Mothers-to-Be and Mommy Mush

Call it what you will -- mommy mush, baby brain, preg-head, mommy brain, or even just a good old brain fart -- but experts are in disagreement as to whether or not women become addle pated and discombobulated when they become pregnant.

Okay, we've all heard the story (or lived the experience) of putting the cereal in the refrigerator and the milk in the cupboard, something anyone who is distracted by everyday life is capable of doing. However, if you're pregnant and this happens, people automatically attribute it to baby brain.

I first heard the term mommy mush used by a friend when she apologized to someone for not catching on quickly to what they were saying. So she was distracted. It happens. Why does it have to be anything more than that?

We grow older, our hair grays, we forget some small item and automatically we have Alzheimer's. Being a blonde over 50 I often refer to my occasional brain fart as a "blonde senior moment" in an effort to evoke extra sympathy. Whatever the reason that we occasionally forget some small piece of well-known information or have trouble recalling a tidbit of truth (personally, I think we've overloaded our brains with nonsense much like our computers and PDAs), if you do it when you're pregnant you have preg-head or baby brain or some other cute disorder.

What the Experts Say about Mommy Mush

Ask Katherine Ellison, Pulitzer-prize winning reporter, mother of two and author of The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter and she'll tell you that pregnancy can actually improve your senses both during pregnancy and immediately after childbirth by improving your efficiency, motivation, stress-coping mechanisms, social skills and emotional intelligence.

In addition, a February 2009 article at Mail Online indicates that a study of 2,500 women, aged 20 to 24, both before and after their pregnancy indicates that there was no change to their mental abilities.

On the other hand, a study written up by the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology in November 2007 indicates that much of the evidence about pregnancy-related deficits to memory came from subjective appraisals and failed to yield consistent results until a "meta-analysis" of 14 studies conducted over the past 17 years showed that pregnant women are "significantly impaired on some, but not all, measures of memory."

Clearly this group is in disagreement as to what is going on; so where is the disconnect? It depends on who you ask.

Is Mommy Mush a Reality?

While some people will tell you that the ability to adapt to being pregnant or having a new born in the home will improve your mental and coping skills, others will use experiments in an effort to find the answer.

On the one hand logic might dictate that taking on the additional challenge of motherhood heightens your natural ability to cope with new challenges. On the other hand it makes sense to think that hormonal changes and possible sleep deprivation - shown to occur when we're pregnant -- must have some negative impact on pregnant women and new mothers.

And what about science? Because science is inexact and based on repetitive experimentation meant to elicit results that can be studied, analyzed and quantified, there is always room for error. Consider the two studies previously cited.

One where mental abilities were tested before and after pregnancy in the same women concluded that "pregnancy and motherhood could actually improve women's mental abilities - and the improvement may be permanent." While the other compared "pregnant and/or postpartum women with healthy matched controls." Since this is rather like comparing apples to oranges, how reliable are the results?

In the end it all comes down to what you choose to believe. If you are pregnant and find yourself forgetful you can blame your medical condition and laugh it off by calling it mommy mush or baby brain. Or you might just decide to ignore the stumble and move on.