How motherhood changes the brain

In the weeks after my first son was born, I squandered hours of precious sleep leaning over his bassinet to check that he was still breathing. I researched potential dangers that seemed to grow into monstrous reality by the blue light of my smartphone. Among them: The lead paint my husband and I had discovered, a real but manageable risk, had turned our new home into a hazard zone. I cleaned our floors incessantly but still imagined a cloud of poison dust following us as I carried the baby, so tiny and fragile, from room to room.

When the doctor screened for postpartum depression during my six-week checkup, she noted that my responses to the questionnaire were somewhat mixed though my score was within the normal range. She asked whether I had thoughts about harming myself or my child, and when I said no, she moved on. But I was struggling. Before baby, I had managed a tendency toward low-level worry. Now it was as if the volume had been turned up. Among the biggest worries I faced was worry itself.

The way I saw it, motherhood made me feel this way, and I would be a mother forevermore. Would I always be this anxious? And would my baby suffer for it? I feared that something deep within me — my disposition, my way of seeing the world, myself — had been altered. If you would like to read more, click here