The other night I was talking to my husband in the kitchen while we made dinner. Suddenly, I stopped talking mid-sentence. Not because I’d forgotten where I was going with the sentence, but because I couldn’t think of a word. And not some fancy or unusual word, it was just a normal word. I described it “Taboo” style, eventually got it figured out, and we moved on with our conversation. I’ve always been better at getting my thoughts out in writing than when I speak, but over the last few years I’ve noticed that I lose my train of thought more frequently or forget words as I talk. And it’s not just words. I’ve also been making really silly mistakes. Almost putting the milk in the cabinet, misremembering the time of a doctor appointment, or inviting a friend over for coffee and then realizing after she left that I never actually thought to make her coffee. Last week, I was telling my husband how our daughter had unscrewed the sink stopper pull on the back of the faucet and that I needed to get some pliers or something to get the rod out because I couldn’t get it with my nails. He looked at me funny and then asked me to follow him into the bathroom. Once there, he pushed the stopper in the sink and the rod on the faucet came right up. I’ve never identified more with the facepalm emoji.
I remember my mom doing similar things. She would “lose” her glasses while wearing them. Once she panicked in the grocery store thinking she’d lost my baby brother–she was holding him on her hip. She’d forget words too, and I got pretty adept at guessing what she meant by her gestures and vague hints. Once I became a mom and the same things started happening to me, I realized it probably wasn’t just my mom’s personality quirks, it was more likely the result of the poor woman wrangling three rowdy rugrats and trying to keep my risk-loving brothers out of the ER because they jumped off the roof of the shed while trying to use a tarp as a parachute again.
I’ve long heard the jokes about “mom brain,” but I just chalked it up to sleep deprivation and how much we’re juggling at any one time. We’re keeping track of medical appointments, school schedules, sports or activity schedules, social calendars, grocery lists, meal planning, household budgets, laundry, dishes, and trying to remember when the last time the toilets were scrubbed. Many of us have full time jobs on top of all that, or, like me, are working part time jobs and running businesses. And the stakes are higher for our decisions because we’re responsible for not only keeping other humans alive, but also helping them become good adults. That all takes a toll. But I recently came across some articles describing the actual science of the phenomenon. Apparently the hormones that flood our bodies during pregnancy also change our brain structures. This results in the loss of gray matter in certain areas that can impact our verbal recall, and these changes have been found to last at least two years. The evolutionary function of these changes is to make us better moms by heightening our awareness of possible dangers, giving us the ability to distinguish between the types of our baby’s cries, and helping us stay calm under stress. But add on the sleep deprivation that comes with a new baby (or in my case, a mama-loving toddler who still wants to nurse at night) and you’ve got a recipe for fogginess, forgetfulness, and losing your train of thought.
Another fun side effect of becoming a mom that I noticed was a new intolerance for TV shows and movies with gratuitous violence or anything bad happening to children. I’ve never been a fan of war movies, but I was a big fan of action and superhero movies. Now I have almost zero interest. I zone out during car chase and fighting scenes. I cry at even the thought of something bad happening to my own kids, so I can’t stand seeing suspenseful or scary things involving moms or their small children on screen, even if they are just background collateral in a destructive action sequence. I struggle to watch movies with large-scale destruction because all I’m thinking about is how that mom’s minivan just got crushed, and now she’s going to have to pay for a rental, and minivans are expensive! and I hope they have insurance on their house that just got wrecked, and now they’re going to have to stay in a hotel for awhile, and that is really going to throw off their schedule, and that poor woman is probably not going to sleep for months over this, and how is this other woman supposed to get proper prenatal care in a zombie apocalypse??
Please tell me I’m not the only one?
This increased emotional sensitivity may be a result of the changes to the amygdala and emotional processing that occurs to help us become more responsive and loving parents— But take heart! While the changes to our brains appear to last, studies haven’t shown that moms end up with impaired cognition or are any worse off in their abilities to do their jobs long term. There are also studies that show increases in gray matter volume in other areas of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex which is involved in executive function and planning. Moms can be incredibly efficient, juggling busier schedules, taking care of multiple children, running a household, doing their jobs, and some research even suggests that pregnant women and mothers are better at dealing with stressful events than other women.
So yes, our brains may have changed, but they did so in a way to adapt to parenting and be the best moms we can for our kids. That seems like a fair tradeoff to me. Even if I can no longer enjoy superhero movies or remember the word “mustard.”
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