Something very weird happened to me after I had Kwezi a little over three years ago. My memory was not the same. I started forgetting things. In fact, it started slowly, with me entering my bedroom to pick something only to stand there and wonder what it is that I went to look for.
As days turned into months, I realised that I will have to live with the fact that my memory will never be the same again. Just as I was trying to come to terms with the fact that I sometimes get off the moto, pay and have to be stopped when I have walked away with the motorist’s helmet, I found out that I am not alone. Not only am I the only mum who has to struggle with things like sudden weight gain and have to endure insensitive questions, I was also not the only one whose memory had taken a dive.
Before I could even breathe a sigh of relief, I was shocked to find out that it is so common that it has a name. A quick perusal in Google showed me "mumnesia” but most mums I know call it "mummy brain”.
One of the reading materials I found indicated that in 2016, a paper published in "Nature Neuroscience”, revealed that my kind of "issue” is actually common. What a relief. According to the paper, a woman’s brain goes through changes, revamping it in ways that continue even after she has given birth. Eh
The research team compared brain scans of women before pregnancy and the brain scans of these same women during pregnancy and the results indicated "reductions in the volume of grey matter”, which contains nerve cells in the brains of the women during pregnancy. In short, there is a physical transformation happening in the brain when a woman gets pregnant.
Their conclusion mentions that post-natal forgetfulness may be attributed to hormones, pain, priorities, and fatigue. Wow.
Looking back, it really does make sense. You have to get pregnant to understand that the changes in your body begin the moment you conceive. I have read somewhere that giving birth naturally shifts organs from their position; albeit very slightly. I now understand why I didn’t feel steady on my feet for about two weeks after I had Kwezi. My knees were as weak as jelly. With all that said, I had never thought that this process goes as far as brain cells. I already felt that women don’t really get all the honour they deserve for bringing life into this world but today, I feel that we perhaps need a law that requires the world to bow to us every now and then but often enough. We are heroes. Don’t even attempt to debate that.