The hardest thing about working during my second pregnancy — aside from the fact that I had four kids at home for a good chunk of it — was my morning commute. I was constantly tired from either getting up in the middle of the night with my toddler (or, in the third trimester, from getting up to go to the bathroom every 37 minutes).

The second hardest thing about my second pregnancy was the way I felt that the size of my expanding body was indirectly proportional to my value as an employee. That is to say, I worried that people would see my enormous belly, notice that I was no longer walking so much as lumbering, and assume that I wouldn’t be able to do my job properly because I was pregnant.

Not that anyone ever said anything like that — oh, no no no. I’ll admit, here and now, that my professional insecurities were entirely internal. After all, my job (as an editor at a large newspaper) requires neither hours of standing on my feet nor heavy physical labor. What it does require is that my brain be in full and proper working order and, as any working mother will testify, that isn’t necessarily possible all the time. So, in addition to worrying about how I’d get by with decaf rather than rocket fuel in my travel mug, I was worrying about keeping my “Mommy Brain” moments to a minimum.

But, surprisingly, it wasn’t as hard as I feared. Sure, there were times when I read the same four paragraphs over and over again, each time thinking that it was the first time I’d read them. I had to curl up in my car for a quick power nap more than once. And there was the day I showed up to work wearing a chic black maternity dress and my paint-spattered, beat-up, ancient brown house shoes. But, all in all, there weren’t any angry letters to the editors pointing out problems I’d missed and my coworkers still seem to like me, so I must not have flaked out all that often.

In fact, if anything, I became more organized, better at managing my time, and more careful about taking breaks when I needed to (and not running myself into the ground).

So, is Mommy Brain a myth?

Katherine Ellison, a journalist, mother, and the author of Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter, thinks there might be something beyond the cliche. “True, I was complaining a lot more,” she writes. “But I was also accomplishing more. Though I often felt frazzled, I was more motivated, excited by all I was learning at work and at home. … Although I’d had newspaper deadlines before, never had I faced the unparalleled urgency of a baby who needed to breastfeed, or a preschool teacher at close of day, both of which taught me a new kind of focus.”

It’s easy to assume fatigue is flakiness and chalk mistakes up to Mommy Brain. But does doing so set ourselves up for failure later? When I was pregnant at the office, I was more than willing to blame sleepless nights and sciatic nerve pain for my brief bouts of brain fog — they’re temporary afflictions. Implying that your mind has been permanently damaged by motherhood, though? That could haunt you — and your career — forever.

Were you affected by Mommy Brain when you were pregnant and working? How did you deal with it at the office?