IN SPITE of the arctic temperatures, spring has sprung. Never mind the cries of “winter drawers on”, signs of new life are all around, be it burgeoning snowdrops, gambolling lambs or Marks & Spencer displaying 200 lemon polyester tank tops.
In the spirit of the season, several colleagues have recently given birth, some of them for the first time.
I was mindful of these sleep-deprived wretches experiencing that baptism of fire when eight hours continual viewing of the backs of the eyelids seems as likely as winning the Euro Lottery, when I read an astonishing headline this week.
This was the claim from American scientists that having a baby makes you cleverer. In fact, depending on your starting point, it can put you on a par with Einstein.
Hollow laughter all around from the Hill household where neither mum nor dad has had a full night’s shut-eye since 1991.
Son number one didn’t go through the night till he was four and number two, well, let’s just say that at the age of 12, he’s still working on it.
This has resulted in us the onset of a well-known medical condition known as PFBS – or porridge for brains syndrome, as it’s known to all parents.
The thought that my mental processes have become razor sharp since giving birth is risible.
I frequently have “mumnesia” and have forgetten to pick them up from school/childminder/ even a sleepover.
More worrying is when I don’t remember to collect them, then remember I must, and finally can’t recall where they are.
This is in addition to going to work in odd shoes, putting my spectacles in the freezer and a tin opener in my handbag. (Don’t ask).
Sometimes, I think my life is on the same level as the pop art cartoon of the anguished mother opining: “Oh no! I left the baby on the bus.”
In fact, a friend of mine actually did a very similar thing. Having parked her pram outside a Dublin department store, complete with sleeping infant inside, she executed her shopping trip and toddled off home.
It was only as she unpacked her marrows and her new Marigolds that she realised another sizable parcel was missing – the swaddled baby, still snoozing outside the retail emporium.
Luckily, this was the 1960s when such blatant negligence was tolerated.
Now she’d have a compulsory parenting order slapped on her and be forced to attend “mothercraft” classes in non-gender stereotypical play methodology. So I just can’t accept the notion that long-term, a mother’s memory and ability to parallel process, or multi-task as it was known in the old days, actually improves.
The theory is that “diaper brain” is just (“just”?) caused by sleep deprivation.
What the scientists are saying is that the brain becomes more active, particularly in those areas to do with memory, learning and emotion, because it has to adapt the increasing demands made upon it by motherhood.
You know, the ones that go “Change nappy. Liquidise food. Sterilise bottles. Write Booker prize-winning novel. ”
Apparently your eyesight gets better – more attuned to fighting off predators – although only if you can keep your eyes open in the first place.
And stress levels diminish too. More oxytocin is produced, the hormone which stimulates labour and breast milk, and this acts as nature’s anti-depressant.
The chance of developing some cancers also lessens with childbirth.
The risks of breast, ovarian and uterine cancer all drop with each pregnancy.
All well and good, but all these positives make giving birth sound like the mother is frozen in some sort of Norman Rockwell painting, a land where sugar and spice and all things nice are equated to a 10lb baby, forceps delivery, no anaesthetic.
When I had my first son, the doctor asked if I wanted an epidural.
Yes, and make it last until he’s 18, I quipped.
With teenage torpor well and truly upon us, I’m beginning to believe my own gags.
Going through adolescent angst can be just as painful as the wading through treacle sensation experienced by the new mum.
I’ve cast aside the anxiety of the potato-shaped body, the calcium-deficient hair and finger nails and the total inability to be a yummy-mummy.
Now I have to be an-understanding-in-the-face-of-GCSE revision stress mum. The sort of mother who soaks up everyone’s bad moods like a natural sponge. The kind who doesn’t snap back, but merely rustles up plates of cookies and glasses of milk with a forebearing smile.
The sort those American scientists would be proud of. If only she existed.
