Is It "Mom Brain" - Or Is Everyone Just Talking To Me At Once?

One thing I've heard from almost all of my postpartum clients - whether as part of a group, in individual therapy, or in couples therapy - is that they experience moments of "mom brain." Mom brain is a colloquial way of referring to the experience of not feeling quite as sharp as you may have before having a baby, or before becoming pregnant. It's the scapegoat for when you misplaced your phone for the fifth time in one day, or when you suddenly can't remember the name of your favorite restaurant.

The more I heard this, the more important it felt to have a way of talking about this phenomenon. How common is it really? And how can it be explained?

I found this research from Yale to be enlightening, and something that I now share frequently with clients. In essence, the research suggests a few important things about mom brain:

1. It is common - about 80% of mothers report experiencing cognitive decline (e.g., impaired memory, concentration, and absentmindedness)

2. These perceived cognitive deficits in the postpartum period don't tend to be supported by cognitive testing. Importantly, there do appear to be subtle decreases in memory during pregnancy, in particular during the third trimester, but they don't appear to carry over into the postpartum period.

3. The researchers suggest that increased environmental complexity is the cause of perceived deficiencies in cognitive ability postpartum (in other words, mom brain). This means that it is not that a mother's mind is less sharp than it used to be. Rather, it is that there are so many more inputs to attend to that some things may be missed.

4. What's more, this increased environmental complexity may actually increase cognitive performance for mothers later in life.

5. And finally - these impacts are not limited to only birthing mothers but can impact any parent who plays an active role in raising their child.

This idea - that our culture has named a deficit in women that is actually a very understandable response to a very demanding circumstance - feels rooted in the type of misogyny that contributes to the lack of systemic support for mothers. As long as it's an individual problem, we don't have to acknowledge the ways we systemically fail new parents. I want those I work with to know that they are still as brilliant as they ever were, and to be able to take credit for the incredible adaptations they make every day - without sweating it too much if they can't always remember where they put their phone.