Holly Nevy is no intellectual slouch. A former middle school math teacher, she can solve complicated algorithms and differential equations.

But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t mix up details, like the date for the puppet show at the library.

“I have a brain. It’s in there,” says Nevy, laughing.

The Odenton mother of two says she feels like she routinely confuses things and takes a second longer to understand what’s being said. She’s pretty sure of the cause: mommy brain.

The symptoms mothers describe aren’t really that different from dementia — forgetfulness, distracted thinking, difficulty concentrating. You forget words and people’s names. You have trouble finishing sentences. You occasionally look for your sunglasses when they’re on top of your head.

It goes by other names: placenta brain, last trimester fog, baby brain drain, pregnancy amnesia or “momnesia.”

Symptoms often begin in pregnancy and worsen closer to delivery as the mind races with worries about finances, the baby’s health and labor. Frequently, the mental handicap continues into the postpartum period, when sleep deprivation worsens the condition, experts agree.

Kelly Tabak, a Columbia mother who has a 3-year-old and is expecting a second child, noticed the symptoms when she was pregnant for the first time, and they continued after her daughter was born.

Once, while pregnant the first time, she took her mother to the airport early in the morning. She was wearing her pjs and had her dog in the backseat. But because it was around the same time she would normally drive to work, she found herself driving there. Fortunately, she realized her mistake before she got to her desk in her pajamas.

Tabak’s friends immediately diagnosed her condition. “They said, ‘Oh yeah, that’s what happens when you’re pregnant. It sucks out all of your brain cells.”

Nevy thought her co-workers were exaggerating when they told her about “mommy brain” when she was pregnant.

“It was a joke,” says Nevy. “I didn’t take it seriously.” Now she knows differently.

Some mothers are relieved to hear that their woes are fairly common. But other women warn against self-fulfilling prophecy, saying that if you believe that you’re mentally impaired, you will be. And some mommies are opposed to the association of a mother with ditzy behavior. If anything, they argue, motherhood sharpens your senses, makes you wiser and enables you to juggle more tasks than should be humanly possible.

“It’s easy to fall in the trap of bashing motherhood,” says Katherine Ellison, author of “The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter.”

Medical opinion and studies differ on the subject. Some data seems to suggest some memory and learning impairment, but other studies have shown improvement in pregnant women’s brain functions, says Dr. Lindsay Alger, medical director of labor and delivery at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

“I don’t think the issue has been resolved,” Alger says.

Many women will experience changes in performance from the interrupted and poor sleep, which begins in pregnancy and continues after the baby arrives with middle-of-the-night feedings.

“We know from both animal and human studies that sleep deprivation has devastating effects on cognitive ability,” says Dr. Margaret McCarthy, a professor of physiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

The other issue is that your mind may not have enough “off time” late in pregnancy and after you become a mother. Preparing and caring for an infant can be mentally (in addition to physically) exhausting, according to parents and experts.

Teaching math to seventh and eighth graders was a demanding job. “But at the end of the day, there was down time,” says Nevy, who has 4-year-old and 1-year-old girls and is also president of the Moms Club of Odenton. “With parenting, it’s 24/7.”

Memory problems and confusion could also be exacerbated by dehydration, iron deficiency and stress, according to some scientists.

If you do experience symptoms, be assured that you’re not the only one. In an Australian report published in a medical journal last year, 82 percent of the women surveyed reported some type of absentmindedness or inability to concentrate during pregnancy.

But not everyone will notice a drastic change.

Some women are more sensitive to hormonal changes, according to Alger and other medical experts.

Just as some women are prone to mood changes and other symptoms of pre-menstrual syndrome, some women may be more likely to experience “mommy brain.”

At certain levels, some of these hormones could be a benefit. At other levels, they can interfere with clear thinking.

For example, some of the hormones that surge late in pregnancy and in the period after birth have calming properties, according to McCarthy.

Because females tend to perform better on tests when they are under less stress, McCarthy says, “If you connect the dots, pregnancy’s calming effects could be a benefit to learning.”

But if those levels get too high, McCarthy concedes, “It can be downright sedating.”

Those calming hormones, prolonged during breast-feeding, could be why some women feel a mental haze until they’ve stopped nursing, according to Dr. Louann Brizendine, author of “The Female Brain.”
Estrogen — if it’s not in levels that are too high — can be good for learning, studies have shown. But other studies conclude that the decreasing estrogen levels from pregnancy to postpartum can make it hard to focus.

Oxytocin, the body’s natural pain killer, has been shown to have amnesia-like effects during labor, which may have an evolutionary benefit. The theory is “if you could remember it, you wouldn’t do it again.”

What’s happening is not that women forget the pain exactly, says McCarthy. But it is dulled in the mother’s mind. “They unhook the connection of the pain and the birth,” she says.

Another benefit to pregnancy is that it is a time when brains actually form new neurons, McCarthy says. (You may actually get to reverse some of the damage done in college, after all.)

In her book, “Mommy Brain,” Ellison, an investigative journalist and mother of two, argues that motherhood improves a woman’s mind in five areas ranging from efficiency to emotional intelligence.

After children, Ellison says, “I felt like I got more focused … I was surprised by how much I could do.”

Working mothers, for example, don’t waste time the way many other workers do. When it’s time to pick up at daycare, she says, “You don’t end up at the water color.”

In addition to excelling at time management, Ellison says that mothers develop a great deal of empathy. It can help them in areas such as getting along with difficult supervisors and co-workers.

“When you’re a mom, you can’t quit,” says Ellison.

In her 30 years of practicing obstetrics, Alger says “mommy brain” hasn’t been a common complaint of patients. She guesses that with so many other more immediate concerns to discuss — nausea, pain, possible complications — the occasional forgotten phone number or misplaced grocery list isn’t a priority.

Or maybe, the mommy-brain afflicted just forget to mention it.

Author’s note:

I’ve lost my brain.

Literally and figuratively. The black day-planner that I call my “brain” containing phone numbers, appointments, passwords and to-do lists has gone missing.

I’ve also misplaced important work notes and a $2,000 check (I’ve since found it and deposited it). In my third trimester as I write this, my mommy brain is as addled as ever.

One night, as I stood in the kitchen simmering taco beef and microwaving vegetables, I bewilderingly asked my 5-year-old: “What am I doing?”

“You’re making dinner, mommy,” he said, his patience clearly tested.

I’ve heard church members say they’ve felt a certain week’s sermon was spoken directly to them. For me, this assignment was like that.

If ever I needed to understand the mommy brain phenomenon and be reassured that I’m not losing my mind completely, now is the time. I didn’t want to use my “fragile” state as an excuse. But I also couldn’t dismiss the power of pregnancy hormones, or the mental damage caused by stress and sleep deprivation.

My husband must be growing tired of my blank stares and my tendency to lose my train of thought mid-sentence.

He hasn’t once said anything about missing my pre-pregnant body. But the other day, he lamented, “I want your brain back.”

Me too.

– Laura Barnhardt Cech

(Laura gave birth to daughter Delaney on Aug. 28. Click to see her photo.