How Mommy's brain went bye bye

When I was pregnant I was told that I would pop out my kid and kiss my brain cells goodbye. I didn’t want to believe it, and fooled myself into thinking for a while that it couldn’t be true.  Then one day I knew for sure it had happened to me.  I needed to sterilize the components of my breast pump.  I placed them in a pan with a little boiling water.  I stepped away from the kitchen (a diaper explosion called) thinking in my mind it would only be a moment, and quickly forgot about the pot on the stove.  By the time I remembered and raced in there to rescue it, it was too late.  All the water had evaporated, and my pump had melted, wilting like a flower in a Salvador Dalí painting under all that heat.  It was ruined, and so was my good Pampered Chef pan.  NOOO!!!

Just the other day at Target, I swiped my ATM card, then I walked away from the checkout stand without signing for my purchase or taking my bags with me. The cashier had to shout and chase after me, and everyone was staring.  I almost left a warehouse-sized can of coffee, mouthwash, and Vienna sausages.  At least I remembered my daughter. 

How could I just walk away like that?  It made me feel like I’m cuckoo for locopuffs. It was a certifiable mommy mental meltdown.  May the parenting gods help me!

I chalk it up to the fact that these days, I’m incredibly distracted.  Maybe I was a bit absentminded to start with, but add to that parenting an extremely active toddler, when I am constantly dropping my food in mid-bite to run after my child, and my mind is all over the place.  It can be challenging to remember to look both ways (and in LA you have to, because there is ALWAYS a car.)

I’ve heard people refer to these moments as brain farts.  You know, those humiliating moments when you can’t remember an important somebody’s name, or you lock your keys in the car with it running.  Nobody wants to admit that they’ve made these mistakes.  I can only speak in terms of me, but I believe I’m not alone.  I believe I am experiencing a constant series of mommy brain farts, and perhaps so are you. I pushed out the kid and the brain went bye bye.  Maybe I should be doing the New York Times cross word puzzle in my down time (what little there is!) to increase my brainpower.  But I think the best thing I can do is realize that this is part of being a mom, and embrace my newfound ditziness.  Heck, I’m going to celebrate it, just as soon as I stop feeling so stupid. 

So the next time you see some lady, shirt on inside out and backwards, hair in a questionably fashionable Scunci, accidently dump the contents of her purse on the floor, barely recover, pay the cashier and then walk away without her change or her latte, take pity, and give her a kind smile. She is a mom.