This is Your Brain on Pregnancy Hormones

This Christmas, I found myself both enthused about celebrating, but without my usual perseverance. I'd start something and then it'd peter out. I chalked this up to the over-abundance of endorphins these days. It's hard to care too much about some things, somehow. Not that I am uncaring!! Just that I am feeling weirdly dreamier than usual, and that impacts my motivation.

Added on to the usual too-much-to-do of the season, I found myself more than usually willing to cut back on activities. Yes, I'd bake cookies, but not too many kinds. Yes, I'd decorate cookies with my niece, but if we only got an hour of quality time together, that was still good. Yes, I'll get tickets to the concert, but I won't worry about the other event that I can't find enough energy for, even though I had been looking forward to it for the previous 6 months (seriously, it happened). I'm actually happy with how things turned out, although some people are still lacking in Christmas cards, because you know... I just ran out of steam somehow.

This reminds me of this Summer, actually. I started several cool new projects in the Spring and early Summer, only to find myself... falling asleep and unable to concentrate. Gee, I wonder why that was. Everything started changing, and all the gnashing of teeth and berating and nagging myself to do some things was completely inadequate to giving me any actual energy for those things. It wasn't even that I didn't want to do those things; I just could not concentrate enough to care enough.

So a number of very fine things in my life fell by the wayside. Some things don't feel as interesting or as important as before. I've learned that - oh well - that's just the way it is now.

And now all the things I am trying to do in the next 6-8 weeks is suffering just as badly. I can see that there are some things that just won't get done. Maybe they will sometime in the next decade... or not! And no doubt, there will be other things that I will let fall in the next year because they won't be as important or urgent as being with my child.

I'm not idealizing the self-sacrifice inherent in the situation or imposed by a gauzy stereotype of motherhood. I'm simply acknowledging that my brain is not the same. I'd be more upset about it, but... gosh, when I'm not feeling strung out with anxiety about preparations, I'm still feeling floatyly unconcerned. I guess I'll run with it.
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