Stupid is as Pregnancy Does

The other evening I was speaking to a colleague of mine, and she was asking about my plans for maternity leave.  This was a great opportunity, because she happens to be an expert when it comes to our teaching contract, so she would be able to tell me exactly what I needed to do to make sure I got my proper mat leave.

"I originally applied to take my mat leave starting on February 1st," I told her, "but my doctor thinks I might have to stop working before the end of the month, so I'm planning to just take sick days until February 1st if I have to, then start my mat leave."

"Actually," Kim explained to me, "If your doctor requires you to stop working early, then that's when your mat leave would begin.  You could also go on short term disability, but then you would lose your mat leave and go straight to your 37 weeks of parental leave."

"I see," I said slowly, thinking very hard about what she had just said.  "Well, what if I just took sick days until my mat leave starts on February 1st?"

"No," Kim said very slowly and patiently, "it doesn't work that way.  If you end up going off early, that's when your mat leave would begin.  You can't take sick days until your mat leave begins."

"Hmm," I said, carefully considering this information.  I wracked my brain to understand the implications of this information.  "Well, how about this?  I might be repeating myself, but couldn't I just take sick days from now until my mat leave begins?"

Kim gave me a strange look.

"Oh," I said, finally getting it.  "I just asked you the same question 10 times, didn't I?"

"Yeah," she replied.

Now, I am not a moron.  I know this for an absolute fact, and I have a lot of evidence to back up this claim.  I have two Bachelor's degrees, and a straight A average in the Master's program I am currently taking. I have a job that I go to everyday, and I am a functioning member of society.  But for some reason, I seem to be doing a series of incredibly stupid things.  According to www.whattoexpect.com, pregnancy hormones cause the brain's volume to actually decrease during the third trimester of pregnancy - which means I still have a few more weeks of this craziness to endure.

So, later that same night, I decided to relax in the bathtub - after all, it had been a stressful day.  I went into the bathroom, and took the detachable shower head off the wall to rinse out the bottom of the tub before I filled it up.  As I was rinsing, the shower head slipped out of my hand, and landed face up at the bottom of the tub, spraying water everywhere.

In retrospect, I can see that a rational person would have simply bent down, picked up the shower head, and them dried them self off with a towel.  But as I've already explained, a pregnant person is not a rational person. So, I did what seemed most logical to me in that instant - I screamed and ran out of the bathroom.

Once I was in the hallway, looking back at the water spraying out of the bathroom door onto the carpet, I realized that "pregnancy brain" was definitely becoming an issue for me.