Your Brain on Postpartum: Healing Intergenerational Cycles
navigating parenthood one wobbly step at a time
Ever feel like becoming a parent changed you? Like all parts of you are irrevocably different? Neuroscience would agree.
When we become mothers and parents, our entire lives and identities shift. Our current world does little to acknowledge the immense changes that occur during matrescence and patrescense: the transition to mother and father respectively.
This experience of becoming a parent is world-shattering and life-altering. And yet, the systems and structures in which we bring children into the world do little to acknowledge this immense shift. Even the process of pregnancy for birthing parents is often treated like an experience happening independently of their own bodies and selves. We ignore the fact that pregnancy, even in cases of miscarriage or infant loss, leaves behind the cells of the babies that live within us and remain in the birthing parent for possibly the rest of their lives. If you’re interested in geeking out, google “microchimerism.”
Science, the unsung hero that she is, has proven that this cellular connection extends to our brains as well. And when you think about it, why wouldn’t it? The phrase “mommy brain” gets tossed around quite a bit and often disparagingly, but what if neuroscience wants us to wear it like a badge of honor? What if these changes that occur are the pieces of us that needed healing from our own childhood or the parts of us that we’ve ignored after a lifetime living in a low-nurture society? What if the changes that occur within our own brains create the resiliency we hope to instill in the children we raise?
Greer Kirshenbaum, a neuroscientist/mother/doula, would like you to think so. In her book The Nurture Revolution, Kirshenbaum explains that “mommy brain” is real in the sense that the brains of birthing parents begin to change during pregnancy. This change carries through into postpartum and it is during this period that the brains of non-birthing parents begin to show similar changes. The brain’s transformation includes changes in gray matter, enhanced empathy and threat detection, and specific wiring for motivation, reward, and calm while in the presence of your baby.
Another key change is the heightened neuroplasticity: the brain’s ability to be flexible and shaped by experience. Matrescense and patrescence are one of the three periods of life in which we experience the intense (re)wiring associated with neuroplasticity; the other two are adolescence, and you guessed it, infancy from birth to 3 years old.
Within that first year of life, babies are making one million connections per second. It is these neural pathways that lead to the creation of their emotional brains. We can imagine that our brains are multi-tiered: the base layer is our survival instincts - the eat, sleep, poop, connect cycle- and above that sits the emotional brain. On top of both of those layers is the thinking brain responsible for logic, rationality, planning, risk assessment, etc.
The first layer, that which is dedicated to survival, is active when a baby is born. But that second layer remains offline until they’re about three years old. This means that during this period of increased neuroplasticity, caregivers are building the emotional brains of their children. Babies rely on their adult caregivers to provide emotional regulation and help cope with stressors. They quite literally “borrow our brain” to do this work.
The loving touches, softly spoken words, hours of bouncing and back patting, song-singing, and eye-gazing are all part of the emotional brain building toolkit. It is these acts that provide the nurture infants need to build their own emotional brains wired for life-long resilience and emotional wellbeing. It is also in the moments of repair, when we react instead of respond, that we build resiliency by showing our babies that perfection is not the goal.
In the words of Krishenbaum, “When their brains soak in this nurture bath, or oxytocin cascade, their emotional systems develop great capacities to handle stress, emotion, relationships, and conflict-to be resilient.” This resilience, she goes on to say, is what gives children the sense of safety they require to explore, think, create, and play.
The idea that we can “spoil” our babies by holding them too much or “giving into their demands” can be thrown out the window. That level of nurture is what we as caregivers are designed to do. Just as our lungs are created in utero with the expectation that there will be oxygen in the world to breathe, our nervous systems are born with the expectation that we will be cared for and loved on as much as we need. Why else would mammals be born with such great dependency if not to have someone to depend on?
At the same time that we are building our baby’s emotional circuitry, we are also offering our own brains an opportunity to rewire by serving as their external brains. This is the brilliance of the neuroplasticity that both baby and parent are experiencing together. We have the ability to reparent ourselves by creating new neural pathways for emotional regulation and well-being.
Because the truth of the matter is that the majority of us grew up in a culture that prioritizes low-nurture and emphasizes hyper-independence. This type of upbringing, although common, is far from normal and has long-lasting effects for us and the children we raise.
When we take the tremendous step to nurture our baby’s brain, we offer the same oxytocin bath to our own brains. I mentioned earlier how our brains, either during pregnancy or early parenthood, begin to change to form a strong reward system when we are around our children. This reward system is an evolutionary adaptation so that all of the long hours, sleepless nights, and tiresome moments feel so incredibly worthwhile. Put simply, our species would have died off a long time ago if we didn’t get such a flood of warm feelings every time our baby did the most mundane behavior.
This oxytocin cascade offers similar effects for caregivers as it does for the infant. We are able to rewire inherited patterns, created by a childhood of low-nurture, and in their place build pathways of emotional resiliency: we expand our tolerance for stress, strengthen our interoception and empathy, as well as improve our ability to relate and connect with others.
Imagine a world in which the adults in charge experienced a childhood of high-nurture. Imagine the effects that would have on how we speak with our neighbors, how we govern nations, how we care for our elders, and more. It is tremendous work to build the brain of a child. It is equally tremendous work to rebuild your own brain in the process and break the cycles of intergenerational trauma we’ve inherited.
It must be said that this work can only be done through strong social support. We cannot provide a high-nurture environment as parents and caregivers without the village to help us along the way. Parents are one piece of the puzzle. Policies like paid parental leave, affordable childcare, and universal healthcare are another. Programs for postpartum support like For Love & Babes and Our Village gatherings for prenatal support are another important piece. We need each other to do this momentous work.
Alana Wilson
doula, yoga teacher, & fellow parent in the thick of it
