The Mother Mind - Because a Mother Never Stops Bleeding

Dear Alessia, Amanda, Hoda and Jane,

Ill start with a question: Would we know of Mary without knowing Jesus?

1 in 5 women get symptoms such as anxiety, depression or obsessive thoughts during their pregnancy or in the period after giving birth (1). How can women be equal to men when we don't talk about the immense cost of motherhood and its impact on a woman's life?

"Women’s sexuality and reproductive health needs to be considered comprehensively with due consideration to the critical contribution of social and contextual factors. There is tremendous under-recognition of these experiences and conditions by the health professionals as well as by society at large. This lack of awareness compounded by women’s low status has resulted in women considering their problems to be ’normal’. The social stigma attached to the expression of emotional distress and mental health problems leads women to accept them as part of being female and to fear being labeled as abnormal if they are unable to function.” - World Health Organization (2009)

This photo essay aims to exhibit the psychological consequences which becoming mothers has for women, not only in relation to their children, but for themselves as individuals. Let's call it the universal human cost of bearing children. The project contains reports of neurological studies, data from women in both developed and developing countries, as well as poetry, photography and testimonies from mothers from around the globe. The aim of this project is to raise awareness of the knowledge that exists in an often under-prioritized area, both scientifically and artistically.

Let me explain: 80% of all women become mothers during their lifetime. Yet there are incredibly few studies of the experience of going through the transformation from woman to mother. Today only 4 per cent. of the research and development funds used in the health sector worldwide go to women's health. If you exclude the funds that go to breast cancer, we are down to 2 per cent (2). It is food for thought: How much do we really know about the significance of the neurological change most women experience?

For example, women’s brains shrink during pregnancy, which actually means more activation, but just like with adolescents' brain reductions, these changes make it more prone for women to develop mental disorders. Pregnant women can be identified by their brain with over 90% accuracy, and some areas remain reduced even 6 years post partum. Women who are mothers also have different mechanisms to combat fear than women who haven't had children (what does this means for pharmaceutical research?). Parental anxiety peaks after birth, its strongest for mothers, and it will remain in some mothers longer. New mothers’ prefer their offspring over highly powerful drugs like cocaine, and mothers can actually smell genetics and identify (plus enjoy) their child’s smell over 5 other children odours, second best smell is the genetically similar child.

In Norway 41% of mothers live within the insomnia scale 2 years after the birth of their child, and in Denmark mothers have an increased risk of hospital admission or outpatient contact after birth, while fathers don’t. 1 in every 5 women may experience symptoms of anxiety, depression, or both during pregnancy and/or following birth. And suicide is one of the biggest maternal death causes in the world, as high as 14% in Viet Nam for example. Maternal suicide, maternal suicide ideation, plus maternal drug abuse grows statistically every year, also quite dramatically in countries like the US and the UK.

At the same time, the knowledge available in the area is not generally known. When we became mothers, broadly available literature will educate us on our baby's everydevelopment, but there is nothing on those books and pamphlets about what happens to our brains, even though we can hardly recognise ourselves sometimes. Our memory, our sense of smell, our spiked alertness, our mood, our sleep patterns are radically changed, and we are as humans forever changed.

It was fundamental to my understanding of the new experience of the world, to delve into what happens to a woman's brain when she is pregnant, gives birth and takes responsibility for a child. Therefore, I have spent a large part of my time the last 14 months investigating scientific studies of mothers' and women's brains. I have delved into scientific articles, I have discussed with researchers from both the neurological, neurobiological, neurosurgical, psychological and histological fields* and visited the operating room of a neurosurgical department, to get a glimpse of the active brain. It is this vital knowledge I have become acquainted with that I wish to pass on with this photo project, in an abbreviated, factually based version, and dressed with the beauty, openness and power of candid analog photography and poetry.

The door to the whole project will be photographic mundane landscapes and family life from my point of view. They are not romanticised, but saturated, surreal in their expression and sometimes even dangerous, mirroring the everyday life anxiety and fear I have inherited from matrescence.

The supportive photographic role in this essay, are processed images of MRI scans and histology images of female brains (including my own) aged 30-50 and from Hispanic, African-American and Caucasian ethnicity. Their role is the background, or abstract yet real landscape, in which my personal images live on.

Lastly, these photographic diptychs will be accompanied by the collected and curated science facts I have gathered during this last long year, and which I believe all women and men should have access to and own, before deciding to go into parenting.

This is my catharsis. The door is art, yet the room is science.

Thanks kindly for your time,

Carolina Echeverri (Colombia/Denmark)

Ref:

(1)https://panda.org.au/get-support/support-expecting-a-baby

(2)https://medwatch.dk/Medicinal___Biotek/article13629585.ece

All photographs are Polaroid or Fuji, and there is no digital manipulation.

*This project is possible thanks to the openness, kindness, knowledge and time of this group of people:

Dr. Jodi Pawluski, University of Rennes. (CAN/FR), Dr. Malte Ottenhausen, Universitätsmedizin der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz (DE), Dr. Elseline Hoekzema, Amsterdam Universitair Medische Centra UMC (NL), Tobias Højgaard, Novo Nordisk (DK), Balder Olrik & Camilla Holck (DK), Laia Abril (SP) and Peter Funch (DK). Special thanks to The Allen Institute (US) for their valuable and rewarding contribution to not only this project but to scientific research in general.