My kids are 5 and 2.5 years old, and I am a chronic sufferer of momnesia. If you’re a mom, you may know all too well what I’m referring to. And the more kids you have the stronger your momnesia. I go downstairs to the kitchen and stare at the cabinets wondering for what reason did I come downstairs.
I come back from the grocery store with a bag full of items, only to realize that I forgot to get milk, which was the main reason I went to the store. I spend 30 minutes looking for my sunglasses only to find that they were perched on my head the entire time, and it’s my 2.5-year old who points that out to me.
Momnesia
One time I asked my mother-in-law if My Man (who is now 41) was a good baby. She says she doesn’t remember. I say, she has momnesia…or she doesn’t want to tell me because he was probably the devil’s spawn.
Either way, moms who have older kids often tell me that they don’t remember what their kids were like as babies and toddlers or they gush about how lovely their child was as a baby. That’s called MSM (mom’s selective memory). It’s another disorder common to moms.
Maybe I’m still too close to the baby/toddler stages to have forgotten, but those first few baby months (at least for me) were so tiring, trying, and frustrating. I can’t imagine forgetting that.
But then again, I can barely remember what to buy at the grocery store so it’s unlikely that I’ll have the brain capacity to remember the tough times with the kids when they were babies. Maybe years from now I’ll have forgotten all the challenging times and simply miss being able to cradle my kids in my arms. It’s kinda hard to cradle a
Maybe years from now I’ll have forgotten all the challenging times and simply miss being able to cradle my kids in my arms. It’s kinda hard to cradle a 15-year-old comfortably, and although I still plan to do that, it won’t be the same.
My mom’s friends who have kids that are grown up tell me all the time to cherish the time when they are little because they grow up so fast. I try to take that to heart. My 2.5-year-old will soon be too heavy to carry, too cool to kiss me goodbye, and too smart to know that I don’t know the answer to everything.
I guess momnesia isn’t so bad. It will help me remember all the good times and forget the bad, and hopefully, that will set in long before I get dementia.