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Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Motherhood Mindlessness: is it a myth?
Before I had children, my friends who had already embarked on the voyage of parenting would tell me, “Just wait until you have kids!”
Often, this was said while I was laughing at them for forgetting something so simple like their own address.
Now as a mom myself … I seem to have a chorus of crickets following me around.
I have mastered the “blank stare” when I am questioned about nearly anything, and am lucky I haven’t left the house in my pajamas yet.
My children have suffered most of all from my over-the-top case of “mom brain.” Noah has been sent to school without his lunch, Nicholas has missed out on multiple show-and-tell days and occasionally, the baby has been swaddled in the same mushy diaper for … well, a while.
Noah has a pretty good grasp on the daily routine and keeps me in check, “Mom, you already gave us vitamins today.”
And, thankfully, my husband pays the bills.
I googled “mom brain” and a few other like-terms, and found some interesting things.
One mom became so forgetful she had the birth dates of her five children tattooed on her arm.
Another mom in Florida drove home from a department store and returned 90-minutes later to retrieve her 1-month-old baby.
I also found that “Mom-brain” isn’t just an excuse for those of us in the profession who forget to drop Junior at his piano lesson - it begins with pregnancy and has been scientifically researched.
Julie Henry, a psychologist at the University of New South Wales, said lifestyle may be a factor, as is sleep deprivation.
Of course, some researchers still claim “mom brain” is a myth. Dr. Ros Crawley said “maternal amnesia” may be due to “cultural expectations of impairments which make women more aware of forgetting things and attributing such mistakes to their pregnancy.”
I think they are both right on.
Had I not heard of mommy memory loss before I had children, I’d likely just be attributing my mindlessness to lack of sleep.
On the flip side, while I am forgetful, I am sometimes stunned by the amount of things I do remember - birth dates being one of them (no tattoos for me), what clothes go in which sons dresser, how many diapers are left, to feed the dog, take and distribute vitamins, doctor appointments, who needs more fiber in their diet, to clip 60 tiny finger and toe nails, who picked the last movie, to feed the fish (sometimes), stock the diaper bag, write a weekly column, feed the fish, take vitamins … Oops! Did I already say that?
I forgot.
Email this contributing writer at Motherhoodcolumn@yahoo.com.
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