On my way to give a presentation for a local company, I said a quick goodbye to my son and our favorite babysitter, took a last look in the mirror at my six-month pregnant self, and ran out the door. My morning had been successful: prenatal Pilates and time to actually do my hair before my son woke up, a little boy that was fed, clean, and happily playing with his babysitter, my power point slides were ready to go and I was even ten minutes early! I felt confident and quite pleased with myself…until I got about half way through my presentation and realized I had two different shoes on. I had experienced yet another case of mommy brain and couldn’t believe it had happened again!

If you are pregnant, have children, or both, you know just what I am talking about. You forget where you put your keys (again), you can’t remember why you walked in to the living room, you put your makeup on but only applied mascara on one eye (another true story for me, at least I wasn’t giving a presentation that time), or you put the milk away in the pantry instead of the fridge. It happens to the best of us! We’ve all heard about “mommy brain” and “momnesia”, but you’ll be happy to know that recent research found there is NO significant difference in cognitive function as a result of pregnancy. Sorry, ladies. No more blaming those nine months (okay, we all know it’s ten) on your forgetfulness. But if pregnancy isn’t to blame, why do you, ahem, I keep forgetting about that load of laundry in the washing machine?

As a speech-language pathologist who works with adults after a neurological injury, I am constantly educating my patients on how memory works. It wasn’t until I went back to work after my son was born that I had an Oprah-style “ah-ha” moment and realized the same concepts that I teach my patients apply to my crazy mom brain. There are a lot of factors that affect how our brain works, but for me, it all comes down to our working memory. Picture your brain as a desk with filing cabinets. Your short-term and long-term memories are stored neatly away in the filing cabinets, ready to access when you need them. On the desktop is our working memory. It’s here that we keep all of the information we need to actively remember before we either store it away in the filing cabinets or toss it in the trash. For every person, the desktop is cluttered with to-do lists, birthdays to remember, lists of groceries to buy, and notes to remind yourself to call back your old friend from high school and to pay the electric bill. Add to that all of the things that moms need to remember on a daily basis, like what time to drop Sally off at school, that Johnny needs lunch money, all that laundry that should have been done yesterday, what to make for dinner, etc., and you have a very full desktop!

The truth of mommy brain is that our working memories are full! There really is a limit to what we can hold on our desktops, a limit that moms (or anyone that has a very demanding life) reach quite often. Pile on a lack of sleep, the stress of a baby crying while a toddler is drawing on your walls with marker in the next room at the same time that dinner is burning in the oven and it’s no wonder we can remember our own names. So while you can’t blame pregnancy itself for a decrease in cognitive abilities, you can blame those sweet little sticky faces for keeping your working memory full…right along with that never-ending laundry basket!

There are quite a few easy strategies you can use to combat momnesia.  Many of which I will cover in  Part 2 of “The Truth About Mommy Brain.” In the meantime, go ahead and buy that new shirt you’ve been eyeing. That will help. Trust me, I’m a professional.