Ok....so you woke up to the realization that it has been two days since you missed the deadline for an important project. Or maybe you forgot to take that status call on Friday. How about the time when you left the tap running / keys hanging on the door / or almost burnt down the kitchen when you forgot to switch of the stove ? Sounds unsettling yet familiar. Rest assured you are in august company. Quite a few pregnant women suffer from a mild form of memory loss or short-term amnesia.
While tests have shown that pregnant women perform poorly at tasks that involve short-term memory as compared to their non-pregnant counterparts, their long term memory remains intact ( Another reason to cry wolf when those corporate houses ask women to take a pay cut after a child-rearing break ). The exact reason for such memory loss/forgetfulness in not known. But with a lot of theories being floated, I would love to share a few that sound credible.
Some state that maybe it is Mother Nature's way of ensuring that the women's primary focus remains the baby and hence the brain is designed to cut out clutter ( or noise as say it in Wave theory ). Others blame it on the rush of those baby-making hormones in the bloodstream that have been cooking up the brain and turning it to mush.
Another theory abounds that it is the social conditioning that lead such women to associate any lapses of memory with a baby-brain. Women who have long being hearing about pregnancy amnesia might start co-relating any minor incidents with the condition and trick themselves into thinking that they might be suffering from the same.
But the most plausible one seems to be that the stress, lack of sleep, heartburn and other physical ailments along with the changed priorities affects one's cognitive skills. Now it is well known that stress/sleep disorders can cause a loss in the cognitive abilities of perfectly healthy individuals. So rest assured your little bouts of forgetfulness are perfectly normal.
While tests have shown that pregnant women perform poorly at tasks that involve short-term memory as compared to their non-pregnant counterparts, their long term memory remains intact ( Another reason to cry wolf when those corporate houses ask women to take a pay cut after a child-rearing break ). The exact reason for such memory loss/forgetfulness in not known. But with a lot of theories being floated, I would love to share a few that sound credible.
Some state that maybe it is Mother Nature's way of ensuring that the women's primary focus remains the baby and hence the brain is designed to cut out clutter ( or noise as say it in Wave theory ). Others blame it on the rush of those baby-making hormones in the bloodstream that have been cooking up the brain and turning it to mush.
Another theory abounds that it is the social conditioning that lead such women to associate any lapses of memory with a baby-brain. Women who have long being hearing about pregnancy amnesia might start co-relating any minor incidents with the condition and trick themselves into thinking that they might be suffering from the same.
But the most plausible one seems to be that the stress, lack of sleep, heartburn and other physical ailments along with the changed priorities affects one's cognitive skills. Now it is well known that stress/sleep disorders can cause a loss in the cognitive abilities of perfectly healthy individuals. So rest assured your little bouts of forgetfulness are perfectly normal.
No comments:
Post a Comment