Pregnancy brain - Page 2

[curvyred]

I've forgotten my home phone number and the names of my midwives several times. Names seem to be my biggest one. My midwives refer to it as "pregnesia."

I had a great one at the doc's office this morning. My DS had his 3 year check and I remembered to ask about a doseage on his meds in the midst of our rambling chit-chat. My doc said, "Hey, that's pretty good you remembered! We're all distracted AND you're pregnant AND you didn't write it down!"

To which I replied, "Actually, I DID write it down . . . I just forgot to bring the list with me."

[BarnMomma]

Pre-pregnancy I was ON all the time. Type A, organized, multitasking, never late, never behind, do it all no probelm type person. Now? Ha ha ha.

I go to grocery stores and forget to buy everything on my list, that's in my hand, but I come home with bunches of random purchases.

I can never remember appointments and I have to call to confirm, about 3 times.

I drive past things constantly.

Recipes seem like they're written in sandscript and usually I'm an excellent cook.

I. Cannot. Do. Math.

A normal convseration seem like it takes so much mental energy that I prefer email...but I can't spell anything correctly. Seriously. "Because" is apparently really hard for me to get right these days.

Sadly, it didn't get better after my son was born and it seems to be worse with this pregnancy.

[Mommabean]

I have locked myself out of my house TWICE in three days.

[~Demeter~]

I believe in it... and I also believe I've never bounced back from #4. It was really bad with her and while it was a little better I'll probably be back where I was with her soon enough.

For me it's different than when you are not pregnant... it's like a full on brain fog.

[MaerynPearl]

luckily my family has grown to expect it with me and know that if they want to make plans with me... to remind me again beforehand.

i wont make plans over top of plans, when making plans I can remember my entire schedule... but when it comes to actually doing anything thats a whole different story! like this morning I had forgotten I promised on monday I would go mushroom hunting again (I got out of it, DS is home sick from school)

my little sister is NOT letting me forget her prom is tomorrow and I am required to show up and take as many pictures of her as I can lol.

[louis]

I can't say what is causing it, the pregnancy itself or some change to my person resulting from pregnancy, but I definitely feel like I am losing my mind.

I am so lucky DH and I go to the grocery store together because several times we head there to pick up a few things and by the time we walk in I am wondering what we are getting while following DH as he heads to the right area for the store. Once we get to it or I ask him and he reminds me, there is this little click in my brain like "oh yeah, i knew that once." It is infuriating because I have never been this person.

I often think up lists of things to tell my DH or do in the evening and I used to have no problem keeping track of these things with no reminders. Now I have taken to texting him throughout the day with websites we need to check out for something or other things I wanted to tell him about. Before the texting I realized that I was thinking of stuff and would forget about it for several days before finally remembering to tell him, which was not helpful if there was a time constraint.

[Monarchgrrl]

Ok I have the Mothering article in front of me. You have to pay to see the study online, but here's some of what it says. Oh, and I was wrong about the survey-type questions.

"The study was published in the February 2010 issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry. Researchers assessed more than 1,000 women aged 20-24 for cognitive speed, working memory, and immediate and delayed recall, at four-year intervals beginning in 1999. No significant differences were found between women who were pregnant and those who were not. Nor were any significant differenace found between mother and non-mothers. The study found only a slight decrease in performance, during late pregnancy, on one of four cognitive tests....The authors suggest that a bias may have been present in previous studies, which may have recruited women who were anxious about their pregnancies, depressed, or sleep deprived."

So far my issues have only been with math, which I use all day at work, and usually isn't a problem for me. It's even to the point where this morning I had to use the calculator to figure out what 1% of 1000 was.

[porcelina]

Thanks for referencing the Mothering article (citing Cognition in pregnancy and motherhood: prospective cohort study. Helen Christensen, Liana S. Leach and Andrew MackinnonThe British Journal of Psychiatry (2010), 196, 126–132.)

Very interesting! I looked it up.

The good things about this study:
*it is prospective, so gathers a representative sample before they are actually pregnant or mothers.
*it measures change in cognitive ability, so collects baseline when not pregnant (up to 4 years prior to pregnancy)

The limitations:
*not a lot of observations (of 1126 who answered at least one follow up survey, only 76 were pregnant over full life of study)
*of those women who were pregnant, they were at varying points in pregnancy
*cognitive tests only measure what they measure (for example, did not measure anything spatial)

Here is the info on the tests if you are really curious:
Cognitive speed
Mental speed was measured with the Symbol–Digit Modalities
Test (SDMT), which asks the participant to substitute as many
digits for symbols as possible in 90 s.28
Working memory
Working memory was assessed with the Digits Backwards subtest
of the Wechsler Memory Scale,29 which presents participants with
series of digits at the rate of one per second and asks them to
repeat the digits backwards.
Immediate and delayed recall
These were assessed with the first trial of the California Verbal
Learning Test,30 which involves recalling a list of 16 nouns. The
interval between immediate and delayed recall was occupied by
a test of grip strength.
Cognitive change scores were calculated for each test by subtracting
wave one scores from wave two scores.

Anyway, I think we can still function when we have to -- I have completed many exams while pregnant and have done equally well in my opinion (though these are reasoning/argumentation, not math). And, as a result, we can still perform well in our jobs, etc.

However, I KNOW I have pregnancy brain regarding remembering things like names, numbers, and how to get places!!

[MaerynPearl]

Yeah if I am concentrating/trying its not as bad as when I am trying to run on the familiar autopilot... like forgetting to turn off my oven. Its like second nature to shut it off as soon as I take the food out... but I somehow keep forgetting that step...

I had to take a 4 hour online class followed by a test the other day... I forgot about it until almost midnight. I finished it in 30 minutes and still aced the test... (it wasnt anything particularly difficult like math or advanced physics or anything... pretty simple really)

the forgetting about having to take it is where the pregnancy brain comes in... once I sat down and started to concentrate on it... I had control over my brain to do it fast and correctly...

[frolick16]

I have forgotten the birthdates of my children, wrote the date of my LMP as 9/28/10, was on the cellphone talking to my mom, gasped and when she said what I said, "I can't remember where I put my cellphone!"

[MaerynPearl]

Originally Posted by frolick16

was on the cellphone talking to my mom, gasped and when she said what I said, "I can't remember where I put my cellphone!"

My DF has done that with me... I swear he has sympathy pregnancy brain.

[Mummoth]

I participated in a study when I was pregnant with my first that was about memory during pregnancy... her conclusion was that women who are pregnant with girls experience it more significantly than women who are pregnant with boys. It's a good thing I didn't know that's what she was looking for, or my son would've had a lot of pink clothes

[SaraCate]

I don't have a source readily available, but I remember reading that pregnancy depletes choline, which plays a role in memory function. It stuck with me because, while I didn't really have any cravings per se with #1, DH noted that we went through about twice as many eggs as usual during the last half of my pg, and eggs are a good source of choline.