Good news, ladies! Pregnancy brain is a real, actual, scientifically proven thing. And better yet, according to a recent study published in Nature Neuroscience, it’s actually good for the brain to undergo this change. According to researchers, our brains do lose gray matter as we bring another human into this world after all; but this allows our brains to develop and mature as we transition into motherhood.
Much like in adolescence when gray matter decreases (for social, emotional, and cognitive development reasons), our mommy-brains also get a fine-tuning during pregnancy. In fact, according to this study, the more the mother’s brain changes, the more emotionally attached to her child she’ll be. This is amazing news for exhausted pregnant women who leave the house without wearing shoes. Just chock it up to their brains getting ready to be kick-ass moms.
The five-year study, conducted in Spain, involved 25 women in their 30s who had never been pregnant before. Their brains were scanned before becoming pregnant and within a few months after giving birth. In addition, 20 women who had never been pregnant and did not become pregnant during the study had their brains scanned as well to compare. The results were surprisingly clear — only the women who had been pregnant showed loss of gray matter in their brains.
And in case you’re wondering what happens to dads in all of this, fathers’ brains were also scanned — before and after the babies were born — and no changes were noted. This doesn’t signify a lack of bonding, nor does it mean fatherhood doesn’t change men. It does mean, however, that pregnancy brain is a special gift that only moms get, and only we can use it as an excuse when we forget our home address. We did grow humans inside of us and push them out, after all; so we kind of deserve this honor.
Even more amazingly, within two years of birthing their babies, women who did not have a second child in that time period regained brain matter. Dr. Paul Thompson, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, finds this astonishing:
“That boost in the memory system is something that many of us in neuroscience would give our eyeteeth to achieve,” said Thompson. Brain areas lose volume “like the erosion of the coast,” he continued, “but there are not many things that put the coast back.”
Dr. Thompson also noted that this regrowth is in the hippocampus, which focuses on memory. He attributes this to the mandatory quick learning curve of new mothers — our brains are running at full speed from the first minute our babies are born, helping our brains to regain what may have been lost.
“We certainly don’t want to put a message out there that ‘pregnancy makes you lose your brain,'” says the study’s lead author Elseline Hoekzema, a neuroscientist at Leiden University the Netherlands and also the pregnant mother of a 2-year-old. Rather, Dr. Hoekzema asserts that the opposite is true: Gray matter is lost, but this allows other areas of the brain to strengthen and respond to our newborn’s needs or detect risk in their environments.
So if you’re pregnant and feel like you’re losing your freakin’ mind, take comfort in this: Technically, you are. But it’s okay! You’re just making room in there for motherhood.