How Mommy Brain Can Actually Improve Your Life

What if I told you mommy brain isn't a liability, it's an asset?

If your brain feels off, there's a good reason for it.

One of the hardest parts of navigating motherhood is the loss of your sense of self - the ever mounting chores, anxiety, sleep deprivation and unending fatigue don’t help either.  But the idea that “Mommy brain” is just a nagging hinderance in parenthood isn't entirely true! "Mommy Brain" can actually improve your life.

Chelsea Conaboy's book Mother Brain was absolutely life changing and helped me understand and reframe the brain changes that happen during motherhood. [If you want to go deeper I can't recommend her book enough, but let's dive in with some highlights here.] Once I saw that "mommy brain" was more than just forgetfulness and overwhelm, it set me on a path to learn how you can actually leverage "mommy brain" and all of the changes happening in your brain to transform your life.

What is Mommy Brain?

I feel like this is the offsides rule from Ted Lasso “It’s hard to describe, but you know it when you see it!”  You’re tired, foggy, overwhelmed and often forgetful of things you wouldn’t normally forget.  Maybe you put the cheese in the pantry, or the batteries in the freezer.  Maybe you lost your car keys for the 20th time this morning.  Maybe it’s simply all the texts and emails you’ve been too exhausted to reply to.

Whatever it looks like, there’s actually a neurological basis for what you’re experiencing: your brain is changing.

First and foremost women’s brains physically change during pregnancy and postpartum [they change during perimenopause too!].  Some studies show a decrease in grey matter, others show an increase in white matter, but in any case we’re seeing physical, structural changes to the brain tissue itself.

Now it’s easy to assume that brain changes are a bad thing, but in motherhood, these changes are are an asset to caretaking - it’s how our bodies have evolved to better take care of children.  Or more so, how children evolved us so that we could keep them alive.

It’s a brutal mix of elements: sleep deprivation, constant crying, and structural brain changes.  But what’s actually happening is our brain is becoming more pliable so that we can learn new things more quickly.  Neuroplasticity and myelination are heightened during the postpartum period because we are learning, in real time, how to respond to our children’s needs.

And this plasticity continues as our children age because their needs are constantly changing and we are, whether we realize it or not, changing with them.

But what do I feel so incapable?

This is a common misconception about “mommy brain” - the idea that you’re somehow cognitively impaired as a new parent.  Tests actually show that women don’t lose that much cognitive function after having a child… it only feels like you do.

Our feelings are misleading here precisely because our brains don’t like change.  Our brains would much prefer consistency and predictability because it keeps us safe and allows us to better regular our dopamine levels.

And parenthood is anything but predictable!

This disruption to our lives feels so overwhelming, but it doesn’t mean your brain stops working - it’s just that your functioning differently.  So while you feel that you forget things and lose things and can’t think straight, the reality is that your brain space is simply being redirected to your child .

and growing in ways to support their needs.

Think of how quickly you learn to discern the difference between hungry and attention cries, the difference between a fart and a shart, and the innate knowing when it’s about time for your baby to wake up again.  

Your brain has learned these things incredibly quickly even if it doesn’t feel like it.

How can I use mommy brain to improve my life?

This is the area most experts and mother’s support groups completely miss - you are PRIMED for change during this time of your life, but you are not limited to learning how to care for your child. You might have very real time, energy and financial limitations after having a kid, but your brain is super available to learn anything incredibly quickly.

So what would you do with that super power?

For me, I took apart everything I knew about movement and my body and singing and life, and put it back together in a way that has allowed me to live pain free and fully expressed that was never possible before. A few weeks ago I even did my first opera audition in 10+ years with only two weeks notice!  Something that would have taken me months to prepare for, I could condense down into 10 days.  And I got more done in those ten days than I’d gotten done in the past 10 years… full stop.

Maybe you want to try a new hobby, maybe you want to learn a language, maybe you want to change careers and start over from the beginning - you are primed for this!

When you can see how your body and brain changing isn’t a liability, but a powerful opportunity for growth, how does that change your sense of self?  What feels more available to you now than it did before you read this?

This is where my coaching starts to bleed into bigger pieces of fulfillment in life… What have you been wanting to do or putting off because you didn’t think it was possible or practical?  What desires are bubbling up ready to be heard?

When you’re no longer fighting or at odds with your body a whole of exciting things start to become available.

I’m here to shake up and expand what you know to be possible.

The world is truly your oyster right now… and your pearl is ready to be found!

If you want to chat more about how mommy brain can actually improve your life, send me a message to schedule a free intro call!  You can also sign-up for my newsletter to hear about upcoming workshops to help you transform and transcend motherhood.