A Meditation on the Mommy Brain

You know how some days seem to have themes? Well, today was the theme of "the uniqueness of the Mommy Brain".

One example, I was putting Evie in the car because I was about to take some young adults from church to Home Depot so they could pick out paint. I was half-giving instruction on how to collapse the stroller to a 16 year old boy, half-doing it for him, holding the baby on my hip and putting items into my trunk all at the same time. A co-worker who is a single non-mother began to remark about how mothers are able to do fifty things at once. I replied, "You just do it, you don't think about it." Later today, I was dropping a friend off on my way home when a Young Boy (about 10 years old) was dribbling his basketball while he was crossing the street against oncoming traffic (meaning me, my 11th day driving a manual transmission). I was so concerned about what I saw, that I stopped the car in the middle of the street, rolled down my window and began to chide the Young Boy with Basketball. "Son (yes, I said Son), you need to hold the ball when you are crossing the street. That's really dangerous, you could have been hit." The Young Boy responded, "You wouldn't have hit me, you have brakes, don't you?" If it wasn't 2007 and if I did not know what the Department of Human Services can do to someone who publicly grips up a child that does not belong to them, I would have gotten out of the car for some good ole' fashioned rebuking.

My friend in the car starts laughing hysterically after we pull off and asks me how I became this way, because I used to never do anything like this. I replied, "I am a mother now." It's true, I think differently, I react to different things, I have my focus on different things.

After I dropped her off, I reflected more on what my friends-who-are-mothers call the Mommy Brain. I used to be a whirlwind of task accomplishments, a Multitasker Extraordinaire, who could keep up with several different projects at one time. I could plan ahead so I could use my time effectively and efficiently, and remember this entire organized plan a week later. NOW ... I am a mess. I can walk up the steps with the intention of getting something from the bedroom, arrive in the bedroom and be totally bewildered about why I am there, fiddle with something else I need to do, and then wander out of the bedroom and remember what I need when I am downstairs in the middle of another task. I cannot hold lists in my head, I cannot do more than two things at one time, and forget about planning ahead. I have the ability to listen to someone speak, instantly remember what I need to do for the baby and then realize that I just zoned out for 5 minutes and have no idea what this person is talking about. However, I am superb at remembering everything the baby needs. This is Mommy Brain.

So today, I happened on a little tidbit that was reported on a National Public Radio's Health and Science broadcast in January 2007.

"A woman's brain gets 8% smaller during pregnancy and doesn't go back to normal until 6 months post-partum. Researchers assume it is because the mother's brain needs some re-wiring to prepare for taking care of a baby. And once back to normal, the female's brain is considered more advanced because new connections have been generated that don't exist in non-mother brains."

This makes sense. Brain shrinkage. Rewiring. New connections. More advanced. Yes, it explains everything.