002: CARE TAKES COLLECTION

CARE TAKES COLLECTION is a series on various forms of art that have informed how I think about motherhood and caregiving. You can read the last instalment here.

In an early phase of my postpartum experience, I couldn’t find my keys. I was sleep deprived, back at work, pumping and trying to keep up a professional face under increasingly complex career pressures. So why couldn’t I find my keys? The answer seemed so obvious. But this simple question also triggered a much more existential and persistent thought: I hadn’t just lost my keys, but the brain I once had.

This feeling of mental fog is often called “mom brain,” a cutesy term that reduces a scientifically complex reality associated with pregnancy to a slogan better suited to a mug you might find in a Home Sense. (See also: “baby blues.”) I’d heard “mom brain” tossed around on TV shows and in films; a popular enough idea that it conjures the idea of a frazzled woman bumbling around with unkempt hair, stretchy pants, clearly a shell of her former self. It’s not that this image is always cruel, but the trope does create a sense of simplicity that allows society to laugh off new mothers instead of trying to understand what they’re going through. In this way, it’s quietly insidious.

What “mom brain” doesn’t divulge is that a pregnant person’s brain is actually altered during the gestational period and beyond. In “From Pregnancy to Postpartum: The Dynamic Reorganization of the Maternal Brain”1 researchers note that “pregnancy leads to a reduction in gray matter volume (GMV), cortical thickness and white matter density.” If, like me, you only having a passing concept of the brain because you never took a biology class after grade six, in plain English this means parts of the brain shrink. Specifically the parts that help you “think, remember and make decisions” (grey matter), the ones associated with intelligence2 (cortical thickness), and cognitive function (white matter). So no shit, you’re going to lose your keys.

The good news is the brain is truly an incredible organ, which has an immense capability for plasticity. I’ve spent more time with neurologists over the past year than I ever have in my life, as the above paragraph might indicate. (Everyone is fine; don’t worry!) Looking over the results of an MRI, I asked a doctor if she could quantify what the results might mean off the page and in the world. Could she look at these black and white scans and, as if holding a crystal ball, explain what the future in lived experience terms would hold? “No,” she said, “because the brain is amazing.” It can adapt in ways that science is still trying to comprehend.

As I read more about this, the image of the frazzled woman trying to gather up scattered toys and bottles snapped into focus; this person was also gathering up thoughts and experiences that their brain was processing in an entirely new way. But while “the most dynamic reorganization of the postpartum brain structure primarily occurs within the initial postpartum weeks,”3 capitalism doesn’t pause to take this into account. Meaning “mom brain” has to work even harder to make sense of this dual identity if you’re also engaging in paid labour. And in a country with no federally mandated maternity leave that’s cutting Medicaid and revoking access to reproductive care, most people are labouring right after going through labour in these initial postpartum weeks.

I hadn’t seen this explored on film in such a succinct way until I stumble on Aisha Amin’s Simone (2022), about a mother navigating New York, motherhood and work all simultaneously. Partly shot on 16mm, there’s a warmth and care for Simone, who is played by Aisha’s longtime friend, Cree McLellan. We meet Simone as she’s rushing to get out of the house with her child while preparing for an impending job interview. This juggling becomes struggling and leads to a slip-up that had me gasp–not in judgement but in recognition of how easily it could happen to anyone whose hands and life feel too full.

It’s the final moment of the film, however, that felt like the true climax. In the wake of an emotionally and physically draining experience, still with her heart racing, Simone answers a work call, shifting in a confident, calm voice. That is the “mom brain” we never get to see. The one that carries the new and still unfamiliar weight of the child’s day alongside her own. That one that is forced to adapt and expand to hold more than it ever thought it could.

Because “mom brain” isn’t a superpower, as some narratives might suggest, and framing “mom brain” as being exceedingly capable doesn’t take into account it has to be. The human host, that new mother, is navigating a world that doesn’t consider her needs. This super human framing weaponizes competence in order to not provide accommodations.

It might seem like small stakes to battle over words, but this framing can have dire effects if we consider that “while some changes [to the brain] are short-term others tend to persist, affecting maternal health and adaptation to motherhood.”4 One of those major issues is postpartum depression, which is often dismissed, overlooked, and understudied. Maybe because unlike a superpower, we can actually understand “mom brain.” We just haven’t taken the time to. And we have to if we want to support those living through it.

Aisha Amin is a New York–based filmmaker and installation artist whose work moves between narrative, documentary, and immersive forms.

Her films are rooted in deep community relationships and a documentary sensibility, drawing from real experiences and real people to tell emotionally resonant stories. Her film practice also extends beyond the screen: her immersive installation The Earth Has Been Made a Place of Prayer, commissioned by The Shed, transformed her documentary relationship with a 40-year-old Brooklyn mosque into a four-channel sound and video installation and reconstructed a sacred communal space as a living archive.

Her short films Simone, Derby, and Contours have screened and won awards at festivals internationally, including Clermont-Ferrand, Slamdance, Alice nella Città, Palm Springs, and BAM, and have been selected as Vimeo Staff Picks.

Aisha is currently serving as a Video Director at Alibaba.com and was previously a Digital Producer at WNET’s American Masters. She holds an MFA in Screenwriting and Directing from Columbia University. Her work has been supported by NYFA, Women in Film, The Gotham, Sundance, the Blacklist, the Shondaland Directing Fellowship, and Cine Qua Non Labs.