What causes baby brain?
By Julia Jones
“I’m halfway to the shops and realised I forgot my phone.”
”I put my keys in the fridge!”
”I can’t remember what day it is.”
If you’ve ever been pregnant, you can probably relate to the above. It’s very common for pregnant women to experience moments of forgetfulness or absentmindedness. You’ve probably even seen memes about it on social media.
In Australia where I live, some people call it baby brain. In other parts of the world it’s called pregnancy brain or mummy brain. In the USA you might hear people talk about mommy brain or momnesia.
Whatever you call it, have you noticed it’s usually referred to in a derogatory way? You might have heard new mothers put themselves down or call themselves silly. You probably have never heard pregnant and postpartum people talk about how amazing their brains are, or brag about how their brains are developing new abilities with every passing day…but that’s exactly what’s happening.
What does the phrase “baby brain” make you think of?
I have been teaching, learning, and talking about baby brain for over a decade now. The answers I always got in the past were negative and sometimes they still are:
Ditsy
Forgetful
Emotional
Hysterical
Hormonal
Silly
Scatterbrained
If this is your perception, you're not alone. That is what I used to think about pregnancy brain too, although things are changing.
But first…
Is baby brain real?
I originally thought that baby brain or pregnancy brain was a sexist stereotype. I wondered if it was just another story we tell to keep women in the kitchen.
In fact, it’s been shown to be real, but it's actually not a bad thing. The brain does really change during pregnancy.
Let’s look at the science behind mummy brain, and then we’ll explore some of the amazing benefits. We’ll also look at how postpartum doulas and other professionals caring for new parents can support baby brain.
What does neuroscience tell us about baby brain?
Many commonly accepted scientific foundations and principles were developed by men. There’s a prevailing idea that men are default humans and that all variations from what are typically considered “male” traits are inferior.
Nowadays, more women are becoming scientists. Some of these women scientists have been now doing research for 50 years or more, and some of those scientists are mothers.
Marion Diamond’s research with pregnant rats
One of those women scientists is Marian Diamond, who passed away in 2017. She is one of the founders of modern neuroscience. She found the first evidence of brain plasticity in mammals, and her groundbreaking research demonstrated the impact of enrichment on brain development.
Before we look at her research, here’s something she said about her experience of motherhood:
“The greatest thrill in my life up to that moment was when I held my first newborn child in my arms against my breast. I knew why I existed. This experience was beyond any other I had ever contemplated and was repeated with each of my next three children.”
You can see why this experience would give you a completely different perception on the experience of having baby brain (or momnesia as it’s sometimes called!)
Marion was one of the first people to include female rats in her research. She put them into impoverished and enriched environments. An impoverished environment was a bare cage that was really boring and had nothing in it. An enriched environment had mazes, puzzles, toys and other interesting things for the rats to do.
Marion examined the rats’ brains at the end of a certain period of time to see how their brains had changed in response to their different environments.
Rats in enriched environments developed a thicker cortex than the rats in impoverished environments. A thicker cortex is associated with higher general intelligence and cognitive abilities, so it's a good thing to have.
But rats who experienced pregnancy in enriched or impoverished environments did not follow the same pattern! The cortex of the postpartum female did not show this difference in cortical thickness in response to their environment.
She really puzzled over this. What she eventually found was that:
“Upon comparing the cortical thickness of enriched postpartum females with the impoverished postpartum females, we unexpectedly found no significant differences in initial and replication experiments. The reason was that both the enriched and impoverished postpartum females had increased their cortical thickness during pregnancy.”
The mother rats had the same size cortex, whether they'd been in impoverished or enriched environments. This is because the rats were experiencing brain changes through sex hormones, regardless of their environment.
Motherhood is an enrichment program
What we can learn from this research is that motherhood is an enrichment program. Simply through the process of becoming pregnant, giving birth and breastfeeding, our brains change.
The future of baby brain science
Since the time of Marion Diamond’s experiments with rats, there have been many research studies demonstrating a wide variety of pregnancy related brain changes. A lot of the sample sizes are still fairly small, but the findings are generally consistent. Here are a few of the more interesting findings:
A computer algorithm can tell with 100% accuracy if a woman has been pregnant or not just from an MRI scan. The very act of being pregnant changes your brain so much that it's visible on a brain scan.
Studies show that up to 80% of pregnant women said they perceived themselves to be experiencing memory loss. Reports from postpartum women indicated a similar percentage.
Pregnancy was linked to significant changes in women’s general cognitive functioning, memory, and executive functioning, according to a 2018 meta-analysis.
Happily, the phenomenon of baby brain is gathering more interest over the past few years. There’s even a Baby Brain Research Project! The aim of their project is to learn more about how pregnancy and parenthood shapes human cognition and parent-child wellbeing outcomes.
It’s exciting to hear about research like this, not just because it’s interesting, but because it may contribute to improved outcomes for new parents. As we learn more about the purpose and impacts of baby brain, perhaps we can better understand and support the needs of pregnant and postnatal people.
How does the brain change during pregnancy and early parenthood?
There are two broad areas of brain changes: increased neuroplasticity (associated with learning) and increased oxytocin (associated with loving). These are protective, adaptive changes that evolved to make new parents happier, healthier and better at parenting.
Increased neuroplasticity
One of the changes is increased neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to change and adapt. Our brains are plastic throughout our whole lives, but we have defined times of increased plasticity. Pregnancy is one of those times. Doesn’t it make sense that someone’s brain would change a lot at a time when they need to adapt to a new role and learn a lot of new skills?
2. Increased production and receptivity to oxytocin
Secondly, there's an increase in production and receptivity to oxytocin. This change is related to the brain's ability to love. During pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding, people are flooded with more oxytocin and the brain and body actually develop more oxytocin receptors as well.
Matrescence - the process of becoming a mother
This neurological transformation is part of matrescence, a word that was coined by anthropologist Dana Raphael, who also coined the word doula in it’s modern sense. It's sometimes called motherhood mindset. This process of becoming a mother is marked in some cultures with rites of passage and initiation ceremonies. This is a time of great change in the brain, the body and in life. Mothers have always known this, and now science is catching up.
The benefits of baby brain
Even though people often associate baby brain or mommy brain with negative things like forgetfulness, the truth is there are many benefits to this neurological shift that make us happier, healthier and better at parenting.
Some of the benefits researchers have found include:
More tolerant of monotony and boredom
Increased resilience
Improved relationships
Increased nutritional uptake
Faster wound healing
Better at multitasking
More accurate interpretation of non-verbal cues
Learn more about the positive side of these brain changes in this blog post: 15 benefits of baby brain
How professionals can help new parents enjoy baby brain
In many ways, we have lost the village of support that new mothers evolved to expect and now parents of newborns are often expected to do it all on their own. Instead of being able to relax into the transition to parenthood, many new parents feel stressed and anxious.
A postpartum care professional can help fill this gap. Those who understand the importance of these brain changes are especially good at supporting baby brain. A support person like this is worth their weight in gold!
Here are some of the ways we train our students to support baby brain in the Postpartum Care and Education Program:
Providing reassurance that the changes they’re experiencing are normal and beneficial
Building rapport and a non-judgmental space for sharing
Educating them about baby brain and how to manage it
Supporting them to assess their own mental health
Helping new parents reflect on their support needs
Setting realistic expectations of life with a baby
Offering referrals to specialists if needed
Providing practical and emotional care
Offering rites, rituals and acknowledgment of the new role
Baby brain is perfectly normal, and when supported properly, can provide some wonderful benefits for parents and babies.
Hopefully, the next couple of decades of neuroscience research will give us even more insight into what exactly is happening in the amazing brains of pregnant people. And perhaps one day, baby brain will be better appreciated as an adaptive trait.
