It's Not Just Brain Fog!

Pregnancy Brain - Not Just a Saying

As of writing this, I am 18 weeks pregnant (4 months or almost halfway through the pregnancy).  It’s obviously a very exciting time but as we all know there are a lot of changes!

I have been fortunate to have a fairly smooth pregnancy so far; I’m not getting sick too often, I’m able to eat well… All in all I’m pretty lucky! 

But there is one thing about being pregnant that I could never have prepared for: pregnancy brain.

It may seem obvious that when your body is going through so many changes, so will your brain. It may be well known that pregnancy can lead to a “brain fog” of sorts. And it may also be common to revert to your middle school days of running into lockers and not knowing why you don’t have the right book for class. 

Of all the symptoms, pregnancy brain has been the worst to deal with!

I consider myself a very capable person, so when I’m unable to spell things correctly on my students’ practice planners, or I’m forgetting their names, or I forget to send a rescheduling email until it’s too late - it starts to wear on me! 

I started to do some research - it was hard for me to just accept the fact that this is how life is going to be.  I wanted to know if others are able to just cope with the brain fogginess and if it gets better with time. 

I mostly came across the classic “yep, that’ll happen!” and laughing it off as just something that everyone deals with. No real answers or solutions. 

And then I discovered it - an article that laid out multiple scientific studies of pregnant women’s brain function before, during, and after pregnancy.  I dug deeper into the studies and found that during pregnancy, healthy or high-risk, the mother’s brain decreases in size by around 5%.

5%?!

That may not seem like a big percentage but consider all of those neural pathways that we spend so much of our lives building disintegrating over the course of just 9 months!  

The good news is that 6 months postpartum the mother’s brain grows back to its original size. 

What does this all mean?

For me, it was helpful to know that I wasn’t just going crazy (I mean, maybe I am, but for other reasons). It was helpful to know that there was justification for why I wasn’t performing at “top speeds” lately even though my body felt fine.  

It was also helpful for me to understand the frustration that a pre-teen or teenager feels when they are battling their own brains.  Yes, I want my students to be responsible and take agency over their own learning, but there are some times that their brains just do not allow them to remember or process things successfully. It's frustrating! 

Having this experience has helped me be more understanding to my students and has given me more tools to help them learn coping and problem solving skills.  For that, I’m grateful

But I will be even more grateful when I have that 5% of my brain back!

P.S. This is not going to become a pregnancy blog - but I felt that this lesson was relatable for other teachers and parents!