Filled with all the things that still need to be done, worries about the kid and whether he'll be alright and frustration!
Response to prompt 9: the words "self-care" sound like a joke at this point in time. Self-care this week was taking the trash and recycling to the dump, alone, with windows down and music loud.
The mental capacity to think about 3 people and all of their needs, 24/7, plus home management, finance/budgeting, planning for the future...all while working full time.
It's just a normal brain that happens to be managing other brains, complete with their own wild emotions and developing personalities.
Driving to the ER with the baby strapped to my chest. Oops!
Mommy brain = going into the pantry with the laundry basket. Or...
Mommy brain is an affliction with no off switch.
Completely having a mush brain and not being able to form coherent thoughts and sentences
The reality
A bit crazed a bit fun, a bit witty, a bit creative and it can be all at the same time!
Having the capacity, power, resilience and compassion to think beyond "me". It's always a we. I am learning to no longer use mommy brain as a derogatory phrase but instead look at it as a complex way of being that has made my life richer and me more capable of taking care of my community
... a condescending saying. The phenomenon IS real, yet I bristle when people say "mommy brain." My experience of this phenomenon is because I am over stimulated, sleep deprived, multitasking throughout each day for many years in a row and could use more support.
Mush... Total emptiness. Like, I can't even remember... Wtf ever anyway. It's pretty normal these days.
Last night, when I was making a card for my son's birthday and I couldn't figure out how to make the number five ......
Mom brain is trying to be doing it all all the time on a torturous lack of sleep. Mom brain is our culture allowing the heavy dose of parenting to fall on the mothers
Leaving my house four or five times in the morning. Each time I get in the car, remembering another thing I forgot the last time I got in the car. And so on and so forth.
A ticker tape (I googled it) of things to do (at home, at work, for kids, for the pets), needs to be met, appointments to be made, grocery lists, meal planning, cleaning chores, laundry status, future plans, worries, that really stupid thing I said 10 years ago......all of this while simultaneously forgetting simple words like "car" and my 5 year old saying "mooooooom, you always forget words!"
Mommy brain is the ability to triple quadruple multi-task while running on empty with no sleep and no money but nobody know because you really are keeping it together for everybody
Mommy brain is what helped my great-great-great grandmother have 19 children and not completely lose her mind.
Mommy brain is Looking for your glasses on your head, your phone in your hand, your cup of coffee that went cold hours ago. It's remembering one kids likes the cereal in a purple bowl while another wants toast with sprinkles on the red plate while simultaneously forgetting to meet that person and pick up the marketplace item.
It's a near-focus, the minutiae, the specific hue of your baby's flushed cheeks, a change in tone in a cry, a keeping of time as intervals between nursing, diaper changing, napping, playing. The mom-brain near-focus is intense and tunneling in the first 6 months. Your baby is near; their heat is near, their breath, smell and small curled body and skin is more often than not, against yours and mixed with yours. I never saw the horizon in those first months. Gradually the periphery seeps back in. It coincides with when your baby starts facing out more, starts sitting alone, starts eating food not from your body, and when my own body started to regain more of its former shape and strengths. My baby is now one and mom-brain is currently a deep, dragging desire to complete a creative task, to make art, and to daydream at the horizon in snatches of time while my baby is asleep, or reading her books, or with her grandparents or dad for a few hours. It's awkward, clunky. I don't have the hang of seizing brief creative time in my new mom-brain. I no longer have the luxury of open-ended hours.
Mommy brain is... hang on a sec... "no you can't have another cookie..." Mommy brain is a type of brain fog that... "Go get a towel and clean it up..." Mommy brain is brought on by the... "Oh sweetie are you okay? Let me see your knee, let's clean that up and get a bandaid..." From constant multitasking and being... "Yes you need to get ready for bed. You can't find monkey? I'll help you look..." It just kind of... sorry, what were we talking about?
driving almost to work with your kid in the car who was supposed to be dropped off at school.
When someone asks me my child's birthdate and I cannot for the life of me unscramble the dates of my 3 children
Mommy brain is something I'm done apologizing for. This brain keeps mental tallies of grocery lists, and bathroom breaks. It constantly computing wake windows and tracking upcoming holidays and birthdays. Its keeping an eye on the craft supplies and remembering to text that friend to check in. Its making a mental note to thaw out the meat every night and put a teether back in the fridge. It's monitoring fevers and coughs and dosages and whose bathed and if the cats are due for vaccines soon while working a full time job. This brain is prepping for work meetings while packing lunches and resetting tomorrows coffee. Its ordering firewood for winter and paying bills and wondering if each kid is getting enough one on one time. Mommy brain is trying to switch from breastfeeding to bombshell in the hour long nap before the baby wakes up again. Sometimes my mommy brain gets tired and i leave the car running in the driveway and stand on the porch looking for my keys. Occasionally it put a toy in the freezer. Or stand in a room unsure what brought me there. Mommy brain is busy but its badass.
mommy brain to me is when I'm trying to concentrate and I keep hearing mom,hey mom,mom look and I constantly lose my train of thought. However I know someday soon I'll miss that constant little voice saying mom
"Mommy brain" is me teaching at the front of the classroom and all of a sudden having absolutely no idea what I just said and no idea what to say next. I instead say, "I have nothing. Sorry," and move to the back of the classroom. "Mommy brain" is having a never ending, never fully met list of needs and tasks running through my brain that if I don't say them aloud or write them down will never be chipped away at. "Mommy brain" is having the capacity to be fully in charge of other humans' lives. Once I became a mother, while this may sound very obvious, I kept seeing my students more and more as "someone's kid," which I then started seeing them more and more through the lens of "my kid." This rewiring in my brain has been for good but it has also added to a compounded exhaustion of constantly thinking of how to do the right thing when it comes to raising up kids--my own and others'.