RSS
Home
Do moms ever get their brains back?
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
We’ve all heard the term “mommy brain”. It’s the notion that once you have a baby, your faculties go out the window and you start putting the remote control in the freezer and trailing off in the middle of a… you know. I think my favorite mommy brain story comes from my co-worker, Debbi. Soon after her son was born, she and another new mom went out to lunch. Once their food arrived, the other woman picked up her sandwich, brought it close to her, and started to burp it. What’s worse, Debbi, also afflicted with the mommy brain, didn’t find this strange at all.
I’ve had many of these moments, like the time I described a baby bottle as being "blank" because I could not remember the word "empty”. The baby lingo we use around the house (jimjams, nanners, dipes, etc.) is starting to creep into my conversations with adults. If you ask me about Edwin’s nighttime habits, I may mention the “all-night boobie buffet” as if that is an appropriate term to bust out in normal conversation.
When I pick up Edwin from daycare, I find myself asking the adults there, "Did he have big poo-poos?" or, "Did he eat his num-nums?" It's certainly not the way I wish to present myself. I am a professional! With a college degree! I read the New Yorker!
That is, I used to read the New Yorker until having a child rotted my brain... or did it? In her book "The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter" Katherine Ellison argues that motherhood actually fosters new types of intelligence, like perception and efficiency.
I like that idea, and it's certainly more appealing than resigning myself to never being able to finish a sentence, a sentence that was probably gibberish anyway. But I'll have to read it later. Right now I sense that a certain baby has poo-poos (perception) and I need to change his dipes and get him into his jimjams, all while I check my voicemail, make dinner, and do the taxes (efficiency.) Hmm, maybe Ellison is right.
Related Articles:
Comments
