Is "Mommy Brain" a Thing?

One of the dirty lies that we've been told is that women suffer from "mommy brain" where we're not as sharp as we used to be or tend to be forgetful after children. The truth is that the brain structure of moms actually DOES change after childbirth, but studies now are only starting to show to what extent and how.

Listen, at best, "mommy brain" can be laughed off when you leave the house with two different shoes or put your keys inside the fridge. AT WORST, "mommy brain" is an excuse to discriminate against mothers at work because they're "not as sharp" as they used to be.

This is an area that I'm extremely passionate about. I remember that when I was returning from maternity leave, I didn't want to ever use "mommy brain" as an excuse. Maybe I was TOO hyper aware of how that would come off, but the reality is that instead of being laser-focused on one thing, I now am responsible for human life! Whether or not Quinn is fed, clothed, housed, nurtured was up to me. It's as if I accepted a second full-time job and was onboarding to that while also trying to jump back into work.

The New York Times recently published an article called "Reframing 'Mommy Brain'". In it they list the various studies that try to understand why and how moms' brains change. One study found that even 2 years after pregnancy, "women had gray matter brain changes in regions involved in social cognition or the ability to empathically understand what is going on in the mind of another person, to put yourself in their shoes". This makes sense since we have to now view the world through our child's eyes or at least try to look at old things in a new light. Another study showed that even though some women couldn't remember certain words (like that one actor who was in Clueless...Paul...?), that didn't impact the type of memory "that involves learning, reasoning and comprehension".

How a mother's brain is changed after pregnancy and the overall process of becoming a mother is called "matrescence" and it's largely been unexplored in the medical community. In another New York Times article published back in 2017, it states that "instead of focusing on the woman's identity transition, more research is focused on how the baby turns out". Come back as we delve deeper into matrescence in future blog posts.