Things Nobody Tells You About Being Pregnant, Part 8: Your Crazy Mind

Ok, so after you get pregnant, you somehow lose your mind. I sometimes really wonder if you ever find it again. There are so many weird tricks your mind starts playing on you, and some of them just aren't nice. At all. Yeah, yeah, go ahead and believe the hormone hype - it's all due to hormonal changes in your body, blah blah. Again I contend that everything can't be blamed on hormones. (And if it really can, why only during pregnancy? That's not fair since you have to deal with hormones for the majority of your life!)

We've all heard the excuses for forgetting stuff. They're all the same excuse, actually, just slightly altered depending on who is giving it at the time. Brain fart, Senior moment, PMS brain, and the list goes on. Another one you can add to that list is Pregnancy brain, and I would go even further to give it a sub-classification of First Trimester Brain.

When I first got pregnant, it felt like I was in a continual fog. Partially from sleep deprivation and constantly having to pee and blow my nose (see previous posts), but the rest I really can't attribute to anything besides just being preggers. It either eased up by the time I hit my second trimester or it became the new norm - I haven't decided which.

Your mind also starts to wander at the weirdest times, and you think about the strangest things. As you're about to drift off to sleep, you suddenly wonder if/when your son will get in trouble at school because he punched some kid in the nose. Or if your daughter will like Barbie dolls. And there's the whole ugly baby thing I talked about earlier. And it gets worse - since your baby can hear you loud and clear, you wonder if your kid really understands that the driver you were yelling at earlier really is an idiot, and if you've already screwed them up by letting out your road rage.

Oh, and the dreams. I have always had pretty vivid, memorable dreams. But something has kicked it up a notch during pregnancy. I had a dream that was so real the other night that when I woke up, I was extremely disappointed that it wasn't true. Pretty sad. But it's even more sad when you find out what it was about. Basically, in the dream, I was getting ready to go somewhere and had put on my favorite pair of jeans. There's nothing like a good pair of jeans - especially that favorite pair. I must've been pseudo-conscious, because I actually became somewhat excited about wearing those jeans to wherever I happened to be going that day - in real life. I woke up, and immediately realized there was no way in hades that I would be fitting into my favorite jeans anytime soon and thought, "Well, crap."

And then there's the whole sleep deprivation issue. You never really know if your fogginess, forgetfulness, and general grouchiness is due to lack of sleep or that hormone thing again. It's probably a combination of both, but I don't think you can ever really know for sure. And with a baby coming soon, it probably won't get any better. Don't give me junk about "that's nature's way of preparing you" for the baby. First of all, so what if it is, and second of all, who the heck cares? Bottom line is that you didn't get any sleep last night and you still haven't popped the kid out. You'd think that "nature" would understand the whole concept a little better and just let you hibernate for about 40 weeks. But those are probably things you only think about when you're pregnant, right?

Entire What Nobody Tells You Series:

Part 1: You Always Have To Pee
Part 2: Snot and Boogers
Part 3: Weight Gain
Part 4: Clothes and Fashion
Part 5: The Ugly Baby
Part 6: The Loaded Question
Part 7: The Gear
Part 8: Your Crazy Mind

And then:

Some Pregnancy Advice
Some MORE Pregnancy Advice