Mama Brain

I lose things all the time these days: my id, my green hat, my keys, my right, silver old high heel that I needed desperately for a wedding recently.

The other day, I packed running shoes in my bag before we headed to my Mom and Dad's, so I could run that afternoon. As I did so, I thought, "Man! Why won't these fit in my bag today?" I discovered later, upon dressing for my run, that I had packed my husband's size 11 running shoes, instead of mine.

Such flakiness is referred to as "Mama Brain." It's a fuzzy head. It's an absent look. It's a feeling that you have just forgotten to do something but you can't quite remember what it was.

At basketball games, no matter how long I have been guarding the same girl, I will forget which one I was guarding after a turn over. "The girl in the red shirt? The one in the blue shirt? Oh, I bet it was the one who JUST SCORED!"

I want to wear shirt as a disclaimer that says something like, "I am a mama! Please forgive me if I am a total idiot! I am trying to keep another, very small, very weird and very loud human alive."

On many a run with G, I get such bad Mama Brain that as I am running, with G, right there in front of me, I stop! in my tracks because I think I have forgotten G somewhere. "Oh shit!" I panic for a second before I remember that I am pushing the grl.

I have lost my brain, but at least I haven't lost G yet.

It seems that I used to have time to think about BIG STUFF, like life and love and the world and good people and bad people, and people I liked, and people I didn't, people's whose clothes I thought were cool, people who never looked at me no matter how many times I passed them in the hall at work. Now, I think that I am not thinking most of the time. OR, maybe I am thinking SO much that I don't even realize that I am thinking, and therefore coming across like I am not thinking.

There, that was just thinking.

The bottom line is that G takes up so much of my brain that there is very little of it left for things that don't really matter.

There's a guy at work whose whole life is about going out to the cool new bar or the fancy new lounge. I can't help but chuckle/judge a bit. He says things like, "For every foot of snow that falls, they are going to be serving $2 off all rail drinks!!!"

Clearly, he and I are not in the same place.

Your life changes with a kid, so it only makes sense that your head would too. You brains cells are in overload trying to grasp the Crazy Town that is your life. You have to pare it all down to the stuff that really matters: Poop over pettiness, Pack n Plays over packed bars, day-to-day over daydreams, smiles over sleep, friends and family over foes.

It's amazing what you can learn from a one year old. (Silent shout out to the sleeping G!) I think (!) that I'll embrace my Mama Brain from now on.