Momnesia

Categories: Parenting & Families , Nonfiction

I'm pretty sure I have "momnesia".  Example one:  I put our dog (a notorious fence jumper) outside, meaning to watch over him to make sure he didn't escape.  I then went back inside and forgot to go back out again.  Hours later my neighbor showed up at the door with the dog, who, of course, had jumped the fence and was roaming happily throughout our neighborhood.  Example two:  Not long after my twins were born, I went to vacuum our carpet only to discover that the vacuum cleaner wouldn't work.  When my husband came home from work, the vacuum cleaner worked fine for him.  It was only then that I realized--I had turned the vacuum cleaner on, but had completely forgotten to plug it in.  Example three:  well, you get the picture.

According to Dr. Louann Brizendine, my "condition" has a name--"momnesia".  Brizendine, author of the book The Female Brain,  says that "momnesia" is "a state of the female brain that is a bit forgetful after a woman has had a baby".  It's influenced by "the wildly fluctuating flood of hormones that accompanies pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding".

The good news is, "momnesia" doesn't last forever.  And, according to Katherine Ellison's The Mommy Brain, motherhood actually makes you smarter:  you become more efficient and learn things more quickly.  I am still waiting for this to kick in.  Although, now that I think about it, I can still manage to remember all the important dates for both my side of the family and my husband's, something my husband has never managed to accomplish.  So I guess I'm not as bad off as I originally thought.  Now if I could just remember which floor I parked the car on...