As a FTM who’s currently home with her 7-week old infant, thank you. My life feels completely turned upside down in a way my husband doesn’t quite understand. I had a pregnancy riddled with complications and a truly horrible recovery from my c section. Breastfeeding and pumping have been incredibly challenging and exhausting. I feel like a different person, physically and emotionally, and the medical community has not been very helpful. I love my daughter, but I was not prepared for just how crazy my journey would be. Thank goodness for communities like this where I can feel seen on a deep level. This sh*t is hard.
“Let’s first recognize the truth, that if we’re forgetful, struggling with word recall, or feel like our heads are stuffed with cotton, it’s because our brains are adapting to huge changes, both physiological and circumstantial.” Sounds a lot like menopausal brain to me as well.
Thank you for this, I have 6 month old twins and felt basically brain dead throughout my pregnancy. They were born at 31 weeks and spent 43 days in NICU so I spent 43 days just sitting around a hospital. When not holding or feeding my babies I just scrolled Pinterest looking at pretty houses and pretty clothes. I wanted to read books, I wanted to write, but my brain was completely non-functioning, all I could concentrate on was images of beautiful things. I’ve felt guilty for being so unproductive during that time, but now I realize that my brain just wasn’t capable of doing anything during that time.
I was especially struck by Dr. Hunter pointing out that the area of the brain responsible for social intelligence, empathy, and awareness of dangerous threats, becomes very “specialized and highly efficient” during pregnancy and the postpartum experience. I haven’t seen such a good explanation before of the “why” behind the “what” is happening. This makes me wonder about the “why” behind the similar changes such as brain fog that happen around menopause.
I wondered the same thing. At times I thought I had perimenopause brain fog but it cleared up once I got treatment for ADHD and hypothyroidism, both of which became worse in my 40s. Middle aged men complain about their memory too and no one tells them that have andopause brain fog.
All of this helps me have more compassion for my kid going through puberty, too. Their brain is becoming a galaxy. But back to pregnancy and postpartum and early childhood parenting—I too experienced dismissiveness about what and how I felt. I really appreciate this reporting, both for the way it clears away patriarchal nonsense and helps us see what’s really happening AND to meet the researchers and innovators finding new language, doing new research, and insisting on a better way.
With my first pregnancy, not only did I experience depression the whole damn time (and no one thought to mention that was a possibility), but also I couldn’t come up with words. I still say my son stole (through no fault of his own) my words in utero because they haven’t come back (8.5 years later). With my second, I finished the first draft of a novel at about 8 weeks pregnant and then have been unable to write anything creative until very recently (1 year postpartum). It’s like my body was so busy creating *literally* inside of me that I couldn’t create anything on the outside until she came out, and then I couldn’t create because, well, my hands and brain were full! I’m happy to report that I have written a short story and a couple scenes for the novel over the past couple months and that *maybe* my life is now such that this kind of creativity is finding its way back to me. But yea, fuck the patriarchy that acts like this is somehow a deficiency. As though I didn’t just grow a whole ass human inside of me.
I also had a “geriatric pregnancy” at the ripe old age of 37! I didn’t have “pregnancy brain” at all - I thought it was a myth! - and I stumbled across an explanation that the brains of birthing people completely rewire themselves after childbirth when my kiddo was still a baby (2014). The idea at that point was that your brain becomes good at multitasking so you are always aware of your baby but also you can do other things. Which… in retrospect ALSO feels misogynistic but at the time felt very real.
As a FTM who’s currently home with her 7-week old infant, thank you. My life feels completely turned upside down in a way my husband doesn’t quite understand. I had a pregnancy riddled with complications and a truly horrible recovery from my c section. Breastfeeding and pumping have been incredibly challenging and exhausting. I feel like a different person, physically and emotionally, and the medical community has not been very helpful. I love my daughter, but I was not prepared for just how crazy my journey would be. Thank goodness for communities like this where I can feel seen on a deep level. This sh*t is hard.
sending you so much love audra - it's SO SO HARD.
“Let’s first recognize the truth, that if we’re forgetful, struggling with word recall, or feel like our heads are stuffed with cotton, it’s because our brains are adapting to huge changes, both physiological and circumstantial.” Sounds a lot like menopausal brain to me as well.
Thank you for this, I have 6 month old twins and felt basically brain dead throughout my pregnancy. They were born at 31 weeks and spent 43 days in NICU so I spent 43 days just sitting around a hospital. When not holding or feeding my babies I just scrolled Pinterest looking at pretty houses and pretty clothes. I wanted to read books, I wanted to write, but my brain was completely non-functioning, all I could concentrate on was images of beautiful things. I’ve felt guilty for being so unproductive during that time, but now I realize that my brain just wasn’t capable of doing anything during that time.
100%
I was especially struck by Dr. Hunter pointing out that the area of the brain responsible for social intelligence, empathy, and awareness of dangerous threats, becomes very “specialized and highly efficient” during pregnancy and the postpartum experience. I haven’t seen such a good explanation before of the “why” behind the “what” is happening. This makes me wonder about the “why” behind the similar changes such as brain fog that happen around menopause.
i know - SAME
I wondered the same thing. At times I thought I had perimenopause brain fog but it cleared up once I got treatment for ADHD and hypothyroidism, both of which became worse in my 40s. Middle aged men complain about their memory too and no one tells them that have andopause brain fog.
All of this helps me have more compassion for my kid going through puberty, too. Their brain is becoming a galaxy. But back to pregnancy and postpartum and early childhood parenting—I too experienced dismissiveness about what and how I felt. I really appreciate this reporting, both for the way it clears away patriarchal nonsense and helps us see what’s really happening AND to meet the researchers and innovators finding new language, doing new research, and insisting on a better way.
oh man i love this: their brain is becoming a galaxy - !!!!
With my first pregnancy, not only did I experience depression the whole damn time (and no one thought to mention that was a possibility), but also I couldn’t come up with words. I still say my son stole (through no fault of his own) my words in utero because they haven’t come back (8.5 years later). With my second, I finished the first draft of a novel at about 8 weeks pregnant and then have been unable to write anything creative until very recently (1 year postpartum). It’s like my body was so busy creating *literally* inside of me that I couldn’t create anything on the outside until she came out, and then I couldn’t create because, well, my hands and brain were full! I’m happy to report that I have written a short story and a couple scenes for the novel over the past couple months and that *maybe* my life is now such that this kind of creativity is finding its way back to me. But yea, fuck the patriarchy that acts like this is somehow a deficiency. As though I didn’t just grow a whole ass human inside of me.
100% yes to all of this
I also had a “geriatric pregnancy” at the ripe old age of 37! I didn’t have “pregnancy brain” at all - I thought it was a myth! - and I stumbled across an explanation that the brains of birthing people completely rewire themselves after childbirth when my kiddo was still a baby (2014). The idea at that point was that your brain becomes good at multitasking so you are always aware of your baby but also you can do other things. Which… in retrospect ALSO feels misogynistic but at the time felt very real.