A lot of recent scientific research has confirmed that the maternal brain gets significantly altered postpartum. There is a literal rearrangement that happens that explains the brain fog feeling many women have reported across time. I find myself forgetful when it comes to many logistical aspects that have to do with my work, but if you ask me when my four-month-old is scheduled for a nap, I can calculate the exact time frame, based on when he woke up. I can intuit his behavioural changes before they even manifest. For instance, one week before he began rolling over, I knew he would reach that milestone.

There’s something magnificent about this brain alchemy that offers coping strategies and helps you prioritise your task list. Each time, though, I forget something on the professional front (yesterday, I totally blanked out about a meeting I had agreed to at noon my time), I remind myself not to be too rough on myself. It happens. It doesn’t make me unprofessional, just a freelancer who doesn’t have the luxury of not working. 

Since this is my second time around, a do-over, so to speak, I feel admittedly more confident and less fazed by it all. For a while, I was convinced it must be so for everyone… There must be a universal rule that says that the second time around, everything is easier, but many mothers with whom I have chatted about this told me point-blank that their second was way more difficult than the first. One friend referred to her second-born as a monster who cries constantly and refuses even a pacifier. Another told me her second-born is a terrible sleeper. Another said hers was simply too hyper. Maybe the second child falls easily into the trap of comparison because the first child sets a standard by which to contrast and differentiate. Then I think the second child is perhaps different because you, as a mother, are different, altered and transformed because of the fact of matrescence. Even a year after my first, I will still be busy ‘becoming mother’. With my second, I am already that.