Baby Amnesia

A hypothesis that may be the key to life as we know it.

And now for something completely different...

If you're a faithful DruGroup reader or even a sporadic skim-reader, you know that I'm prone to writing on leadership lessons with a good number of leadership diagrams like The Opportunity Filter and the Crisis Decision-Making Quadrant tossed in for good measure.

But if you’re like me sometimes you need to take a mental stretch break and talk about something else entirely, maybe something a little humorous, possibly even ridiculous. If humor and ridiculousness are not your speed, you can just skip this one.

So, let's talk about a strange theory I've joked about for about two decades: baby amnesia.*

Human beings forget what it’s like to have a baby. This baby amnesia is absolutely crucial for the reproduction of the human race. Here’s why: no one would ever have more than one baby if they remembered what it was like to have the last one. 

We forget what it’s really like. This is good because then the human race has more babies. This is why we have spread across the globe as the most successful species on the planet. Baby amnesia is the key to life as we know it.

However, this also means that we are intentionally putting ourselves through the torture and pain of having babies. Of course, it is mostly women who go through childbirth. (Since I'm a paid researcher, not just a social-media troll, I fact-checked that statement and discovered to my surprise that women are exclusively going through this, as controversial as that statement might be to some.) Let me describe for you what in fact happens to a woman when she becomes pregnant and “brings a life into this world.”

They get fat. 

Let’s be honest. We all tell pregnant women how good they look whatever trimester they are in. But this is only in comparison to other pregnant women we’ve witnessed who look as though they have accidentally swallowed all of their bedding.

The really amazing thing is that women usually make themselves this fat on purpose. They are intentionally becoming fat in order to have this baby. Some of them have dreamed all of their lives of having a baby which, pretty much right away, makes them fat. 

The irony is that women usually also dream all of their lives about not getting fat. Most men are unaware of this, but many an honest woman would confess to you that during a meal they are only telling themselves one repeated phrase as they chew tiny morsels: “don’t get fat, don’t get fat, don’t get fat.” The expectations (external and internal) for a woman are so much greater than for most men, and this is only one example of why.

I can see why a woman might have a baby and get fat once because they have no idea just how fat they are going to get. But these competing desires don’t seem to be compatible over the long run. Only women with complete baby amnesia from the last time they got that fat would ever choose to get that fat again. Even more amazing, most women claim that each time they have a baby they gain more weight than the last time!

“Take the shot quick I need this for my Insta feed before I go put my feet up.”

But it doesn’t end there. Gaining weight is only part of the madness. They also are in extreme pain. 

Many women will literally throw up almost every day when they wake up in the first few months of their pregnancy. When I first heard this I couldn’t believe it. But it’s true. They call it “morning sickness.” 

Now, only a woman with baby amnesia would have given something as violent as daily barfing before breakfast a name as mild as “morning sickness.” It sounds like a light headache, not constant regurgitation. 

After the morning sickness, they often get a sharp pain in the leg. Many women will have this “sciatica” problem that actually causes them to lose hours of sleep every night and sometimes to fall down because of the shooting pain into their spinal column. Again, I remind you that a repeatedly pregnant woman is usually choosing to have this pain. They are not sadists, they simply have baby amnesia.

“If I pretend I’m a tee-pee maybe it will stop me from thinking about ice cream and my sciatica”

However, as we veterans know by far the worst part of childbirth is the actual “birthing” part. For most of my life, I had a vague sense that babies “came out” but before I witnessed it I preferred to think of it as a somewhat mystical process involving storks, Doctors, and God, or Doctor storks sent by God, rather than to actually picture what really happens. 

My former ignorance was bliss. When I saw what really happens I nearly gave myself “morning sickness.” Some call this process "the miracle of life" but you might also call it "disturbing torture by squeezing a baby out."

One reason it is disturbing is because of the stretching involved. When the nurses and doctors say things like “you’re dilated to a 4” or “you need to be at a 10 before the baby can get all the way out.” This all sounds nice and vaguely medical until you realize what a “10” actually means. I can explain it to men and/or women who have baby amnesia like this: Go right now and get an ordinary softball, which is around 10 centimeters in diameter. 

Got one? No. Okay, I'll wait a minute while you go to the sports bin.

Okay, now that you have a softball, hold it up to the side of your head by your ear. Now that you’re in this position take a hammer and strike the softball repeatedly until it enters your ear canal. 

You have just simulated the pain and stretching process of childbirth.  

Okay, now no one would actually do that, would they? Of course not! But women are having babies all the time. And beyond that, they are doing it again and again. I know one woman who had 14 babies! This alone proves the Baby Amnesia Hypothesis.

“If she tells me it’s twins again this time around I might murder this technician.”

My own mother said that giving birth to me was “like pooping out an entire watermelon.” Now, I have never pooped out any kind of melon, but it sounds quite painful. I should remind you that I’m the oldest and my mother obviously forgot this fact in order to have another child after me, my brother. 

Question: Who would actually choose to poop out an entire watermelon? 

Answer: A woman with baby amnesia.

To me, there are at least two fascinating moments that happen during the birthing of a child. The first is the “give me drugs” moment, the second is the “my beautiful baby moment” and they both are factors in baby amnesia. Many women will tell their doctors, nurses, and husbands that they don’t intend to have any drugs during the birth of their child. “I’m going to try to do this one ‘natural’” they claim. They say this even though they had all kinds of drugs for their previous childbirths. Many women even get an epidural, where the entire body from the waist down is numbed to the pain. 

Now, an epidural is a wonderful invention. I fully support it. Just watching a baby being born made me want to have an epidural myself in order to watch it happen more comfortably. There were times when the baby was crying at 2 am a few months later when I would have gladly received a double epidural to help me cope. I mentioned this to a doctor once who reacted poorly and now I'm on some kind of "list" at the Pharmacist.

“Bruh, that was whack.”

However, it still amazes me that women still fool themselves into thinking that after having an epidural on the last baby they are somehow going to say, “I am woman, hear me roar” through the next birth. Because at some point during the excruciating pain of unnatural severe contractions that woman will say to the nurse, “This is not natural, give me drugs, NOW!”  

Then, after all the breathing and the pushing and the glooping out of the baby, we have our second fascinating moment. I’ve watched my wife at this moment three times and her face went through a radical transformation. At one moment her face is crimson red. Her hair is matted to the sweat on her forehead. Nose crunching up. Eyelids purple. Teeth clenched like a Balrog Demon prepared to kill millions of harmlessly cute bunnies in one fire-breathing breath.

Newborn baby William, First of His Name, Warden of Watermelons, Dilation Bringer, Episiotomy Author, Destroyer of Worlds.

Then, the baby comes out, the doctor clears her throat, the umbilical cord is cut and everything changes. My wife's face has such profound relief and pleasure on it you’d think she was on a Caribbean cruise. Her color returns, she smiles broadly. A tear of joy squirts out of the corner of her eye while a faint golden halo rises above her head. The nurses in the hallway begin singing the Hallelujah Chorus as my wife reaches out to hold the baby and rub its mucus-covered head onto her shoulder. In one instant that woman forgets the watermelon-pooping-out-process entirely.

And don’t even get me started on what an episiotomy is.  

I think I’d choose to have baby amnesia too.

Got reactions, theories of your own, or ways I have offended every ounce of your being with every adjective I used in this essay? Leave a comment at the button above and subscribe to the free version of DruGroup, if you dare, below.

*Adapted and updated from a 2005 article I wrote under the same title.