Since I Became a Mom, I FORGET Everything!

A mom ready to head out with her baby in a mei tai carrier — A mom ready to head out with her baby in the Asteraki mei tai 4783 carrier

Where are my keys again?

What did I start to say?

Why did I open this cupboard?

And where on earth did I leave my phone?

If you have recently had a baby and things like this happen to you a little more often, you have probably already heard the familiar explanation: “mom brain”.

Forgetfulness during pregnancy and after birth is something that so many women describe. You forget what you wanted to say in the middle of a sentence, you go from one room to another and by the time you get there you cannot remember why, you look for things that you always used to know exactly where to find.

And you wonder: is something really happening to me, or am I just so tired that I do not know what is going on?

The answer, it seems, is a little more interesting.

Is “mom brain” really a thing?

A meta-analysis of 20 studies, published in 2018, found that pregnant women performed on average slightly lower on some tests of memory, executive function and general cognitive function compared with women who were not pregnant. The differences were most noticeable in the third trimester.

But that “slightly” matters.

We are not talking about a woman who suddenly cannot think or function normally. We are talking about relatively small differences, which in most cases are probably felt more in the demands of everyday life than in a quiet assessment inside a lab.

The brain really does change during pregnancy

For many years “pregnancy brain” was treated more or less like a cute joke.

Today we know that pregnancy is a period of remarkable neuroplasticity.

MRI studies have recorded significant changes in the brain during pregnancy and after birth (some began to reverse after the birth, while others seem to remain for quite some time).

This might sound a little scary if we stop at “gray matter decreases”. But it does not mean that pregnancy destroys the brain or that we suddenly lose our minds.

Earlier research had already shown that some of the changes appear in areas linked to social perception and to responsiveness toward the baby itself. Researchers consider them part of the brain’s great adaptation to motherhood.

In short, pregnancy does not only change our belly, our breasts, our hormones and our sleep. To some extent, it also changes our brain.

Baby sleeping in a ring sling in everyday life — Everyday life with the baby in a ring sling (here is the linen 1543)

And once the baby arrives?

“Have I completely lost it?”

With a newborn at home you try to function on two hours of sleep. You count how many times you have woken up, fed and changed the baby, and it feels like countless times. You wonder whether this tiny grumpy little creature is sleepy, hungry, in pain, or has simply decided that today it does not like anything.

Interrupted sleep and tiredness can naturally affect attention and memory. Older studies in new mothers have found a correlation between sleep loss and memory or psychomotor performance.

But there is one more factor that needs no study for us to understand:

You suddenly have far more things on your mind.

When did the baby eat? How much did it eat? Which side did I nurse from last time? How many diapers did it fill? Did I put a clean changing pad in the bag? Wipes? Pacifier? Did I switch off the water heater? When is the appointment with the pediatrician?

And on top of all that, you also have to remember your own keys.

Our brain does not have unlimited capacity for attention and working memory. When a large part of it is constantly busy with a new person who depends entirely on us, it is no wonder that small everyday pieces of information start to slip away.

Are you feeling more forgetful than you actually are?

Now here is the best part:

In a 2022 study, researchers compared 43 moms about a year after birth with 43 women without children.

When they objectively tested verbal memory, working memory and information processing speed, they found no significant differences between the two groups.

But when they asked the moms themselves how they felt about their memory, they believed it was worse!

And this feeling was linked to their sleep, their stress and their mood.

In other words, you may indeed be looking for your glasses while you are wearing them, but that does not necessarily mean something has happened to your memory.

You are simply asking a lot more of your mind now.

When does it pass?

If only someone could tell us “at six months and three days you will wake up and remember where you left everything again”.

Even though it does not work that way, there is encouraging evidence: attention control seems to improve significantly from the third trimester of pregnancy until four months after birth. And as we saw, at one year after birth another study found no objective differences in memory between new mothers and women who did not have children.

In real life, of course, the situation does not depend only on how many months have passed since the birth.

It also depends on whether you are sleeping. On whether the baby wakes up six times a night. On whether you have help. On how many things you are trying to hold in your head at once. On stress, your mood and generally on what your life is like during that period.

So for most women this intense sense of forgetfulness improves. Even though some changes in the brain remain for years, it does not mean you will be looking for your keys forever. The structural changes of motherhood and everyday forgetfulness are not the same thing.

Until then, what do we do?

Newborn sleeping in a mei tai carrier — You do not have to remember everything! (Here is the mei tai 4759 carrier)

You know, the usual: “sleep when you get the chance”, as if we did not know.

You do not have to prove every day that you can keep 47 things in your head at once. Put your keys and your phone in the same place. Write down whatever you do not need to remember. Set reminders. Keep the baby’s bag ready. Make life a little easier for tomorrow’s version of yourself.

A small note

Ordinary forgetfulness is very different from intense or sudden confusion, serious difficulty concentrating, or symptoms that significantly disrupt your everyday life. If something worries you, if you feel that the symptoms are severe or if they are accompanied by persistent anxiety or a very low mood, you may want to discuss it with your doctor.