Your New Superpower

As your bump grows, your brain is busy forging a brand-new skill: the ability to read your baby’s mind

Ever hunted all over the house for your keys, only to find them nestled in the fridge while your sandwich is sitting on the roof of the car? Since the beginning of time, women have wondered if pregnancy does something peculiar to our minds, landing us with the socalled ‘baby brain’ that leaves our thought processes a little addled, and our keys regularly lost. Now scientists have the proof to back up what we’ve always suspected: pregnancy really does change your brain. And that scattiness is just a side effect of an amazing alteration as the structure of your grey matter adjusts to give you skills that will make you a better mum.

‘We found that pregnancy changes the grey matter volume within the brain,’ says neuroscientist and mum Erika Barba-Müller, co-author of a new report that is making waves in the scientific community. Over the course of five-and-a-half years, her team of neuroscientists compared magnetic resonance images of first-time mums and their partners, and a control group of women who were not and had never been pregnant, and men. Everyone had their brains scanned, with the mums being tested before conception, soon after they had given birth and again two years later.

And the results were fascinating.