Sunday, January 25, 2009

Pregnancy Brain

So I just read an article in a psychology magazine about what happens to your brain while pregnant. I had a baby girl 3 months ago so this article is pretty relevant to my life. The article says that your hormones are 1000 times more at the height of pregnancy (3rd trimester) and compared to other non-pregnant people your memory suffers (at least that's what I remember-ha ha). Anyway, this continues for at least a year after you have the kid and then supposedly your brain benefits from all this craziness and is better than other people's brains. I'm not sure I believe that part. Also, if you are pregnant with a girl you do worse on memory related tasks than if you are pregnant with a boy. How is that fair? Having 4 girls has put me at a significant disadvantage in that category!
However, this article supported what I have known all along-that my scatterbraininess is not a figment of my imagination. It's real and it's not my fault, there is research to back this up!! Ok, the research mostly involves rats but still. When I can't remember the name of someone I've known for 10 years-it's not my fault. When I go to the doctor's office on the wrong day-it's not my fault. When my husband tells me he told me the same thing 3 times in a row AND I don't remember-it's not my fault.
Being an extremely responsible person for most of my life this is hard for me and everyone around me to get used to. Expectations need to be adjusted for this time. I feel blessed that I have a good reason (the best) for being memory challenged and wouldn't change it for the world!

Hopefully, I'll get my brain back soon!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We can have baby brain together, although I guess my brain is better than yours since I had a boy. Hehe. This aspect of during and post pregnancy was so hard for me. I literally could not remember the name of common household items, or last names of anyone I came into contact with. Totally bizarre, but I am coming up on a year so I'm going to be in the clear soon!

Anonymous said...

E, I don't have pregnancy brain and I can't remember things; guess it's called older age.