Mind Boggling!

I've been thinking lately (a dangerous pastime, I know) about how interesting memory is. I can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard Pres. Hinckley had passed away, or that someone had crashed a plane into the World Trade Center, or that Challenger had exploded. (Respectively: in the car with my mom heading to my sister-in-law's house, in the car with my brother heading to SUU - when Travis told me I thought he was making some absurd joke, watching TV in the lunch room of the oldest functioning elementary school in Clark County with the 15 other students grades 1-6.) But, when I think back to the traumatic moments of birthing my two children, I have a very hard time remembering much of anything. I really have to put my mind to reconstructing events and emotions associated with those moments.

Being at LDS hospital for two months due to complications with Tomas provided numerous opportunities for stressful events like having pneumonia and anxiety attacks and having my baby undergo all sorts of procedures. Yet those two months of insanity melted away instantly as soon as my little family drove around the bend into Toquerville. It was like it never happened! I have to put forth great mental effort to piece together the events that, at the time, I never thought I could forget. (I REALLY should have journaled!) It's like a dream that you promise yourself you'll remember when you wake-up, but that inevitably fades.

Having Hazel was a much simpler procedure, but it still had its moments of distress since I managed to deliver her without the aid of an epidural. I can remember that I thought the pain felt more like an extremely anxious need to move around than any kind of sharp pain, but I can't actually remember the pain. I remember liking that Levi and my mom took turns putting a hot compress on my lower back, hating being on my side, and really wanting Dr. Winward to give me an episiotomy, but I only vividly remember Hazel being sat upon my chest and me thinking: what is this thing? it's my baby. she's really here? and she's my Hazel baby!! she's so beautiful!


Another memory anomaly that intrigues me is the whole pregnancy-brain phenomenon. I went from being a girl who graduated summa cum laude because I could absorb info like a sponge and retain it (heck, I can still remember my older sibs teaching me what it meant to multiply before I was in school!) to a girl who struggled to recall basic information such as my name, address, phone number; or the rest of the sentence I had started. How does that happen? Such is the mystery of the mind boggling mind!