Pregnacy Brain

J

JJ Lady

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Oct 26, 2004
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OK - So I never really belived it, but I've got it. The Pregnant brain. I can't remeber anything and It takes me a while to get my brain working. When it starts its ok. But I'd forget my head...well you know.

Other women who have had babies on here, and men who have been around a pregnent woman - Have you experienced this? WHAT THE HELL? Why would eveloution lead you to this. You think you would need to be quicker, more intelligent, and able to remember things when you are pregnant or just have a baby, but no...You have to get stupid and forget things, like your phone, setting the alarm, sending the email of the power point that you worked on until 10pm the night before....I don't get it!?!
 
Its evolutions way of making you forget how unpleasant pregnancies can be at times so you will do it again ...and again... and again. :)

A once preggo friend of mine also said that you dumb down a lot more when the kid comes because you are only exposed to kid books, movies and such and not exercising your brain normally. Oh man.
 
My brain cells waited until after the babies were born to go on strike. One theory is that mothers are trying to stay on top of more things than ever, taking care of a baby and everything else, but I am convinced that motherhood shrivels neurons like salt on a slug.
 
When pregnant my wife pulled out in her car from front of our house and did a U-turn right into the car parked directly across the street from where she was parked. Then backed up a few feet and drove into it again. She was going slow and jumped bumped it both times not doing any damage to either car but that type of thing was typical.
 
I wish I could say it gets better after the kid is born, but it doesn't. If I don't write something down and put it in a place that I'll see it often, I forget.
 
My wife is going through this now. It's worse with this baby too. Hers passed after the first one was born, but it seemed she might have had it still, but that was due to exhaustion since we had a baby that liked to scream instead of sleep.
 
wanko80 said:
My wife is going through this now. It's worse with this baby too. Hers passed after the first one was born, but it seemed she might have had it still, but that was due to exhaustion since we had a baby that liked to scream instead of sleep.
Click to expand...

Yea, the more kids you have the worse it stays.
 
wanko80 said:
My wife is going through this now. It's worse with this baby too. Hers passed after the first one was born, but it seemed she might have had it still, but that was due to exhaustion since we had a baby that liked to scream instead of sleep.
Click to expand...

Yea, the more kids you have the worse it stays. My excuse is cause I'm trying to juggle all the household duties while caring for 3 kids and trying to keep them safe from one another and themselves.
 
all of the above is true. it's true what april said about not exercising your brain once you're at home with a baby. you lose a lot. and you lose a sense of identity and confidence because of it. i don't have a lot to say anymore unless you start talking diapers and dora.

and i think part of forgetting things is that you have instantly added a gajillion things to your plate. it's not about taking care of just yourself anymore...you've instantly taken on repsonsibility for ALL of another person's decisions. you not only have to keep your calendar but the calendar and dietary needs and toiletry needs and emotional needs and scheduling needs and sleep needs and pain needs of another person. it's just not that easy. it takes practice and practice requires mistakes. and it's normal. there's nothing more comforting to a pregnant woman than hearing, "oh, that's normal." then you're allowed to bleed or forget or cramp or sleep more or eat an entire pizza or whatever. it's NORMAL. :)
the best thing to do is accept that this is part of you now and try to reconfigure your brain. what worked for you in the past may not work now, so you have to find something that does work. used to set your alarm at night? not anymore. set it right after you turn it off in the morning. good about remembering your doctor's appointments? but you've forgotten the last two? get up on some online messaging system that pushes a reminder on you the day before...and the day of. :) just try to roll with it, as sad and frightening and disappointing and frustrating as it is.
...and i always thought, as a way to make myself feel better, that the baby was getting smarter as i was getting dumber.
and i'm telling you, i sure am dumb these days. ;)
 
Falcon_Punch.jpg



Too Soon?
 
Thorn Bird said:
all of the above is true. it's true what april said about not exercising your brain once you're at home with a baby. you lose a lot. and you lose a sense of identity and confidence because of it. i don't have a lot to say anymore unless you start talking diapers and dora.
Click to expand...

Did you see that epside where....


Thorn is right though. If you are planning on staying at home, make it a point to get involved in groups that give you an opportunity to interact with other adults on a regular basis or you will go insane, and just seeing your hubby when he gets home at night doesn't count.
 
wanko80 said:
My wife is going through this now. It's worse with this baby too. Hers passed after the first one was born, but it seemed she might have had it still, but that was due to exhaustion since we had a baby that liked to scream instead of sleep.
Click to expand...

I see your drivel saps more than just our intelligence. :clap:
 
fly said:
I'm not buying that article. If you have it, plz post it here.
Click to expand...

If you can point me to somewhere that I can upload a PDF, I'll do it. For now, here's the basic point:

"Although pregnancy does impact negatively on memory performance as indexed by objective behavioral measures, this is only true for measures of this construct that place relatively high demands on effortful processing and, specifically, measures of free recall and the executive component of WM [my note: this means working memory, which is similar to the idea of "short term memory" -- memories that often last less than 20 seconds, like if you tried to repeat back a series of 9 random digits.]. Further, the pattern of deficits observed postpartum mirrors the pattern of deficits observed during pregnancy, both qualitatively and quantitatively ...

However, of those memory measures that did prove sensitive to pregnancy/postpartum effects, the magnitude of the deficits was invariably small, and thus the observed impairment may be regarded as relatively subtle."

64747912c1bc8fb2.png


Each of the numbers in the far left column is the difference between the mean of non-pregnant women and pregnant women, measured in standard deviations. So for example, let's say that I quickly tell a woman 20 random numbers. Most women would be able to repeat back maybe 9 of them, and most women would fall between 7 and 11 over many trials. That would make the Mean 9, and the SD about 1. So pregnant women with a disadvantage of .26 (the largest one above), would have an average of 8.74, with most between 6.74 and 10.74. Not a big deal.

This difference is tiny; as a rule of thumb, anything below .3 is considered useless.

In a nutshell: the increasing complexity of your life is the really big reason why you feel like you're forgetting more things, not a severe deficit in memory following pregnancy.
 
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