Mom Brain

I think every mother knows about “mom brain.” It starts in pregnancy and persists through the first year of baby’s life–or longer. It’s a foggy, forgetful, fuzzy state of being that makes new moms feel like they are sleepwalking through their days. Some people call it “momnesia.”

In my first pregnancy, I felt like an alien was taking over my brain–it wasn’t working the way it used to, and I felt like I couldn’t trust it. Toward the end of another pregnancy, I had to stop driving; I was worried about my absent-mindedness, and didn’t think I could navigate the roads safely. My group of friends called it “placenta brain;” our minds had been commandeered, along with the rest of us, for the nurture and growth of baby.

I read an article recently, “Why ‘Mom Brain’ is Good for Mothers and Babies,”  that confirms that mom brain is real, and it’s a positive thing. It’s also worse than I imagined. Gray matter is permanently lost. No wonder moms are forgetful, absentminded and emotional!

Pregnant women lost a significant amount of gray matter, in a pattern similar to what happens during puberty—another time when women experience a surge of sex hormones like estrogen. This adolescent “synaptic pruning” doesn’t mean we get dumber as teens. Instead, the brain is simply becoming more efficient and refined, in a process associated with healthy cognitive and emotional development. In other words, the teen brain is “leveling up” into greater maturity as it sheds extraneous connections between neurons.”

The biggest changes were concentrated in regions of the brain that help us navigate social interactions and form close relationships with others. The areas that showed pruning were specifically related to the “theory of mind” network—that is, the part of the brain that tries to figure out what people are thinking and feeling. The researchers speculate that this may enhance mothers’ ability to accurately guess their infant’s emotional states and meet their needs.

Mothers’ brains are rewired to better understand the thoughts and feelings of others, enabling them to anticipate and meet their babies’ needs. So yes, it seems that–as many a teen has feared–a mother can read her child’s mind. Her brain has been remodeled to super-power status. I believe we have always sensed this; the idea of mothers having “eyes in the back of their head” expresses the same idea. Now we  know that it’s not extra eyes, it’s fine-tuned gray matter.

To give babies the best chance of survival, pregnancy hormones signal the brain that a big, big change is coming and some radical housekeeping is needed immediately to prepare for the demands this tiny, helpless human is going make upon arrival. Guidebooks and supportive family and friends are helpful, but in the middle of the night when the baby is still crying, it comes down to just the two of you: mom verses baby. A mother must be able to understand and meet her baby’s needs, or at least understand that her baby is in a very, very bad mood, she shouldn’t take it personally and it will eventually pass (wait–I may be thinking of teens again).

The pregnancy brain-pruning process may give mothers a jump-start on maternal instinct, but that doesn’t mean that a man, or a woman who hasn’t given birth, cannot reach the same place of relational insight and caring. According to an article in Psychology Today, brain changes occur in dads as well as moms, but maybe not in such a head-spinning way. The “leveling up” to relational maturity can be learned; there is no doubt that caregivers other than mothers are able to step in and master the art of speaking baby.

The symptoms of mom brain do fade, but the benefits are permanent. When the baby gets a little older, life doesn’t feel quite as overwhelming. Equilibrium eventually returns. Mothering can then become a way of relating to the world, with eyes that are able to see everybody as somebody’s baby, and respond to them with compassion and care.