Losing the plot

37 weeks

There are many myths and old wive's tales surrounding pregnancy which as a pregnant person you navigate your way around by applying a little bit of common sense.

However, there is one particular pregnancy cliché that is painfully true. You really do lose your brain.

I have lost count of the number of times I have left the grill on. Sometimes it's after the food has been cooked and taken out. Other times with food still in it. Consequently, our cuisine has taken on a distinctly charcoal-based flavour recently.

Last night I left the oven on. The previous day the smoke alarm battery conked out and I forgot, while out shopping, to buy replacements. And it's not as if I even realise I've done these
things. It's always Husband that notices the digression. When he discovered that I had both forgotten to buy new batteries for the smoke alarm and left the oven on in the same day he was distinctly unimpressed. I think he is beginning to fear for his life. This is not helped by the fact that whilst out driving the other day I nearly ploughed through a pedestrian crossing. I think he wishes he had those dual brake thingys in my car the way driving instructors do.

I regularly enter rooms only to stand there and think: "Um, why did I come in here?". I have become an avid list writer. Even if I only need three things, I will only remember one of them by the time I get to the shop. The slight snag in trying to be organised in this way is that you a) have to remember where you put the list and b) remember to take it out with you when you go shopping. I don't think I need to go into my success rate on these fronts.

And for the love of God please don't ask me to make a decision about anything. It takes me so long to understand the question that I've forgotten what it is I'm being asked to make a decision about in the first place.

When I speak to other mothers who have already got babies they can't help telling me delightedly that "It never comes back". By which they mean that the mother's brain power is irrevocably diminished, and they're very glad that another woman has joined the ditziness ranks.

Even my sister Nancy who, aside from Husband, is meant to be my staunchest ally and defender commented in not so many words at the end of our phone conversation: "I don't know what's happened to you," she says, laughing, "But you used to be so bright and articulate."