Mom Forget You? Maybe She Has 'Momnesia'

June 12, 2008 — -- When you have eight children all under the age of 8, it's no easy task to remember their various doctors' appointments, soccer games and dance recitals.

Mothers like Kate Gosselin – whose family has their own show, "Jon and Kate Plus 8," on The Learning Channel – know what it's like to suffer from memory loss as each additional child is born, constantly struggling to keep track of who needs to be where and when.

"It's very difficult," Gosselin says of the logistics for her eight children – two twin girls and one set of sextuplets. "Your brain just goes."

"There is such a thing as 'momnesia,'" added Gosselin, who said that she had never once forgotten an appointment until recently, when she missed her sextuplet's dentist appointments.

'Momnesia,' a term used by many mothers to describe their worsening memory function as they birth more children, is – while not a medical condition – a symptom several moms told ABCNEWS.com cause them to leave children behind at school and forget dentist appointments.

Liz Thompson, a mom of four, told ABCNEWS.com that she "can't remember a darn thing anymore."

"When I take the kids to the doctor and they ask how old they are or when their birthdays are, I have to ask the kids," said Thompson, who writes for the New Jersey Moms' Blog. "The more children you have the less brain cells you're left with at the end of the day."

One Virginia mother of seven said that she knows "momnesia" all too well.

"Basically, as a mom, you live in a haze and fog of forgetting the most ordinary things because you have many things pulling for your attention," said Hannah Keeley, founder of Totalmom.com.

Keeley told ABCNEWS.com that she once almost drove out her driveway to go to the library before she noticed that her youngest was still asleep in the crib in the house.

"Fortunately the baby was fine and we didn't pull out of the driveway," said Keeley. "But I can't even tell you how many times I've had the infamous cup of coffee on the top of the car that just flies off later during the trip."