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Pregnancy Brian (brian, brain…whatever)

Are you aware of the term “pregnancy brain” or “baby on the brain”? It’s a term I’ve heard about but really haven’t pursued because frankly, there are much more important issues to educate yourself on regarding pregnancy. For example, what kind of non-alcoholic beer is the tastiest. Prior to getting knocked up, I really wasn’t a subscriber to the theory that such a dramatic increase of pregnancy hormones could cause some sort of cognitive decline (aka crazy stupid pregnant lady syndrome). I mean, C’MON LADIES, QUIT PRETENDING YOU ARE SO DENSE JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE A FETUS IN YOUR UTERUS. Well, once again, I have been proven so very wrong. I should have recognized some sort of cognitive decline unfolding when today’s blog attempt looked something like this:

Hi, I am whoorl. I have a baby in my belly. I like Yoplait whips for breakfast. They are tasty, especially the raspberry mousse flavor. Sometimes my tummy hurts. I think it’s funny when my husband sings out loud. Heehee. Bye for now!

Houston, we have a problem.

It got me thinking (which really isn’t saying much). Did this “pregnancy brain” phenomenon happen overnight? Have I been doing incredibly moronic things for the past 2 months and not putting two-and-two together? Hmmmm. Interesting. So I dove into my cerebral cortex, searching for any evidence*. And guess what? I found some.

PB Exhibit #1 – The glasses incident.

PB Exhibit #2 – The evening after the glasses incident, D and I went grocery shopping. We returned home, unloaded the groceries, watched some tube and hit the sack. The next morning, while trying to leave for work, I realized I misplaced the keys to my car. After thirty minutes of stomping around the house, muttering under my breath, D found them. They had been sitting in the lock on the outside of the door where I had left them the night before after returning from the grocery store. Oh please, scary burglar, please break into our house. I’ve left the keys on the door so you don’t have to use force! Woot!

PB Exhibit #3 – I don’t know why my glasses are such an issue, but several times I have found them sitting with my folded wool sweaters in my closet.

PB Exhibit #4 – Wait, screw this. As I typed this entry, I asked my husband simple questions about verbiage and vocabulary, and he couldn’t come up with one lousy answer to my questions. Can husbands of pregnant women develop pregnancy brain, too?

Now, that’s an interesting theory…

* it took me over 6 minutes, staring blankly at my computer screen, to come up with the word “evidence”

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14 comments
  1. lissa

    January 4, 2006 at 10:21 am

    At least now you have an excuse for everything…
    not doing work blame it on being preggers, when husband gets mad at you blame it on the unborn baby. PB really has so many uses.

  2. Boogie's Mom

    January 4, 2006 at 10:27 am

    I, being the most organized person on the planet, found it hard to deal with the side effects that pregnancy has on the brain. Just know you’re not alone. I don’t think my brain has found its way back to normal yet! ;)

  3. gorillabuns

    January 4, 2006 at 11:43 am

    hate to break it to you but i don’t think the brain returns to normal status for like ever…..

  4. rebecca

    January 4, 2006 at 11:45 am

    I’m sorry to say it will get much, much worse. When I was pregnant, I forgot how to use “track changes” in Microsoft Word. I spent 10 minutes searching for it under the Edit menu. Because duh, if you want to track changes you must be editing, right?? But NO, it was under the Tools menu. Never mind that I had successfully located the track changes feature hundreds of other times. I can only blame it on the hormones.

  5. SAJ

    January 4, 2006 at 12:26 pm

    it’s so good not to be alone in this any more!

  6. ms. sizzle

    January 4, 2006 at 1:46 pm

    can i get pregnancy brain from hanging around pregnant women? i think if that is true, i have a plausible excuse for my behavior lately…

  7. cj4

    January 4, 2006 at 3:29 pm

    Pregnancy brain does exist. The evidence:

    When K was pregnant, she tried to call me at work. After several attempts to get a dial tone without success, she gave up and began to type out an irate e-mail about the phone being on the fritz. It was at that point that she realized that she had been repeatedly pounding my phone number into a calculator and holding it up to her ear to listen for the ring. In her defense, she did notice this after only five attempts.

    On the other hand, fear not about the keys-in-the-door disease. I do that all the time and, as much as I’d like to blame my mid-section paunch on pregnancy and not holiday over-indulgence, I am reasonably sure that I have not defied several million years of evolutionary development. Instead, I think you can chalk it up to good ol’fashioned senility.

  8. don't call me ma'am

    January 4, 2006 at 3:46 pm

    What truly sucks about pregnancy brain is that it gets worse AFTER you have kids. My theory is that you “give” half your brain to each child. So my first-born has half my original brain. She’s pretty smart. My second-born has 1/2 of my “half of a brain.” She’s a lovely child, very talented, but not always the brightest bulb (just kidding). And… that leaves me with 25% of my original brain (I had to draw pictures of pies to figure all these fractions out).

  9. mrsmogul

    January 4, 2006 at 4:05 pm

    I HAVE PG BRAIN. It took me three hours to read this LOL. I am soo slow..

  10. wordgirl

    January 4, 2006 at 7:15 pm

    When I was pregnant I used to transpose numbers…like when I was copying a phone number down. Hey! You’re growing another human being there…everyone needs to be very patient with you.

  11. Jurgen Nation

    January 4, 2006 at 1:13 pm

    You know, I read an article somewhere (and NO ONE believes me when I doth protest, so I must find this SOB-ing article) that mentioned that women who are at or around PMS/Menstruation Cycle get “forgetful.” And I do!!! I swear, it’s the whore-moans, not me!! I’ve lost my car countless times (nothing is worse than trying to leave work to go home, but walking up and down the parking garage ramps for 45 EFFING MINUTES trying to find your stupid car), I’ve done the key thing, etc. I believe that it’s probably worse during pregnancy, because, you know, PMS is a week and I hear pregnancy is like, a few more weeks than that. But girl. I feels ya. I’ll try to find the article. I know I want to keep a copy in my purse so I can say, “HERE – SEE??? I TOLD YOU IT WASN’T ME.” What can I say. I’m an “I told you so”-er.

    Hi, I love novel-like comments. Can this get any longer? Let’s see. I like long walks on the beach, Baked Cheetos, candlelight dinners…

    Nebbermind.

  12. Krisco

    January 4, 2006 at 11:04 pm

    Oh, the pregnancy brain thing is so real, and so annoying.

    Think about it; all your blood is going to make some new person. You don’t *need* to know how to spell “evidence.” (Or so biology apparently figures.)

    I didn’t know what it was at first, I just suddenly (or did it evolve??) got stupid and didn’t know why. Thank goodness for other mothers. They tell you such lovely things. The things no one else will but that really matter.

  13. Anna

    January 5, 2006 at 4:08 am

    My theory is that it doesn’t really get much better. By the time you aren’t pregnant and your brain is supposed to return to normal, you start forgetting because all of your energy is focused on remembering everything there is to remember about a baby!

    Have fun

  14. Susie

    January 6, 2006 at 9:16 am

    I had baby #1 when I was 32 and working on my MBA. Threatened miscarriage put me in bed for 20 weeks. I watched Gilligan’s Island reruns and learned how to knit…and reached the point where PB seemed so normal that I no longer cared.

    Anna, Rebecca, and all the other commenters are correct…to wit:

    Today, child #1 is married and child #2 is graduating high school and I am almost at the point where I can maintain thought continuity and coherence…almost.

    Raising my children has been a blessing, but 20 years is a looonnnnng time to fly without mental acuity.

    Ahhh, motherhood. Congratulations!