This article hit home for me big time. I just sent it to a new mother friend of mine. I wish someone had sent it to me when I was an anxious, isolated new mother...
"What I didn’t know then — what I wish I had known then — was that I was in the midst of the most rapid and dramatic neurobiological change of my adult life. The unmooring I felt, and that so many new mothers feel, likely was at least in part a manifestation of structural and functional brain changes, handed down through the millennia by mothers past and intended to mold me into a fiercely protective, motivated caregiver, focused on my baby’s survival and long-term well-being."
"The more brain change the mothers experienced, the higher they scored on measures of emotional attachment to their babies, a finding that echoed past studies. And the changes in most brain regions remained two years later."
"The brain scans seemed to validate the rapid, pronounced, long-lasting change in mothers that a much bigger body of animal research has found. Reviewing a range of studies, Pawluski and her coauthors wrote in a 2016 paper that as a developmental period, pregnancy is as formative as puberty. “Under healthy conditions, the female brain transforms into a motivated, maternal mechanism,” they wrote. Entering into motherhood is “a major event” for the brain, says Jodi Pawluski, a researcher at University of Rennes 1 in France who focuses on what she and her colleagues call the “neglected neurobiology” of the maternal brain. “It’s one of the most significant biological events, I would say, you would have in your life.”
"Many new mothers say that they feel like crying “most of the time” and wonder if that means they aren’t cut out for being a mother, Brazelton wrote. “It must be reassuring to know that this is a common result of the physical and psychological readjustments that follow delivery. These will pass. They may even be an important part of her ability to become a different kind of person — a ‘mother,’ rather than a young girl.”
- Boston Globe Article
Yeah. And almost two years after baby #2, I'm just now starting to find my balance again. Note the key word, starting. This shit is bonkers, ya'll.
Also of interest to me, is the bit about the more brain changes, the higher the attachment to the baby. I practice attachment parenting, especially during infancy. It felt intuitively right and I was not interested in anything else. I babywear, cosleep, breastfeed past infancy, etc. and don't force any separation between mother and baby until well into toddlerhood. I also had wicked postpartum anxiety birth times. Verrrrrrry interesting!