Brainiac

I have a pregnancy book that tells me things I should know about being pregnant and also shows me helpful/terrifying illustrations of naked women with translucent skin, who should really get some clothes because you can totally see all of their lungs and kidneys and stuff.

This helpful book was, I believe, written by medical professionals. One of the pieces of information offered in this book is that there is no existing medical support for the phenomenon commonly referred to as "baby brain." "Baby brain" is traditionally described as a woman having difficulty with memory, concentration, reasoning, and other mental tasks during pregnancy. This is (at least apocryphally) attributed to the hormonal cocktail sloshing around in the pregnant woman's brain like so many vodka martinis, with similar results.

I sincerely hope that my pregnancy book is relying on outdated research or an otherwise incomplete survey of the medical literature.*  If not, then I have a serious problem because my brain function has just taken an unexpected nosedive for some reason unrelated to gestating another human being in my body. As an example, here are some of the things I did on one single workday this week:

• Wrote a really heartfelt note in a Facebook message to the wrong person because they had similar names (not even the same name, just first names that started with some of the same letters).

• Forgot what year it was

• Forgot what month it was

• Sent a calendar invite with an incorrect dial-in number. Then corrected it, but the correction was wrong. Got it right on the third try, but then when I actually tried to dial in, dialed in incorrectly 4 times such that I was two minutes late on the call because I couldn't get the number right on time. Note: the dial-in number that I was struggling with was not some random, arbitrary passcode or unfamiliar number.  It was MY OWN PHONE NUMBER.  The one I tell people to call me on.

• Referred to a case involving a party named "Sickles" as the following: "that Shingles case," "the Spangles case," and "that case with Smacker in it." This was five minutes after looking at the case name printed on a piece of paper.

• Got confused as to why it was so dark in my office during the daytime before realizing,15 minutes later, that the blinds were down.

If this isn't baby brain, then Houston, we have a... um... issue?


*So I just googled "baby brain," only to find the Mayo Clinic telling me it doesn't exist, and the website saying it does exist is... the Daily Mail.  This does not make me feel great.