KEY POINTS:
Mothers-to-be have long complained about forgetting the simplest things as soon as they fall pregnant, jokingly blaming their "baby brain". Now a major study has found that many women expecting a child do in fact suffer considerable memory loss, which continues even after birth.
Julie Henry, a psychologist
at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, who conducted the research, said: "Pregnant women are significantly impaired on some, but not all, measures of memory. The memory deficits are smaller than the deficits found when comparing healthy 20-year-olds and 80-year-olds, but are probably close to the modest deficits found when comparing healthy 20-year-olds with healthy 60-year-olds."
Henry and Peter Rendell, a memory researcher at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, reached their conclusion after examining the memory performance of 412 pregnant women, 272 mothers and 386 non-pregnant women. Pregnant women experienced the worst problems in memory tasks which were more challenging, the authors said in the report published in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology.
"Regular, well-practised memory tasks are unlikely to be affected, such as remembering phone numbers of friends and family members," said Henry. "However, the ability to perform more novel memory tasks, such as having to remember new phone numbers or people's names, or recalling five or six digits for a short period of time, may be affected."
The authors admit that, while they believe the syndrome exists, they cannot be sure why. "Our own suspicion is that lifestyle may be a relevant factor to consider; for example the increased disruption and dislocation of pregnancy, busyness and the lack of routine associated with this period," said Henry. "Sleep deprivation is also going to be a relevant factor post-pregnancy that could affect cognitive performance."
But some academics have dismissed "maternal amnesia" as a myth. Dr Ros Crawley, who led a team of researchers from Sunderland University in 2003, suggested that negative mood swings were causing the apparent problem, or that the reason could be "cultural expectations of impairments".
However, Carole Mitchell, a mother-of-two, who edits a National Childbirth Trust newsletter in the UK, said: "My memory began suffering five years ago when I was pregnant with my first child, Erin. I think that for some women it starts during your first pregnancy because you're stressed about it and you get bogged down with all the preparations. Then, once you've got a child or children, you're bound to forget things because you're always on duty."
- Observer