Postpartum is the most physiologically and psychologically vulnerable time in a mother’s life. This is informed by a dramatic increase in hormones in pregnancy followed by the sudden decrease after birth. The neural plasticity of the maternal brain is also a contributing factor.
The changes to the brain in pregnancy and motherhood are so profound, an MRI can detect whether a woman has ever been pregnant. A landmark study, published in 2017, provided evidence for the first time that a mother’s brain changes size and shape in pregnancy to prepare for parenthood. The brain decreases in size but increases in maternal sensitivity which is referred to as a fine tuning of the brain circuitry.
Neuroscientist Dr Jodi Pawluski explains that the brain essentially becomes more efficient and primes the mother for learning. This is important because it debunks the myth of maternal instinct which informs the social narrative that as soon as we birth our babies, we’ll know exactly what to do and have all the answers; the foundation of the harmful ‘mum knows best’ trope.
“I don’t like maternal instinct primarily because of the pressure it puts on new mothers and then they’re like: but I should know! There must be something wrong with me. There’s a huge drive to keep your baby alive because you’ve just grown them for nine months, but you have to learn how to do that,” says Pawluski.
Every learning process begins with the discomfort of not-knowing but it’s particularly confronting in postpartum when we aren’t prepared for the profound questioning, doubt and uncertainty. It’s also when we’re most likely to notice the loss of the village. During labour and after birth, a new mother experiences a lifetime high level of oxytocin, the hormone that increases trust and empathy, encouraging social connection. We are an interdependent species and social care and connection in postpartum is a basic biological need; new mothers are neurologically wired to reach out for support. But they’re isolated in nuclear homes – the village has been eradicated and new mothers bear the brunt of this loss.
In over 60 interviews I did with perinatal health specialists, one common theme emerged: it’s never been harder to be a mother. Our increasing perinatal anxiety and depression rates aren’t so much a psychological condition but a normal human response to a highly stressful situation. This is exacerbated by the fact that we are parenting in a climate, cost of living and housing crisis with dwindling social support structures.
The reality is confronting but there is hope in the new science of motherhood which recognises matrescence as one of the most profound periods of brain development in life. The word was first used by anthropologist Dana Raphael in 1973 and recently revived by Dr Aurelie Athan, head of matrescence and reproductive identity at Colombia State University in New York. When she couldn’t find any positive paradigms about new motherhood, she went looking for them.
Athan likens matrescence to adolescence; a period of hormonal upheaval, biological change and significant identity shifts and it was evident in all the interviews she did with new mothers. She also noticed that every mother was talking about big change in all the domains of their life and while it was stressful, it was the coexistence of really intense negative and positive experiences that piqued her interest.
“This reminded me of spiritual practice – of how you can sit with both the suffering and the joy, and that you find meaning in both.”
These realisations alongside the identity shifts are profound but they don’t fit with the social and cultural expectations of perfect motherhood; that we should bounce back, have all the answers and strive for perfection. Instead, mothers are told that they’re in a temporary space and encouraged to be as efficient and accepting as they can. As Athan says, we would never expect a teenager to bounce-back to childhood, so why do we expect it of mothers?
That’s why matrescence is so vital; it humanises mothers and reveres the long, messy and often discombobulating process of ‘becoming’ after birth.
Realistic expectations are one pillar of a positive postpartum experience, as outlined by the World Health Organization. Athan’s research supports this: the mothers who did well in postpartum weren’t Pollyanna types and they didn’t love every minute but they were really good forecasters; they had realistic expectations about what life after birth would look like.
Matrescence helps us bridge the gap between our expectations of ourselves and of motherhood, and the reality. Socially we need to make space for new mothers to move through this transition, just as we accept and respect the time it takes for children to become adolescents.
When Athan explains matrescence to new mothers, three things happen: their shoulders drop in relief because they thought something was wrong with them, they cognitively recognise their own developmental process and then they get angry.
“They’re angry because they don’t have a supportive environment, they’re not held, they didn’t know, they weren’t prepared and they don’t feel seen,” says Athan.
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