Pregnancy is an expanding experience.

It can be traumatic to transition from small to BIG, to enormous. Forget aesthetics, being a lot bigger than “normal” – there is always the possibility that you will miscalculate your actual size and attempt to move through an opening that……….just is not big enough !

And end up STUCK.

It’s not going to happen

Good news…. despite the fact that your body size is changing “every day”, your brain keeps abreast of the situation.

You will never get stuck.

Your brain has you covered. Your brain KNOWS how big you are and can do the necessary calculations.

This is the finding of a group of researchers from New York University, who explored how tuned in pregnant women are, to their body size.

Big, bigger bodies

The researchers enlisted the help of 11 pregnant ladies. The women were asked to squeeze through a series of doorways, at different points during their pregnancy.  The team discovered – as their bellies increased in size, so did their judgements of what doorways posed a problem.

The technical term for this ability to match body size with environment, is affordance.

Affordance is something we all need. Your motor abilities, body size and morphology change throughout your life, but most of these changes happen so slowly, the adapting is barely noticeable. In the case of pregnancy, things are changing rather quickly.

So how does your brain do it ?

Affordance is learned

The team discovered the brain has to learn it. Day to day experiences, are required to facilitate the perceptual–motor recalibration, that ensures you fit into your environment.

When the team waved a magic wand and turned ordinary women, into women who were 9 months pregnant (they used a little Hollywood trickery), they found these women had no idea which doorways were a go and which were a no go.

But after a little practice – they got the hang of it.

Your body size is covered

Your brain is incredible, it knows where you are and whether you will fit. So no need to worry…

Keep Calm you won’t get stuck.

Of course……… if you think you won’t fit, don’t disregard the information, your brain probably knows best.

Further reading

You are getting wider even if you’re not getting fatter	What you think you see is what you get	To fit in your clothes, forgo FITTING IN at the dinner table

If you are an expectant Mom or know someone that is – invite them to participate, so they can create Better Body Chemistry during their pregnancy and raise a HAPPY HEALTHY little one.