I wanted to blog on this last week when I first heard the story that ‘baby brain,’ or ‘mumnesia,’ as it is sometimes called, has been found to have no scientific basis, and since the story broke news services around the world have taken a bizarre amount of delight in declaring the myth debunked.

The findings come from researchers at Australian National University Researchers, who say they have evidence pregnant women perform just as well in cognitive testing as they did before becoming pregnant. The ANU researchers had recruited 2404 women from the electoral roll, assessing 1241 in 1999, 1126 in 2003 and 1058 in 2007 in four areas of cognition: speed, working memory and immediate and delayed recall. What women identify as being reduced cognitive ability, the article of the findings suggests, is adaptive, shifting attention to the baby.

Now, I’ve never had a baby nor been pregnant, but I’ve asked several pregnant friends about this phenomenon, as I was sceptical myself of its existence. Without fail, every one of my pregnant friends attested to its veracity. Perhaps this is why women have come out vehemently against these findings.

Victoria Trenouth, a 28-year-old English teacher who became a mother for the first time last month when she gave birth to George Bell, said she suffered from baby brain while pregnant.

”I had a terrible, terrible memory … I couldn’t spell, I couldn’t get my words out, I couldn’t remember what I was saying. I spent 20 minutes trying to have a hot shower and screaming at my husband because I thought there was no hot water and it was on cold and he said try turning the hot tap on.”

The Sydney Morning Herald has an interesting opinion piece describing one woman’s experience with pregnancy:

Whether or not baby brain is measurable by tests, there is no doubt that pregnancy and breastfeeding are exhausting and in some case debilitating experiences. And that’s just for the dads. It must be really bad for the mums.

Cathy Warwick of Britain’s Royal College of Midwives told the BBC: “The physical and emotional stresses on a woman’s body from pregnancy can make women feel more tired than usual.

“As we all know, tiredness – for men as well as women – can make us lose concentration and cause us to function less effectively.

“This is why midwives encourage pregnant women to take appropriate rest breaks, at home and at work. Many pregnant women will need this rest, and all of them deserve it.”

I can’t help but think that this study is akin to the numerous scientists who claim to prove the female orgasm doesn’t exist. Apparently a team of researchers at King’s College in London have found “fairly conclusively” that there is no such thing as a g-spot.

Apparently their findings are based on a massive twin study in which, because they could not document that twins both felt the same g-spot sensations in the same place, no G-spot could, in fact, exist.

Some 4600 twinned women were enrolled in the UK research. Of these, 1875 women responded to the sex questions, and of that number, the study excluded women who hadn’t had intercourse and those who identified as lesbian or bisexual (keep those in mind — we’ll get back to them in a bit). They were left with 1800 women aged 23-85 (mean age 55) whose responses were considered in the preparation of their report on the G-spot.

Those women responded to a very interestingly-worded question about the G-spot: They were asked whether they believed they had “a so-called G-spot.” And because too few women said they believed they did, the researchers concluded that the G-spot is a “perception” caused by “non-physical factors” that “heighten sexual sensation.” That is, women may have mental G-spots, but not actual physical ones.

So what do the lead scientists of the study have to say about their findings? Something really ridiculous:

Dr. Spector also has some choice words for women who believe they have G-spots: “This is by far the biggest study ever carried out and shows fairly conclusively that the idea of a G-spot is subjective. Women may argue that having a G-spot is due to diet or exercise, but in fact it is virtually impossible to find real traits.”

Listen to the methodology of this sex study:

The scientists in this study asked women if they believed they had a G-spot, and if they didn’t, the researchers accepted that none was present. They did not ask searching questions that would help them evaluate whether the women’s belief might be backed with experience… in fact, they excluded from their sample those women who were most likely to have had G-spot experience, the lesbian and bisexual women who, the researchers decided, would skew the results by being more likely than the heterosexual women to have used their fingers. Instead they seemed to be grasping for evidence that the G-spot existed in heterosexual women who were less likely (they guessed) than their lesbian counterparts to have sex in a way that’s most associated with G-spot stimulation and pleasure.

Okay, well, this is something that’s been happening to women for centuries – because some men and scientific methods can’t prove something women claim they experience, these men and their science deny the possibility of its existence.