Pregnancy Brain

I guess it's time for me to face the music. Pregnancy makes me a complete and utter idiot.

There are things - old wives' tales, if you will - about pregnancy that I used to believe were either total myths or, at best, self-fulfilling prophecies. Sure, I am hungrier when I am pregnant, but that makes sense. I am growing a person who has nutritional needs of their own, plus I'm burning calories by actually growing said person. But I'm not really "eating for two" as everyone likes to say. And last time, when I followed that old adage, the evidence of my "eating for two" remained on my jiggly, wobbly body long after L was born.

Slightly related are pregnancy cravings. I can only speak to my own experiences on this one. I will admit that there is some truth to the belief that you crave certain things when you're pregnant. For me, at least, it was more of a "wow, this particular food item sounds really good to me and I've never liked it before now", instead of a "if I don't get a pickle in 5 minutes I will spontaneously combust".

So yeah, I'd have to say that many of the wives' tales regarding pregnancy are more myth than fact.

Except for pregnancy brain. Pregnancy brain is very, very real. Pregnancy brain turns me into the stoopidest person alive.

With pregnancy brain, I am clumsy, forgetful and just a moron in general.

Case in point. In the middle of writing this post, I get a feeling of deja vu, as if I had written something along these lines before. But I couldn't exactly remember, so I went back and tried to find a similar post because I didn't want to write this post if it had essentially already been written. But then I got sidetracked reading all my old stuff and forgot what I was looking for. So if this is a redundant post, please forgive me.

Other reasons I am an idiot:

I am in the middle of coordinating an awards banquet for work. It's a pretty decent sized event, and by far my favorite part of my job. One of my responsibilities is to send out 3,000+ save the date flyers to everyone we are inviting. So I designed this really nice autumn-themed save the date flyer and was really happy with it. We print off a few in color to hand out at meetings and such, but the majority of the flyers are printed in grey scale.

Today, my boss comes up to me with a flyer in hand and says, "We have a bit of a problem with the save the dates." My heart dropped because I was afraid there was some sort of spelling error or something, and I'd be seriously pissed because I proofread the stupid flyer to within an inch of its life.

But no, it wasn't a spelling or grammatical error. Instead, she pointed to the rather large graphic of the maple leaf that was in the lower right-hand corner. On the color flyers, it was obviously a maple leaf. On the grey scale flyers, however, it was a big, fat marijuana leaf. So 3,000+ people now think I'm a pothead.

Awesome.

Then, yesterday I was leaving a work-related message for someone. I briefly outlined what it was I needed, and then I started my usual message wrap-up spiel.

"If you could give me a call back when you get the chance, I'd appreciate it. You can reach me at....um....uh.....Well, this is embarrassing, I can't seem to remember my office phone number right now. It's um.....well, hopefully you have it. If I don't hear from you by this afternoon, I'll call you back. Thanks so much! Bye."

Yeah, she never called me back.

The other day, I was zoned out at my desk, trying to figure out some relatively simple math when the phone rang. I picked it up on auto-pilot and didn't start tuning in to what was going on in the conversation till about half-way through. By that point, I didn't really understand what the guy was saying so I just "mm-hmm-ed" and "yep-ed" my way until he mercifully seemed satisfied enough to end the conversation.

The next day, I got a call from some lady named Amy. Amy informed me that I had spoken with her colleague Dave the previous day, and he had put me down as the contact person for my order.

I was like, "Umm...what?" And then she was like, "Oh yes, he told me to contact you with any issues about your toner order and I just needed to confirm your shipping address."

"Uh....I don't recall ordering any toner. I am not usually the contact person for that type of thing, are you sure he spoke to me?" I said, desperately trying to remember what she could be talking about.

Then suddenly, it dawned on me that my space cadet moment from the day before might have landed me in some trouble. So I asked her to recap the order and she said, "Yes, you very wisely were able to lock in last year's price for toner. We have you down for 12 boxes at the discounted rate of $365 per box, instead of the current rate, which is $424!"

I tried not to keel over dead as my brain exploded from trying to mentally calculate how much 12 boxes of toner times $365 per box would cost. I frantically and very ineloquently explained to her that some sort of mistake had been made, I was confused when I spoke with Dave, and we decidedly did not want 12 boxes of toner. Thankfully, I think Amy was not a salesperson because she managed a confused, "Umm.....ok, then. Thanks." and let me off the hook. Dave would likely have tried a lot harder to save the sale, thus furthering my discomfort and embarrassment.

It's really unfortunate that all my idiot moments seem to happen at work. Work is the place where I'm supposed to appear together and competent. I get enough of the falling apart and appearing incompetent as a mom! And as a mom, I generally don't have a huge audience to witness my failures. (L, my one constant witness, so far is luckily not saying anything to anyone, either. A good reason to appreciate the fact that he's still not really talking much yet.)

At work, though, there's plenty of people around at all times to see me fall on my face in one way or another. And why does it always seem to be the same people? Although now that I think about it, it's probably best that a small handful of people repeatedly witness me playing the idiot than a bunch of random people every time. At least it stays contained this way.

Shockingly, I can't remember if pregnancy brain goes away after the baby is born. Which is likely due to my current bout of pregnancy brain. Here's hoping, I guess.