Leggo my Preggo, my brain is an Eggo...

Ya so, the Books tell you that it’s the hormones that do it to you. In fact, the books blame everything on the hormones, but that is beside the point. Wait, what was my point? Right, preggo brain. Also known by some as “pregnancy insanity”, it is the process by which a seemingly normal and together woman is rendered completely incompetent by the 1cm blob affixed directly inside her abdomen, that will one day be born and grow up to think you’re weird.

It’s an odd side effect of pregnancy I didn’t know a whole lot about until I found myself “with child” as one of the many euphemisms for pregnancy states.

Any way it goes something like this….

One day, you’ve got it all together. You know your work and personal schedule without the need of a blackberry or even a pen. You know when your appointments are, how long it takes to get there, what time you need to leave your house to make your morning meeting and exactly what things you do and don’t need when you enter the grocery store. You know your husband’s schedule so well, he calls you to ask when he’s got to see the dentist, and you even know that your BFF has to get a PAP done in 3 weeks, and that your mother has Spin class on Tuesdays, and TBA (that’s Thighs, Butt and Abs for those of you lucky enough not to know what that stands for) on Thursdays. You know when all your favourite shows are on, you know 3 days in advance when the dog is going to be out of food, and you know the dates of all the leftovers in your fridge. You are in essence, just any old gal with her head screwed on right.

Then you procreate and everything goes to shit. You’re suddenly the girl who not only runs out of dog food, but who forgets to feed him for 3 straight days after that, only to realize he’s following you around hoovering up crumbs to fill his little belly in case you never come to your senses again. You’re also the girl who puts her cell phone on the basket at the grocery store, walks aimlessly around for 45 mins. only to leave with a bag of Oreo’s, 6 liters of soda water and milk for the cereal you forgot to buy. Then gets home and goes to call your husband to pick up said cereal, only to realize your cell phone is still in the basket at the checkout, and you’re at home. You go to work with makeup only on one eye, you forget to pack underwear for a 4 day business trip, and worst of all, you’re so damn confused about everything all the time, you barely recognize that all these things are happening.

This is around the time your husband will start to wonder if you’re ever coming back. And what I’ve learned from a few of my already mommy friends, is that it’s not likely for a few years.

I don’t know what happens, but your brain just melts. That part of you that was once so sharp, so overly capable of retaining information, multitasking and thinking logically has been replaced but what I can only assume is something that looks like an Eggo. You know, it sort of functions. It functions enough for you to get out of bed, make yourself mildly presentable and get to where you need to go eventually, even if you’re sweaty and crying when you get there. And the reason I think it’s like an Eggo is that, I’ve always found their design tolerable at best as well. While the waffle is designed to make pockets of warm melty butter and syrup, it’s not designed to keep those pockets full. Once you try to put it to work – you know, transferring from flat on the plate to squarely in your mouth, the design all but fails. The tasty, yummy concoction of salty butter and sweet sweet syrup run out of the pockets, and either drip onto the edge of your plate, or onto your lap.

This is like my preggo brain. Things appear to sink in, just as usual. It looks like it’s going to work, that I am going to function, that this time I will be victorious over the confusion, only to, at the last minute fall apart like a sticky pile of syrup. Your brain just can’t retain what it needs. It can lay there and accept it, it can fake retention, but as soon as you put it to work, all you’re left with is frustration. Just like my morning Eggo.

And sure, they blame it on the hormones, I get it. I guess somehow, the insane amount of estrogen, HCG and progesterone that has been surging through my body the last 11 weeks, fighting it out and seeing which one could screw with me more, made these holes in my brain. The book says it, so it has to be right, doesn’t hit (ha ha ha).

What I think? Well I think that the lovely little creature that has taken up residence squarely in the centre of your body has now started to control you in each and every way. Think of it as practice for their teenage years. Like any alien force that enters a host body, the purpose is to make that host body act according to their plan. And for my little bean, this plan seems to be turning his mama whacko before she hits the tender age of 30. Sitting snug and warm, protected by the amniotic fluid that MY body had to create, this 40 week gestating creature (the only species I know of that gestates longer is an elephant, and no wonder, look at the SIZE of that thing?) has decided that it might as well start ruling now.

I don’t really mind that my fetus tells me when and what to eat, when to gag or dry heave, when to pee, and on occasion if you’re one of the lucky ones, when to poop. And I even don’t mind that it tells me when I can sleep, for how long and how well, I don’t mind any of it. I just mind the things that cause me to act like a total moron with waffles for brains. I mind the things that have me incessantly searching for my cell phone (which after 12 successful years with one has never been lost before), or driving in circles because I honestly forgot where I was going. I mind the things that make me wonder how long it will be before I am the evil mother who drives away with her baby accidentally on the roof of the car…because only someone with Eggos for brains could truly be that daft!