Baby Brain!

It’s a weird phenomena, becoming a parent. It’s full of warmth and love and wonder and surprises...you realize how strong you are, how capable you are, how much you can love another human being, and, sadly, how truly, deeply stupid you can be. Welcome to the world of baby brain!

I’m an intelligent, educated, well-read woman. I have a good job, and am a literate, organized, competent individual....or, I was until my baby came along. It’s got to be baby brain, right?

For example, I know where the dish washing soap goes. I do. It goes in my house where it goes in most people’s houses....at the kitchen sink. NOT in the freezer where I somehow managed to put it. Another example: for Easter, I wanted to bake my traditional carrot cake. I love baking, I looked forward to it all week, getting my hands in a mixing bowl to bake my family my famous carrot cake. I got out the box, turned on the oven, hunted down all my ingredients....and forget to do anything else the rest of the day. And the bills, oh my gosh, the bills....for the first time in my life, I just absolutely freakin’ forgot to pay a couple of our household bills.....how did that happen? Luckily, I found the bills, buried in the bottom of my purse (where I never put them), just in the nick of time, so I wasn’t late in paying them....but almost! Walking in a room....hm...I know I came in here for something...what was it? Alright now, I didn't just walk in this room from all the way across the house FOR NOTHING! Why am I here? And how does my laundry continually get buried, underneath the covers and sheets and blanket, at the foot of my bed? How does it get there, coz I sure didn't put it there! But I should be lucky I did the laundry at all, coz many times, I put it in the washing machine, turned the dial...and then promptly left the lid UP (so the cycle never starts) for the rest of the entire weekend!

I was beginning to really get kind of scared...I mean, what if I had a tumor or something? What if I was at the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s? What if I was losing my mind completely, just at the time when my life had really begun to be amazing and wonderful, with my beautiful new family? I’m a hypochondriac, in case you can’t tell, and I really was working myself up into a frenzy of worry.

I didn’t want to mention these things to anyone. I had always been the efficient task-master of the family...the one everyone else counted on, depended on, relied on, to manage everything, to take care of every thing, to get everything done, in the proper order, in the proper time. And now, I was losing it? Good grief, what would become of my family....a teenager, a newborn, and my husband....we were lost!

Luckily, before I checked myself into a hospital, and spent thousands of dollars on CAT scans, MRI’s and everything including electroshock therapy, I mentioned it to another mommy friend of my, and she saved my life with the words, “BABY BRAIN”.

So the next time you are with a brand new mommy, and she’s flustered, frustrated and distracted, cut her some slack, OK.....it’s not in the PDR (yet), but it should be, and will be soon....I know, coz it’ll have my picture right next to it!

How ‘bout it, ladies (and gents, too, for that matter). Anyone care to share their stories of baby brain?