Sunday 22 February 2015

Pregnancy brain: It's really a thing

I am a smart person.  I was a straight A student all through school and university, and I've won more than a couple of academic awards in my day.  I once had friends refuse to read the multiple choices on Trivial Pursuit cards when they were playing against me, claiming it would make the game more fair.

I say this not to humblebrag (although technically, I guess I'm just normal bragging).  I say this to set the stage to illustrate just how freaking dumb I've become in the past couple of weeks.  While I had always read about "pregnancy brain fog", I kind of never believed it was really a thing.  I mean yeah, pregnancy changes your body in tumultuous ways, but your brain?  Maybe after the baby comes and you're functioning on a huge sleep deficit, but surely just being pregnant couldn't have the same effect.  Or could it?

Exhibit A:  Last weekend while in Ottawa for one of my baby showers, I plugged the wrong address into Google Maps.  Twice.  For one friend, I had written down her address wrong and I had to call her only to have her open her front door at a house directly across the street.  For the other, I put a totally made up address into my phone, resulting in several wrong turns and an inadvertent trip across the border into Quebec before we finally reached our destination.

Exhibit B:  On the trip back to Toronto, we stopped at a highway rest stop to grab some food.  I went to Tim Horton's and ordered two hot chocolates and a toasted bagel.  I paid, took our hot chocolates, and left.  Only about five minutes later, after I'd bought some gum at another store, did I realize that I was bagel-less and went back to retrieve it.  Thankfully, this is Canada, and it was still there on the counter waiting for me.

Exhibit C:  This morning M and I were about to enjoy our traditional Sunday morning waffles.  Usually I make some kind of fruit topping to go with them, like hot cinnamon apples or fresh cut strawberries.  This morning it was going to be a warm banana pecan topping, made of sliced bananas sauteed with a bit of butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg.  I grabbed the nutmeg from my spice rack and shook a generous amount over the bananas as they bubbled in the pan...and realized my mistake as the scent of chili powder wafted up at me instead.  Bananas, meet garbage.  My husband came in and patted me on the head like an idiot child.

I rest my case.


25 comments:

  1. I'm laughing only because I remember this all too well. Still living in a fog, but I know this one is sleep deprivation induced. The only thing that seems to help (other than post-its) is laughing it all off.

    Hang in there.

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  2. It's totally a real thing until one of my patients asked if she could go out on disability at 24 weeks due to "pregnancy brain". When I shot her down for that one, she then tried to claim emotional libility. One of her co-workers was passive-aggressive to her and she broke down and cried. Yeah, guess what. People are jerks even when you're not pregnant.

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  3. Laughing at the chili bananas. Too awesome. Yes, pregnancy brain is a thing. I don't even want to remember all the dumb things I did at work the last few weeks. For me it had to do with scheduling: I couldn't tell one day from another and I was always writing down appointments on the wrong days. I was so lucky people were patient and did not judge.

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  4. Yup! Although at almost 4 months post partum I cannot say my normal smart rain has returned.

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  5. Even in my current sleep-deprived fog, I seem to remember the pregnancy brain setting in much earlier (or, at least, I remember using it as an excuse for dumbness much earlier). Thankfully, most of my clients and coworkers had also been pregnant, so they were very understanding. Also, I think you might be onto something with those chili bananas. Maybe not with waffles, but somehow that seems like it should totally be a thing.

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  6. Unfortunately I still have mine 6 months later!

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  7. Yes, totally. I had to write very detailed lists for my experiments at work because if you skip one you can start over and loose the work from 1-2 days... and I'm talking about approximately 5 steps. Nothing actually complicated. Some people say this continues straight into nursing brain, but for me (as far as I can tell ;) it became much better. Hang in there!

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  8. Pregnancy brain is sooooo real. It had me questioning - ardent feminist card revoked - whether or not women should really be allowed to be surgeons and run countries. At least while pregnant. And that is terrible.
    Potentially worse: your brain in the week or so post-delivery (INSANE hormones plus no sleep). I would stand in the kitchen and ask my husband an absolute minimum of three times whether or not he had walked the dogs. I wouldn't do or say anything between those moments. I just repeated myself and potentially fell asleep between each repetition. It was cute. Lots of head patting.

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  9. On Saturday I took a carton of juice out of the fridge and set it on the counter. Then I went and got a glass from the cupboard and brought it back to the counter where I set the juice. Except the juice was gone. I checked all over, re-checked the fridge, etc/...eventually decided that I was insane and there had never been any juice to begin with. When I was making supper that night, I opened the cupboard with the dishes and found the juice where I had put it when taking out a glass. I'm not totally sold on "pregnancy brain" but the sleep deprivation can't be helping.

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  10. I believe you. It's a real thing. I've mostly been really forgetful and can't string together words into a cohesive sentence when I used to be quite eloquent. LOL

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  11. First of all, that banana thing sounds amazing (with the nutmeg, not the chili powder) and I totally want to make waffles just so I can have that.
    Second, I feel like I still have pregnancy brain. Although, at this point I guess it's just complete and utter exhaustion that is making me dumb and forgetful. I have been struggling lately to find the right words for things. I have become that person who says "you know that movie with the guy in it. what's it called?" Ugh.

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  12. Chili Bananas sounds actually quite yummy, although not the "generous" part.

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  13. he he...
    you will has the dumb some more post-birth, weeee!
    will we has the dumb forever and forever?
    gnnuhhhh....night-night. brain, night-night.
    /:

    ReplyDelete
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