There was a time when I felt pretty confident in my ability to remember important appointments, birthdays, anniversaries…trash day…. But since having children I find that if I don’t write something on my calendar, it may not find its way onto my radar until days later (if at all).
A lot of women call this “mommy brain.” It usually starts during pregnancy, and from what I can tell, it continues throughout a mother’s life until it becomes re-labeled as “senility.” Either way—it provides a great excuse for allowing a frozen pizza to burn to a crisp while you take a shower.
That sounds ridiculous, of course. I mean, why would you take a shower when you know you have something in the oven? Well, it makes complete sense if you consider a string of events leading to the blackened pizza. Here is how it could go down:
You pull a pizza out of the freezer for your children’s lunch and then put it in the oven. You think that during the 12-minute cook time, you can put in a load of laundry.
After switching on the washer, you realize that you still have 10 minutes to complete another quick chore. So you sit down in front of the computer instead. You already did something productive like laundry, why tidy up the living room when it would be much more enjoyable to check your e-mail?
As you are reading through messages, you see that Old Navy is having a sale. This reminds you that your daughter really needs some new fall clothes.
Noting that you still have five minutes before you need to check the pizza, you decide to run upstairs and take inventory of the long-sleeve shirts and pants that are currently in her drawers.
On the way up the stairs, you step on something sharp, causing you to scream in pain and then almost fall. This launches the Diet Coke you were holding into the step on eye level, where it bounces and then sprays all over the carpet and you.
Then you say some bad words.
Then you decide to banish Legos from the house, as you limp up the remaining stairs to retrieve the carpet cleaner.
After applying said cleaner to the Diet Coke stains on the carpet, you go back upstairs to change clothes.
As you pull your shirt over your head you realize that you also have Diet Coke in your hair. Remembering that you have to work at the preschool after lunch, you jump in the shower to wash your hair.
[downstairs a timer buzzes]
Throwing on clean clothes and then pulling your wet hair into a hasty pony tail, you race downstairs to make lunch.
And THEN you remember the pizza. But only because you can smell it burning.
Then you say some more bad words.
Then you make peanut butter sandwiches.
Then you do the fall clothes inventory in your daughter’s room and get back on the computer to make the Old Navy purchases.
Only then do you see that the e-mail was from last week and the sale is now over.
The End….
This little scene may or may not have actually happened to me, but it definitely COULD happen to me since I have mommy brain.
And it’s obvious to me that this condition has very little to do with hormones or exploding brain cells. It’s a result of trying to do too many things at once.
It may start as a chemical reaction in the brain during pregnancy…but once the baby is out—and especially when the baby grows into a school age child—there is very little reason to assume any biological origin.
Further proof of this is that fathers suffer from the same affliction. Stay-at-home dads leave backpacks on the front steps, only to find them the following morning, soaked through by an evening rain storm. Working dads make Saturday morning grocery runs with their children and completely forget to buy the first (and most important) item on the list. ALL dads forget to pick their dirty socks up off the floor.
O.K., I just made that last one up. Not all dads share my husband’s forgetfulness when it comes to picking dirty clothes up off the floor… And the true origin of that quirk starts with the letters L – A, and ends with the letters, Z – Y.
In truth, my husband isn’t just lazy. He makes plenty of stupid mistakes due to feeling overloaded by responsibility. Just this morning as I lamented the fact that I was going to have to find an appliance repair service for our washing machine, which stopped working, he made a sheepish confession. Actually, it started as, “Great news! I fixed the washing machine!” And right as I was getting ready to congratulate him and apologize for years of teasing him for not being “handy,” he told me the truth. Yesterday he decided to try to fix the leaky faucet in the laundry room. And fiddling with two faucets directly above the sink seemed to do the trick. Unfortunately, it also turned off the water.
With all of the weekend chaos, he needed to hear me whine about the broken washing machine five times before actually making the connection.
But back to mommy brain. Maybe we should call it parent brain. Clearly it’s not uterus-related.
And I like the idea of sharing the burden of this dumb-assery with my husband. We are in this together after all…
I also like having a logical reason for why I sometimes find myself standing in the bathroom holding a Barbie doll.
I have yet to figure that one out…
Originally posted on Health News HERE.
Yup. I'm blaming mommy brain on totally spacing on my week 36 dr appt this morning. oops.
Great article Kate!
Love, love. Have so been there and, still, am there.
Sorry I haven't been around. We've been moving and it is seriously messing with my blog reading. love you.
I'm still waiting for mommy brain to make an exit. Though not quite as bad as when I was in the early, sleep-deprived phases (remembering keys in the dishwasher), my brain still has not fully recovered. (I'll be using this excuse for the next sixty years!)
I don't know why but I can't seem to leave a comment on the site you wrote the entire story on – but I will say, boy do I suffer from mommy brain! Like when I took a pizza pan out of the oven wearing only ONE oven mitt? Or the time I washed the sharp massive chef knife with my hands? Yup. Mommy brain, I got it.
I LOVE the last line! Total relating to that one!
Excellent article! And your husband should have left it at "I fixed the washing machine!" How adorable, we ALL find that we put the milk in the spice pantry at least ONCE in our lives.
:)
Ha. Perfect!!
Exactly. I think it's just "busy beyond all reason" brain.