Does Pregnancy Affect Memory?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8491493.stm

It has been referred to as "pregnancy head", "baby brain" or "mumnesia". Some people believe that women become more forgetful when they are pregnant. Others say this is just a myth.

According to February's issue of The British Journal of Psychiatry, pregnancy does not make you forgetful. Helen Christensen, the researcher from Australian National University who led the study, said it makes you think you are more forgetful because you are already worried about memory loss.

Prior studies have linked pregnancy, parenting and forgetfulness. Those were mostly based on self-reporting by women during pregnancy and did not compare cognitive performance before, during and after.

The latest research tested 1,241 women between the ages of 20 and 24 in 1999, then followed up with those same women in 2003 and again in 2007, asking them to perform the same tasks. At the time of the follow-ups, 77 of the women were pregnant, 188 had become mothers in the interim, and 542 never had children. The results were that there was no significant differences in cognitive change found as a function of pregnancy or motherhood, although late pregnancy was associated with deterioration on one of the four tests of memory and cognition.