Yahoo health reports that, “Australian researchers said on Friday they had debunked the myth that a woman’s ability to think was impaired by pregnancy and mothering a newborn — a condition commonly referred to as ‘baby brain’.”
This follows another Australian report from 2 years ago saying that researchers have confirmed women do become more forgetful during and after pregnancy.
This time, the researchers analyzed the mental function of a group of women before, during, and after pregnancy, and reported no differences at all.
“I think that people have the tendency to blame the fact that they’re pregnant on normal lapses of memory which happen all the time to us anyway,” said lead researcher Helen Christensen. “Our results challenge the view that mothers are anything other than the intellectual peers of their contemporaries.”
Well, no one is saying that pregnant women and mommies are dumber than we used to be. We are just slightly more absent-minded and forgetful. I’m not sure that is something that can be accurately measured.
“Women often report problems with memory and reasoning after they become pregnant,” Christensen said. “But the latest findings from our decade-long study, the most in-depth to look at this issue, has proven they do not.”
Blame it on sleep deprivation, hormonal changes, or just normal memory lapses… I still think there’s something to it. I tend to agree with blogger Kimmama who refuses to believe that “baby brain” was all in her head. She’s thinking, and I’m thinking too, that clearly none of these researchers have been pregnant before!
The Daily Mail reports mentions research carried out last year by Dr Craig Kinsley, of Richmond University in Virginia, suggesting that giving birth actually leads to dramatic improvements in mental capacity. He says that giving birth actually produces a “surge of memory and learning ability that makes women more vigilant and alert.”
Like I said, we’re not getting dumber… we’re just… what was it I said?
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