Article by: Dr Zoe Arugay
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Angelina Jolie Photo: Fame Pictures |
Forgetfulness. You wouldn't be human if you hadn't had your bout with it every once in a while. Yet strong claims have been made that memory lapses are recurrent during pregnancy. Myth or fact?
Here's an example. Bena Blakeslee, a mother of two residing in Westchester, New York, recalls her somewhat humorous experiences with the 'pregnancy brain.'
In once instance during her pregnancy, Blakeslee went around in circles looking for her jeep in a parking lot at an airport. An hour went by with no jeep in sight, so this prompted her to call up her husband to inform him that their vehicle had been stolen. It turns out that she had just looked in the wrong parking lot.
And that wasn't all. The mother of two confesses that she had twice gone to the wrong airport on the same trip, and also another time where she was sitting on the wrong gate and completely missed her flight.
And these encounters are no different with other pregnant women who can relate. The memory lapse are also known by several names including the following; 'pregnancy brain,' 'mommy brain,' pregnancy amnesia,' and 'momnesia.'
Yet who is right, the pregnant moms or the researchers? Here are some answers:
Says Helen Christensen, PhD, of the Australian National University, "If you read pregnancy manuals and listen to pregnant mothers, yes, there is such a thing as pregnancy brain of momnesia, and there is also evidence from research showing deficits in memory."
Yet Christensen reveals to webMD in an email that the evidence of the study shows that the capacity of the brain is unchanged in pregnancy, even though the mom may not be as razor sharp like she was before.
Like in Blakeslee's case, her forgetfulness is understandable, just like many moms. It is possible that our subject here may lack sleep and handles the stressful demands of her two young kids besides household chores and other burdensome tasks.
Jane Martin, assistant professor of psychiatry and director of the Neuropsychological Testing and Evaluation Center at New York's mount Sinai Medical Center agrees with Christensen.
She says that lack of sleep contributes to poor memory especially when multitasking. "You are not cognitively sharp when you haven't slept well," she adds.
Editor In-Chief's Note: I want to ask Angelina Jolie about this one! There's an issue about her saying that she forgot to talk about her baby Pax in a magazine interview. Is she pregnant? Or the fans and readers are just imagining things?
