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Brain scans show new moms' brains grow
Moms really are the brains of the operation. New research shows that, far from losing grey matter when we become mothers, mamas’ brains actually grow.
In the months after giving birth, women develop more brain cells in the parts of the brain associated with reasoning, judgement and sensory perception. We really do know everything! At least, more than mere mortals who have not given birth.
What’s more, the more you love your baby, the more your brain develops:
Those moms who are particularly awestruck and gushy over their babies show more growth in the brain areas associated with motivation, reward and the regulation of emotion, the researchers said.
Having a baby is exhausting. At the end of the day, you and your partner probably can’t wait to crawl into bed…and sleep. Doing anything else between the sheets fades to a distant memory, something fun some other incarnation of you used to enjoy. Sound familiar?
MomLogic offers up some tips to help tired moms hate sex less. This short article contains some of the most depressing love advice I have ever read. As one mom who read it over my shoulder said, “That makes me never want to have sex again. And that’s not right.” Continue reading »
News flash: if you’re committed to personal perfection, parenting is going to be a rough ride.
Science has once again caught up with conventional wisdom. Motherlode shares a study that shows pregnant women who expect perfection from themselves are more prone to postpartum depression.
Ready for a blissed out birth? A method of childbirth preparation called Hypnobirthing is garnering international attention for, purportedly, giving women the pain relief of an epidural without taking any actual drugs.
Riiiiiight.
New York City has only 13 home birth midwives, and 7 of them are in danger of losing their licenses.
State law requires all home birth midwives to have agreements with obstetricians at nearby hospitals who will back them up and handle medical emergencies with their patients. St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan was the official back-up hospital for more than half of New York City’s midwives until it closed this week.
Now the midwives are having trouble finding a new hospital that will take them in. Obstetricians, it seems, are not eager to sign on for back-up duty.
New Scientist has sent one of their reporters, who happens to be pregnant, to do a little investigative research on the power of old wives tales to predict who’s inside that bump.
“Women’s Intuition” won the day. While all the other tales she investigated turned up duds, Linda Geddes reports that she’s expecting a daughter. An ultrasound confirmed the feeling she’s had for weeks that her baby would be a girl.
She’s not relying on her own anecdotal experience alone, though. There’s research that shows over three quarters of women can accurately guess the sex of their baby.
Every couple of weeks, we run a story about some obviously clueless, crazy person who gives birth in an exotic locale like “on a train” or “in a school bathroom” because she didn’t even know she was pregnant until the baby popped out.
Crazy, right? Not necessarily. Apparently, not knowing you’re pregnant is more common than we think.
Lori Garcia 
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
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