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New research shows how your brain might change between your first and second pregnancies.
First-time moms had more changes linked to self-reflection and identity, while second-time moms showed greater changes in brain activity related to external demands and sensorimotor processing.
Experts note that more research is needed to better understand how generalizable the findings are in the real world.
Research has shown that pregnancy can have a big impact on your brain, priming you to bond with your little one and to tackle the parenthood challenges ahead. But a new study analyzing the brains of second-time moms has uncovered even more detail about the specific changes between a woman’s first and second pregnancies.
The latest data provides a fascinating look at how the brain adapts to prepare you for motherhood, and then changes again to help you manage the increased demands of welcoming another child.
Here’s what’s behind all of this, plus what you can take away from the findings.
Meet the experts: Elseline Hoekzema, PhDstudy co-author, neuroscientist and head of the Pregnancy Brain Lab at the Amsterdam University Medical Center; Clifford Segil, DOa neurologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California; and Catherine Birndorf, MDfounder of The Motherhood Center in New York City and an associate professor of psychiatry at the Weill Cornell Medical College.
What did the study find?
The study, which was published in Nature Communications, followed 110 women before pregnancy and after they gave birth. Of those, 40 were first-time moms, 30 were second-time moms, and 40 did not become pregnant.
The researchers tracked the participants’ brains and mental health through MRI scans and questionnaires during pregnancy and after childbirth to look for changes.
First-time moms showed brain changes linked to self-reflection, social understanding, perspective, and identity processing, suggesting that the brain reorganizes itself around relationships and a sense of self with a first pregnancy.
Second-time moms had some of the same brain changes, just fine-tuned and more subtle than the first time around. There were also greater changes in the brain networks involved in attention to external demands, goal-directed focus, sensorimotor processing (the ability to receive and interpret information from the senses, such as sight, touch, and sound), movement, and coordination.
“These findings show that a second pregnancy uniquely changes a woman’s brain, entailing both convergent and distinct neural transformations,” the researchers wrote in the study.
What are some reasons your brain might change from your first to your second pregnancy?
The study didn’t directly look into reasons for these changes—it just discovered what’s going on in the brain during first and second pregnancies. But that said, there are some theories.
It’s possible that your brain is less sensitive or reacts differently when exposed to pregnancy hormones the second time around, compared to the first, says Elseline Hoekzema, PhDstudy co-author, neuroscientist, and head of the Pregnancy Brain Lab at the Amsterdam University Medical Center. These could simply be “adaptive benefits” that help to ease the transition into being a mom of more than one child, she says.
Your body—and your brain—might also know the drill by the time you have a second pregnancy, says Clifford Segil, DOa neurologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California. “Being pregnant a second time involves a level of comfort as your body and brain have gone through this process one time,” he says. “Maybe the brain fine-tunes its connections during a second pregnancy.”
But while the changes seem to be priming your brain to be a mom of several kids, Segil notes it’s hard to say how the findings translate to the real world, as they may vary from person to person. “Being a second-time parent for some is calming, whereas for others it is overwhelming,” he points out.
“These networks are important for directing your attention and processing, so you can imagine that this might play a role in being able to pay attention to multiple children at the same time,” Hoekzema says. “But further studies should check whether this is indeed the case.”
What’s the takeaway here?
The findings simply underscore how well a woman’s body changes to meet the demands of pregnancy and motherhood, according to Catherine Birndorf, MDfounder of The Motherhood Center in New York City and an associate professor of psychiatry at the Weill Cornell Medical College. “The brain adapts to what a mother needs,” she says. “It’s just amazing and a beautiful process that your brain would adapt to create the right environment for you to best mother your child.”
While Birndorf stresses that more work is needed, she also praises the findings. “Know that your brain is working for you,” she says.
Korin Miller is a freelance writer specializing in general wellness, sexual health and relationships, and lifestyle trends, with work appearing in Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Self, Glamour, and more. She has a master’s degree from American University, lives by the beach, and hopes to own a teacup pig and taco truck one day.
Carina Hsieh, MPH, is the deputy features editor of Women’s Health. She has more than a decade’s worth of experience working in media and has covered everything from beauty, fashion, travel, lifestyle, pets, to health.
She began her career as an intern in the fashion closet at Cosmopolitan where she worked her way up to Senior Sex & Relationships Editor. While covering women’s health there, she discovered her passion for health service journalism and took a break to get her Masters in Public Health. Post-grad school, she worked as a freelance writer and as The Daily Beast’s first Beauty, Health, and Wellness Reporter.
Carina is an alum of the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Yale School of Public Health. She and her French Bulldog, Bao Bao, split their time between Brooklyn and Connecticut. She enjoys reformer Pilates, (slow) running, and smelling the fancy toiletries in boutique fitness class locker rooms.
