Pregnancy Brain: Real or Not?

Can y’all believe there are scientists out there trying to say that pregnancy brain isn’t real, like we just come up with this madness off the tops of our heads for attention or something. Of course there are studies that agree that pregnancy has an affect on cognitive abilities and so on, but just the fact that there are some people trying to argue that we as pregnant and postpartum women are making up these symptoms really annoys me.

What is pregnancy brain?

Honestly? Something I’m in the middle of while trying to work through the fall semester of the school year. Imagine how difficult that is. No but really, pregnancy brain is defined as “the feeling of forgetfulness, inattention, or mental fogginess that sometimes accompanies pregnancy,” according to a contributor to the website Very Well Family named Kendra Cherry.

Just like other pregnancy symptoms, pregnancy brain doesn’t affect every woman as all pregnancies are different even separate pregnancies had by the same woman. I know I can say my first pregnancy is vastly different from the pregnancy I’m in the middle of now. That being said, unfortunately, pregnancy brain is a shared symptom between the two pregnancies for me. Ugh ugh ugh. I’ll give you some of my experiences with the phenomenon as examples to better help you understand why I say uuuuuuuggggggghhhhhh. And if you have experienced pregnancy brain or are experiencing it now leave a comment and tell me what it’s like for you. Tell me I’m not alone. It’s dark in this pregnancy brain vortex you guys.

Forgetfulness

During this pregnancy, I’ve found that I have pregnancy brain much worse than with my first. I have literally had to reschedule every single doctor’s appointment that has ever been scheduled for this pregnancy. It feels so bizarre. I would sit in my bed the night before and think, “Oh yeah! Let me set an alarm for my appointment in the morning!” and in that very next moment forget that I’d ever had that thought. It’s like I’d remember to set my alarm and then forget that I remembered to remember.

Another example is when I’m talking to someone and telling a story or relaying something that’s happened to me, I will literally lose what I’m saying. It’s like it drops out of my head or something. It makes me feel like I’ve escaped from some terrible lab that you only see in Marvel movies, and I’m experiencing life-long trauma from the effects of the experiments.

Fogginess

One of the first instructors I had when I started college was a millenial women barely older than me. She’s probably my favorite instructor of all time and if not the number one then definitely the top three. Anyway, it was an english class. Our final was to be a digital research presentation instead of the whole traditional “sit in a desk and take a test” scene. Instead of leaving at the end of class, I lagged behind because I had so many questions about the direction my digital research paper was going in.

She stood there with a bright, open face ready to help as I stumbled over every word I’ve ever known. It sounded kind of like, “So well… okay I tried like uuuuum… okay so you know how like… basically, I can’t really figure out um…” A horrible blankness settled in my brain like poison, and I was unable to recall not just what I wanted to say, but also, what I was even talking about. What made it all the more embarrassing was the fact that it happened while I was trying to get help from an instructor as opposed to my mama or someone like that.

In the end, I had no choice but to admit that I’d lost what I wanted to say, and I was very happy to blame pregnancy brain (which she had never heard of because she hadn’t had any children yet). I wanted to scream.

Loss of Fine Motor Skills

You know when you started school, you spent a while learning how to use a pencil and write? You practiced with those workbooks and traced the letters that were printed in dotted lines. As you went on in your education and continued to get better and better at writing, you never considered that it was something you could forget unless something horrible like a stroke happened to you.

Think again love muffin. This didn’t happen to me in my first pregnancy, but this time, I’ve found, as the semester has been moving along, I’m scratching out more notes than I’m taking. When I try to form the letters, they come out illegible in a way that I know even if I, the writer of said letters, went back to study them, I’d never be able to make out what I meant to say. It’s become quite frustrating, and it’s surprising.

I also forget how to spell almost everything. Before, I could just look up at the instructor’s notes and copy what I see based on my memory of giant portions of sentences. I’d write the first half of a sentence and then look up, see the sentence again, and write the rest. Lately, I have been remembering the sentences just fine but looking up at the board after every other word to see how to spell it. Hell, I don’t even know how I’m writing this freaking post right now. I feel like I need to go through therapy or something. It has gotten RIDICULOUS.

Pray For Me Y’all

There can be as many studies out there trying to “debunk” pregnancy brain. God can come down from heaven and say, “Yo, this ain’t real. It’s all in ya head sister girl.” I’d still say pregnancy brain is REAL. It’s real, sis. I have six, almost seven months of personal experience to prove it. These horrific symptoms are not my imagination.

Alright, lovely ladies, I’d love to hear from you. Comment down below if you have ever had pregnancy brain and what you did to deal with it. Hell, tell me a funny story about your pregnancy brain and make me laugh. It’ll definitely make me feel better about mine. As usual, thank you beauties for stopping by. Share this post if you enjoyed it or resonated with it in anyway and don’t forget to subscribe. Until next time…. If I remember I even have a blog.