MOTHERHOOD

“Having children just puts the whole world into perspective. Everything else just disappears.”

—Kate Winslet

I had my first child shortly after completing residency, and just before taking my pediatric boards.  Things were crazy – we were selling everything we owned for the trip back across the Pacific to the mainland to start my first job and I spent my days studying like mad for the boards. I was, sometimes calmly and sometimes anxiously, awaiting baby’s arrival.  And in retrospect, I realize that there wasn’t a way for me to know, understand, or prepare for the transformational process that I was about to undergo.

When I happen to meet parents before the birth of their first baby, I try to leave the parents with a blessing and a recommendation – I wish the mom a quick and painless childbirth, and I encourage the couple to enjoy their time together before baby because their lives will never be the same…in a good way.  

So what happens to us when we have a baby?  Well, our brain actually changes. Researchers out of France and the Netherlands have been studying the changes that occur in the architecture of the brain from before a woman is pregnant to after she has a baby, and even 2 years later.  What they have found is that there are significant changes that occur in a woman’s brain after having baby. The changes occur in areas of the brain that support relationships, emotions, and response to baby. There were reductions in grey matter in areas of the brain associated with social cognition, most specifically the areas that manage understanding what is going on in someone else’s mind.  The brain changes were so dramatic on MRI, that researchers could predict who had had children just based on their MRI image.

Although most of us can agree that change is hard, not all change is bad.  The researchers took a strong stance that these brain changes allowed mothers to prepare for motherhood and being acutely tuned into the needs of their new babies.  In fact, the more prominent the brain changes noted on the scans, the higher these moms scored on attachment scales. This heightened maternal awareness, connection, attachment to and interaction with her baby, optimizes how her baby’s brain is making connections and improves her baby’s development.   

Science is at such a cool time, where behavioral observations can now be seen and confirmed in brain imaging because we have the technology to see these changes.  It really is an exciting time to be a woman in science, because neuroscience research that is coming out now reaffirms and grounds my actual life experiences and the life experiences of so many women entering into motherhood.  Understanding that motherhood is transformational by biological design is an empowering place to start the journey… I hope you take this information with you on yours…

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