This just in: having a baby can cause a woman's brain to get a little, you know, sloppy. You forget things. You forget lots of things. You can barely remember your own name. All you know is this: YOU HAVE A BABY (or, if you're pregnant: YOU HAVE A FETUS.) Which means that the little things - turning off the stove, keeping track of your car keys, remembering your partner's name - kind of disappear from your consciousness.

Which, if you are a mom, or an expectant mom, is not news. Call it mommy brain, pregnancy-induced brain farts or 'momnesia' - as a recent report is calling it - it all adds up to the same thing: have baby, will gap out. Every mom knows this.

Still, there's something reassuring about being reminded that 'momnesia' is totally normal.

According to a report posted on USA Today this week, researchers say that while they can't explain all the ways motherhood affects a woman's memory, they do agree that there's a pattern, and that that pattern is a pretty universally blurry one.

For example, they point out that "many moms feel mentally foggy (UNDERSTATEMENT) in the days after delivery. And they notice that the details of labor and delivery, which are scenes one might expect to be seared into a woman's consciousness, began to slowly slip away." (Again: DUH DUH DUH DUH. But, good to know that researchers recognize this as normal.)

In another example of stunning understatement, one expert notes that "few parents enjoy feeling so scatterbrained." Neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, author of The Female Brain, adds that (need I point out again that this is understatement understatement understatement and, also, duh, obvious?) "momnesia can be dangerous, such as when moms forget to fasten the straps in an infant's car seat."

BUT - and here's where the report gets most reassuring- "momnesia may give modern mothers an evolutionary advantage," Brizendine says. (It's worth noting here that she's not the first to say this: Katherine Ellison's book 'The Mommy Brain' covered this ground pretty well already.)

"It turns you into someone who serves that little infant, to keep it alive no matter what," says Brizendine, founder of the Women's and Teen Girls' Mood and Hormone Clinic at the University of California in San Francisco. "Other parts of your brain that are usually on high alert are sort of taken offline."

So, even though those brain farts might make one feel stupid, mothers don't actually get dumber after childbirth. Instead, new-mom brains are get a workout that exercises different parts of the brain. "You are learning a lot," says Brizendine. "Once your mommy brain gets readjusted, you get more efficient, and you become smarter and learn things faster, but it won't happen all at once." Why does it happen this way?

According to the report: 'Mothers need to be "hyper vigilant" about their infants, who may develop symptoms of illness that are apparent only to those who have scrutinized their every coo and cry, Brizendine says. "You're on the mother beat all the time. It requires certain parts of your brain to work hyper, hyper, hyper well. But it requires other parts of your brain to play second fiddle."'

Right. At the moment - third-trimester of pregnancy with a two-year old running circles around me - those quote-unquote 'other parts of my brain' are actually playing fourth fiddle in a jug band somewhere well outside of my psyche. 'Momnesia', in my case, is more akin to a partial lobotomy - and will, I'm sure, approach full-lobotomy status by the time Baby #2 arrives. So, while it's good to know that it serves some purpose, I cannot, from moment to moment, remember what that purpose is.

What about you? Have you written about 'mommy brain' or 'momnesia' or some experience - that time you forgot your husband's name/left your car keys in the freezer for days/got lost walking home from the corner store - that falls into the category of momnesiac behavior? Tell me about it, or drop a link in the comments - I'm interested in reading about and maybe following up on what this looks like for other moms, and how everybody else copes with this.