I Need My Bitches To Fix My Brain

If you are a mom, know a mom, or watch any television at all, I am sure you have heard of Mommybrain – that elusive ailment that affects your ability to remember (and therefore avoid) the excruciating pain of labour, inhibits your ability to recall why you just entered your kitchen on some random errand and causes you to forget that there is such a thing as makeup, tweezers and razors.  As women, we hear the warnings about this condition from other moms and are therefore fairly well informed about it before we choose to shove our little bundles of joy out of our va-jay-jays.  What we are never told is the fact that if you have a second child you get Mommybrain² - Mommybrain to the second power or Mommybrain squared.

Apparently, Mommybrain becomes exponentially stronger with each child, which explains why I can now only speak baby talk - last week I asked the cashier at the grocery store if they took “Amewican Expwess.”  I honestly don’t know how moms with more than two kids can still walk upright – I guess that explains Kate Gosselin. 

I recently discovered the exponential power of Mommybrain when I tried to wean Simba off of bottles.  I know that at some point I managed to get Prince off of bottles but I have no idea how I did it.  That period of time has been completely wiped out by my Mommybrain.  I know that there must be some evolutionary reason for this condition – it makes sense to deprive us of the knowledge of how awful childbirth is, otherwise we would never have more than one child.  But I don’t get why this condition wipes out all knowledge of how you managed to raise your first kid – I mean, shouldn’t it be easier with the second one?  I really don’t want to have to read all those What To Expect books again – they were boring enough the first time.  Don’t I deserve a break? 

Apparently not.  Now I am stuck with two kids I don’t know how to raise and even less time to research the matter.  So I started thinking – maybe nature causes us to forget this stuff so that moms are required to band together in order to successfully raise their kids.  What’s that saying? It takes a suburb to raise a child or something like that?  Unfortunately, being so far from most of my friends and family I am kinda screwed in that area.  But luckily, through the magic of Kijiji I have made a few good friends in my new town.  And I can honestly say, if it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t have managed to get Simba off bottles, get Prince to sleep through the night again (Yeah!) or retain what is left of my sanity.

In other words, the only way I have discovered to overcome Mommybrain is by creating your own Mommy Support Group (MSG).  This consists of a group of like minded moms in your area that you can get together with on a regular basis to bitch and complain about all the annoying parts of being a mom, have girls night out with so you get a chance to wear those heels hidden at the back of your closet, and have some potential free babysitters available so you can have your pap smear in privacy. 

Having an MSG isn’t going to solve all your problems.  You will still find yourself searching the house for your cell phone only to find that it was in your back pocket the whole time (apparently I have no feeling left in my ass).  There will still be temper tantrums, exploding diapers and times when the kids play hide and go seek with your wallet, but at least you can look forward to having a few laughs with the girls about it later on.  The bottom line is women need other women in their lives.  There are just some things that your man cannot understand or help with, like menstrual cramps, post-labour hemorrhoids and the sporadic need to cry for no reason.  Together we can overcome the hardships of Mommyhood, including the effects of Mommybrain to whatever power, and survive to one day reclaim a life free of diapers and other people’s laundry.

-Wendy