there’s the pure exhaustion you feel when you’re pregnant. It’s like coming off back to back red eye flights, then running a marathon and then being expected to sit at your desk or run your household with complete clarity.
But let’s not forget the other factors like feeling worried, anxious, stressed and dealing with the physical effects of all those changing hormones in your body.
It’s no wonder we forget stuff!
Since I’ve been pregnant with baby number two, my baby brain-o-meter has gone through the roof… I’m blaming the fact that I’ve got a two year old to contend with now, on top of the hormones, which clearly just makes it all the more pronounced…. It does, right?!
To start with, I’ve woken myself up an hour early in the mornings, on a number of occasions, scowling at my phone, giving out to it for my alarm not going off. Then getting dressed, etc, getting the confused toddler up and down for his breakfast and only when my alarm actually did go off at the right time, did it strike me that I was up I’m up a full hour earlier.
Not too bad you might say, it could happen to anyone. Well it gets worse.
The day of the horrific Mosque attacks in Christchurch in New Zealand, I woke up probably an hour earlier unbeknownst to myself and looked bleary eyed at my phone, as you do. I had a quick check of Facebook and noticed a friend from college who now lives in New Zealand, had marked herself safe from the ‘mosquito attack’ in Christchurch.
God, I thought to myself, that sounds awful. Then I scratched my head, wondering what a ‘mosquito attack’ was? I envisioned a huge cloud of a million mozzies descending on Christchurch like some kind of biblical plague of locusts attacking everyone in sight.
How would you even protect yourself against that I thought?, as I went about my morning routine, getting up and dressed etc.
Would you have to wear a sort of bee suit or a huge mosquito net?
Feeling very bemused, I then checked Twitter to find out more and realised it was in fact a monstrous act of terrorism in the form of an attack on Mosque and not a Mosquito attack!
But by far the stupidest thing I’ve done (so far!) in this pregnancy is when, after the toddler had been at a birthday party of a friend’s son. We went along and had a lovely times, etc and when I got back in the car I raised the card had fallen out of the present.
No that wasn’t the stupid part.
Never mind, I thought, I’ll just pop it in the post.
The next day, I had to go to do the grocery shopping with the little dude and had another letter to post, so I brought both envelopes along with me, popped them both in the letterbox and was delighted to get another thing off my list.
I texted my friend to say I’d sent it off in the post so it should arrive soon.
But a few days went past and I didn’t hear anything. This was still a couple of weeks before my 12 week scan, so I quickly forgot all about it as my mind was preoccupied with that and feeling like dogshit.
Then a couple of weeks ago, while lying in bed it hit me. I’d put the envelope in the post-box with no stamp and no address on it. Simply the little boys name in big writing with stars on it!
How in the name of Jesus was it ever going to get to him? And how the hell had I not copped on I’d made the huge gaff until weeks later?
The answer my friends is Baby Brain!