Pregnancy Brain is real. Don’t let no one tell you it’s not.
“Damnit what was I talking about again?” I would literally forget my thoughts mid way through sentences.
You may be diagnosed with Pregnancy Brain aka memory lost while pregnant. Myself and most of my friends who have had kids definitely had it. I was convinced after pregnancy that you can’t avoid it. You will forget stuff and lose your thoughts all the time. But I’m going to help you deal with this as best you can.
Prior to Pregnancy
I was on point, let me tell you! At my job I was known for being administratively strong. I was the list builder, the processes creator, the get shit done person. Reports flying out of my inbox. Organization at its best! If you asked me to complete a task it would get done.
Boom Pregnancy Hits!
At times I would be talking to a coworker or student and then I couldn’t remember what I said a few minutes prior. Shoot, I couldn’t remember things I told myself that I needed to remember. After a while I had trouble keeping on top of task I needed to complete. I left tons of emails marked unread, saying to myself this will help me remember to go back to them. But no, it just created a pile of emails it looked like I never checked. It got so bad my kids (college students) were telling me they noticed I was a little off my usual. Like damn they even noticed the change in my ways.
My personal life started to feel like it was all over the place as well. Pregnancy comes with tons of appointments you need to make, prenatals and vitamins you have to take, blah blah blah. I would have my gynecologist print out my next appointments on paper so I could have a physical reminder. I had to leave my prenatal pills by my body lotion just so I could see it as I was getting ready for the day and remember to take them.
I’m a Type A person so Pregnancy Brain was a no-no for me.
I needed to remember stuff:
For work, especially since I had a big project at work for planning a regional wide conference that had over 500 attendees coming. Yea you need to remember a lot of things in order to make that happen.
For pregnancy, like doctors appointments and what the doctor might have advised me to do within the appointment to help me throughout pregnancy or making decisions for my baby. Oh yea and to remember to take my damn prenatal and vitamins.
For life, I just wanted to remember things because that’s who I was before pregnancy. I wanted to still feel like I still got this. I am pregnant but I am still me! I also wanted to remember what I said when arguing with my boyfriend, Pop. Who wants to be arguing and you can’t even remember the statement he said that made you upset in the first place. What a way to lose an argument lol.
Enough was enough! So I had to make some changes in order to get my life right. Pregnancy Brain might have been affecting me but I wasn’t going to let it take me! Here’s what I did:
Tips on How to Kick Pregnancy Brain in the Ass
- Post-it Notes: These saved my life!!! I used post-it notes for everything and placed them everywhere and anywhere. My desk was filled with them. My apartment door were filled with them. I had stacks of them in every purse. Whenever I had a thought that I wasn’t sure if I would remember, I wrote it down. This included my grocery list to people I needed to contact at work.
- Reminder App: I have an iPhone and that reminder app that I toggled with every once in a while then forgot about, it came to my recuse. I could voice my reminder to my phone, set a time for it to remind me of what I wanted to do. Boom! life made easier.
- Resent Text: When you get a message on the iPhone you can’t mark it unread like emails (which sucks, Apple should change this and give me credit for this idea). If someone said something to me that I wanted to remember or something they told me to do but I wasn’t sure if I would remember to do it, I would ask them to resend me the message. I would leave it bolded until I was ready to complete the task. Everyone checks their notifications right! This reminded me that, hey I have messages and hey I was supposed to do something. (Resending messages might have been annoying for some, but who is going to say that to a pregnant lady)
- Alarms: I used my alarm like my reminders for quick reminders. If I needed to do a task that had a timing or deadline I would set it as an alarm. Then I would get a loud reminder to do it and I could also snooze it if I needed to.
- Make Someone Else My Reminder: Hey its the blame game and they all lose with me! Sometimes I would tell someone else to remind me to do something. This will then put it on them to remind me lol. I only used this method when the task I needed to do involved another person.
- F-it!: Sometimes I if I couldn’t remember I just said F-it! If it was important it will come back to me. Hey Pregnancy Brain is real so why not say F-it to a few things when you can. Live your life!
For the Win (conclusion)
Moral of the story, Pregnancy Brain is real and it may affect you too. Get ahead of this bad boy and get you some post-its or choose other options that work best for reminding yourself of important matters. And when you can’t remember say F-it. Hopefully it will come back to you and if it doesn’t then maybe it wasn’t meant for you to remember it.
Are you affected by Pregnancy Brain? How are you dealing with it?
