Baby brain drain…
We moms knew it! It appears that ‘baby brain’ is no myth after all. New research appears to show that pregnancy does affect a woman’s memory for up to a year after giving birth. Not all aspects of memory are affected: your brain drain syndrome seems to target the unfamiliar or demanding – in other words, exactly what confronts a new mom or pregnant woman.
“What we found is that memory tasks which are more challenging or more novel, or those that would require multitasking are likely to be disrupted,” says Dr Julie Henry, a psychology researcher at Australia’s University of New South Wales, who co-authored the study along with Associate Professor Peter Rendell, of Australia’s Catholic University.
In the first investigation of its kind, researchers analyzed the results of 14 different studies carried out around the world since 1990. These studies compared the memory performances of more than 1,000 pregnant women, moms and healthy non-pregnant women.
The results indicated that pregnant women are significantly impaired on some, but not all, measures of memory – and that the forgetfulness does continue for up to a year after a baby is born.
“Regular, well-practiced memory tasks, such as remembering phone numbers of friends and family members, are unlikely to be affected,” says Professor Rendell. “It’s a different story, though, when you have to remember new phone numbers or people’s names, or multitask.”
The researchers are unable to pinpoint why this memory loss happens – it may be due to hormones or lifestyle factors. As most women will recognize, having a baby causes a seismic lifestyle shift – there’s so much going on in her life, she gets less sleep, and fatigue definitely affects memory and cognitive behavior.
The research is published in the Journals of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology.