Reframing Mommy Brain

A new mother finally gets her fussy baby to sleep and steps into a relaxing hot shower — with her glasses on. At a family barbecue she can’t recall the name of a relative she rarely sees.

It’s easy to laugh off such lapses as “mommy brain,” but there remains a cultural belief that pregnancy and child care impact a woman’s cognition and mental life, long after a baby is born.

Women have often chalked up these changes to hormones, fatigue and the intoxicating love for a new baby.

Hormones do affect cognition, and, as anyone who has ever done shift work or had jet lag knows, sleep deprivation saps our mental abilities.

And the current evidence in scientific literature suggests that pregnancy changes the brain on a physical, cellular level in ways that we are only beginning to understand. Read the entire article here.