A Beginner's Guide to Motherhood and the Brain
I’ve heard “Oh, it must be your mom brain” more than I care to admit when I’ve forgotten what I’m supposed to be working on at work. Naturally, I found this offensive every time. But truthfully, we go through many changes when we become moms beyond lifestyle and financial changes. So, let's talk about motherhood and the brain in this blog post.
A couple of weeks ago, I talked about the concept of matrescence. Moms go through developmental changes much like adolescents do.
We feel like awkward teenagers with all the emotional and hormonal changes that happen. This occurs for a good reason though: it’s our body’s way of preparing us for motherhood.
Without biological changes, it would be difficult for us to be responsive and sensitive to our baby's needs. However, I noticed that most of us are not educated on the topic by our healthcare providers. We're left wondering if what we’re going through is normal. We’re left feeling embarrassed when we forget about a birthday or an appointment.
So, in this post, I’ll dive into everything to do with motherhood and the brain. I'll talk about “neuroplasticity”, hormones, maternal instincts, emotional regulation, “mom brain,” and postpartum depression/anxiety. I’ll end things off with some tips and tricks to help you support your brain health.
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What Exactly is Neuroplasticity?
In the simplest way possible, neuroplasticity describes how our brain adapts to a particular situation we’re in.
So, in the case of pregnancy and postpartum, a mom’s brain adapts to the demands of motherhood.
Our brains literally grow in areas involved in empathy, the senses, motivation, reward processing, and emotion regulation - all of which help us care for our baby during the postpartum period.
Amazingly, the more growth that occurs in the areas that support our motivation and reward processing, the more we feel positive feelings toward our baby
Throughout this blog post, you’ll see even more ways our brain grows and expands to support our ability to care for our baby.
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Do We Have Maternal Instincts?
Truthfully, I don’t understand what maternal instincts even mean.
Yes, our brain and biology go through changes that help us bond and care for our babies, but many of these changes happen in fathers.
And, just because we go through these changes doesn’t mean we naturally know what our baby needs. I believe this comes from getting to know our baby and it doesn’t naturally happen the moment they are born. It can take months before we feel even a little capable of understanding what our baby needs.
I wanted to make that clear before I go any further because I don’t want you walking away from this blog post thinking there’s something wrong with you if you’re not sure what your baby needs or how to respond to them.
How do we bond with our babies?
OK, now that I’ve cleared that up, I want to briefly mention some things research has shown about bonding with our babies:
- When our baby cries or smiles, this triggers the emotional part of our brain, and this signals to our brain, “Hey, this is something I want to engage with.”
- The more our baby shows these cues, the more we want to form a connection with them, supporting the bond with our little one.
- Moms have a positive response to their baby’s cries, not in the sense that they’re happy about it, but they have compassion and empathy. A typical adult who isn’t a parent has the opposite reaction. Yes, it’s normal to feel annoyed when you hear a baby crying when you’re not a parent.
- Certain brain areas that make a mom more responsive to their baby’s cry seem to be more activated in moms who give birth vaginally and breastfeed because of the release of oxytocin. But don’t worry, if you don’t go through either of these things or haven’t, that doesn’t mean you didn’t respond well enough or won’t be responsive to your baby. The brain also releases oxytocin throughout labour and during skin-to-skin contact with your baby.
So, I don’t buy into the idea that moms have “maternal instincts,” where they know what to do for their baby at all times.
Rather, provided a mom is in a healthy state of mind, she will naturally want to engage with and care for her baby due to her brain’s response to her baby’s cries and smiles.
I’ll talk about cases where this doesn’t happen in moms later in this blog post.
Hormonal Changes and Emotional Regulation
Several hormones are involved in pregnancy through postpartum: oxytocin, prolactin, stress hormones, endorphins, estrogen, and dopamine. Let’s focus on a few of these.
Our responsiveness to our baby is largely to do with oxytocin and dopamine. Oxytocin makes us want to protect and be close to others.
Since it’s released so much throughout labour and skin-to-skin contact with our baby, it makes sense we feel a surge of love and the need to nurture our little mom.
Oxytocin also helps counteract stress by reducing fear and anxiety activated in the emotional part of our brain. Oxytocin works this way because our brains are built to manage our emotions so we can efficiently respond to our baby’s cues.
There are brain regions that work with oxytocin to help keep moms emotionally regulated when their baby is in distress.
Our brains activate dopamine when something is rewarding to us, which motivates us to keep going. That’s why something like ticking off a habit tracker is so motivating.
When we respond to our babies, our brains reward us with a pleasurable experience when interacting with them, which reinforces our behaviour so we continue to be responsive and bond with our babies. That’s the handy work of dopamine.
Stress hormones trigger our fight-or-flight response during labour because of the pain we go through. Stress hormones can increase the odds of postpartum depression if they continue to rise.
We also have a surge of endorphins post-birth. Endorphins help us manage the pain and increase our energy. This explains how you were able to keep yourself awake even after a long labour process.
What about mood swings?
Estrogen is a big one because it increases quickly during pregnancy. This rapid increase is responsible for mood swings in pregnant women.
BUT estrogen dramatically drops postpartum when we give birth to the placenta.
We end up feeling even more emotional after having our baby. It's the rapid increases and decreases that result in mood swings, not the hormone itself.
Other hormonal changes occur during pregnancy and postpartum. These are the ones that play a big role in our emotional responses. So remember that you’re not crazy for experiencing emotions that are uncharacteristic to you - they’re just hormones.
Memory and Cognitive Function
Before I get into mental illness and stress during postpartum, let’s talk about “mom brain.”
Elizabeth Werner defines mom brain as a term used for the fogginess that moms experience during pregnancy and postpartum.
During matrescence (the period of pregnancy into motherhood), it’s common for moms to experience forgetfulness.
And, there is a decrease in gray matter in the maternal brain. The thing is, it’s not that the parts of our brain responsible for memory are shrinking. It’s more complex than that.
To best explain, we can go back to the adolescence analogy.
Teens experience a reduction in gray matter during development - that doesn’t mean they’re losing functioning. It means their brain is making room for more important functions that will help them be a mature adult.
This happens in moms too. Our brains are making room for us to be responsive parents and learn all these skills that are new to us. We get better at attuning to others' emotions. Our brain does this for the sake of the baby we gave birth to.
What does this mean for memory?
Well, this change doesn’t make our memories poor suddenly.
Sleep loss, stress, and being distracted by new responsibilities are the main contributors to forgetfulness. It can also be a result of postpartum mental illnesses.
Once, I got more sleep, my mind was clearer and I started to feel more like myself. Trust me, your memory or lack thereof is not doomed just because you got pregnant and had a baby.
Postpartum Depression and Anxiety
Some of you by now might be thinking of all the examples of moms who weren’t responsive to their baby’s needs and perhaps experienced anxiety that bordered on obsession.
Or you might be thinking of those moms who were extremely depressed after having a baby and not as happy as you’d expect them to be.
These examples aren’t the norm - they usually happen due to chemical imbalances, among other risk factors like childhood upbringing, trauma, poverty, and the like.
Some anxiety and perceived threats are normal in moms because we want to protect our babies. Things get a little dangerous for our well-being when our threat detection is too low or too high.
The hormones responsible for our emotion regulation have lower activity in moms with postpartum depression, reducing their responsiveness and sensitivity to their child.
Sensitivity is also negatively impacted by childhood stress and trauma because these events rev up our stress hormones. When stress hormones are not at bay, this can lead to depression and low responsiveness because of the lack of emotion regulation.
Chemical imbalances are the reason some women don’t feel happy during postpartum.
Imbalances also explain why some aren’t as “maternal” as they expected they’d be. So if this is you, don’t go thinking you’re the problem and that you’re a bad person.
Tips and Tricks
To end this post, here are some tips and tricks to help you take care of your brain:
- Get longer stretches of sleep at night time
- Take 5 minutes just to breathe and clear your head
- Use to-do lists and calendars (don’t assume you’ll just remember your appointments)
- Go on walks regularly
- Make time every day to do something you enjoy
- Give yourself lots of love and self-compassion. Don’t worry about being perfect, be OK with being a “good enough” mom
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