Postpartum
Lisa Marie Oliver
Scientists have found gray matter reduction in the brains
of women who’ve recently given birth.
They set him newborn and naked on my chest:
full head of hair, wailing open mouth, eyes
squinting into brightness, thin film
of vernix caeseosa.
The effect includes changes in the surface area
of the cortex in areas related to social cognition.
After three days of sleep deprivation I hallucinate
a white cat in the halls of the maternity wing.
The nurse pushes me in a wheelchair,
I carry the baby.
The degree of changes in the gray matter volume predicts
the degree of hostility and attachment.
Things I feel paranoid about: hand-washing,
smokers, strangers, SIDS, car accidents,
The Handmaid’s Tale, mountain lion attacks,
school-shootings, my mother, burglars.
The other turbulent time period of life that causes loss
of grey matter is adolescence.
Once when I was a teenager I prayed
two hours uninterrupted at the base
of Neahkahnie Mountain and opened
my eyes surrounded by crows.
The area of the brain that regains volume
after childbirth is the hippocampus.
Third week postpartum,
growth-spurts and cluster-feedings,
I sleep in forty-five minutes cycles,
averaging three hours per night.
Concurrently, growth of the child’s bilateral hippocampi
shows distinct responses to postnatal maternal anxiety.
We take long walks everyday.
He loves to mimic sounds--
Caw Caw from the treetops,
caw caw from the baby-stroller.
Some regions increase in size in the months after giving birth
as if the maternal brain waxes and wanes.
At winter solstice, I take a photograph
of our shadows projected on the sidewalk:
me, baby, stroller. We look like giants
in noontime light.
Lisa Marie Oliver's poems are featured or forthcoming in Book of Matches, Windfall, Literary Mama and FERAL. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her wife and toddler.