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exhausted, but couldn\u2019t sleep. My eyes felt funny. My pediatrician ordered test after test. Nothing appeared to be off. He assured my parents that I was just a normal teenager, probably overexerting myself.<\/p>\nMy mom isn\u2019t a doctor. She\u2019s not a scientist. In fact, biology was her worst subject in school. She gets squeamish around blood, and hospitals make her nervous. Yet she was the one who challenged a physician\u2019s diagnosis and saved me from a puzzling illness.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve often wondered how she could know something my doctor didn\u2019t. Is there really such a thing as \u201cmother\u2019s intuition?\u201d As it turns out, a number of researchers believe stories like mine are just the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n
In eighth grade, I began experiencing headaches and nausea. I was exhausted, but couldn\u2019t sleep. My eyes felt funny. My pediatrician ordered test after test. Nothing appeared to be off. He assured my parents that I was just a normal teenager, probably overexerting myself.<\/p>\n
My mom tried to shake off her concerns. All parents worry about their children\u2014but for her, this was more than worry. In the back of her mind, there was a nagging feeling\u2014she knew <\/em>something was very wrong. Pretty soon, I wasn\u2019t the only one who couldn\u2019t sleep. Over the next three months, she hauled me back and forth to half a dozen specialists.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything looks okay, but we\u2019ll run more tests,\u201d one endocrinologist said. \u201cMaybe we\u2019ll think about getting an MRI down the line.\u201d<\/p>\n MRI, MRI, MRI. <\/em>On the car ride home, my mother couldn\u2019t get those initials out of her head. She persuaded my dad to take a detour to my pediatrician\u2019s office. While my dad and I waited in the car, she went inside and demanded that the doctor order an MRI.<\/p>\n He called her a hysterical, overprotective mother. An MRI was costly and unnecessary. \u201cMaybe you <\/em>need to have your head checked,\u201d he said, trying to make light of the situation. But Mom didn\u2019t think it was funny. Finally, the doctor wrote a referral.<\/p>\n That same day, I got an MRI. The results came the following afternoon\u2014there was a cyst sitting on my optic nerve. We caught it just in time, before I lost my vision completely, and maybe even worse. All thanks to my mother\u2019s weird, insistent feeling.<\/p>\n Curious after all these years about the explanation, I recently talked to Dr. Victor Shamas, a psychologist at the University of Arizona who has studied the phenomenon of mother\u2019s intuition. Shamas conducted a study in the 1990s that suggests mother\u2019s intuition starts early\u2014during pregnancy.<\/p>\n One hundred women, who didn\u2019t yet know the sex of their babies, were divided into two groups\u2014those who had a gender preference and those who did not. The women were asked to guess \u201cboy\u201d or \u201cgirl\u201d and explain how they made their choice.<\/p>\n Those who had no preference and made their determination based on intuition\u2014say, a dream or a gut feeling\u2014were correct 70 percent of the time, a far greater percentage than what would be expected by chance. How did Shamas account for such a phenomenon?<\/p>\n \u201cIntuition is something that we don\u2019t understand, but it\u2019s not conscious reasoning,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t know any reasoning process that a mother can use that says a <\/em>plus b <\/em>equals c <\/em>and I know the sex of my baby.\u201d<\/p>\n Shamas believes that it has to do with the bond formed in the womb. \u201cThe mother and the child share the same body for nine months.\u2026 That\u2019s why the bond is so powerful,\u201d he says. The mother actually becomes one with her child and can feel what the child is feeling, essentially transcending herself.<\/p>\n \u201cMy theory is, when your child is born, your life as an independent entity ends. You now define yourself as someone who is a parent and who is connected to this child,\u201d Shamas says. \u201cWhen you do that, you develop this intense compassion for your child. So their pain becomes your pain. Their experience to some degree becomes your experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps my mother fought the doctors because she could understand my suffering in a way that no one else could.<\/p>\n Parenting expert Dr. Michele Borba, the author of 12 Simple Secrets Real Moms Know, <\/em>agrees that \u201coneness\u201d is at the root of mother\u2019s intuition. \u201cThe reason that we\u2019re able to act on our intuition is that it\u2019s not just that gut feeling,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s based on empathy. We\u2019re so tuned in to them that we\u2019re actually\u2014it\u2019s called stepping into their shoes\u2014feeling with <\/em>them. You\u2019re in communion with the other person.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s why mother\u2019s intuition is most acute in times of distress, says Dr. Judith Orloff, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA and the author of Second Sight, <\/em>a book examining intuition. \u201cIt\u2019s easier to pick up dire situations or tragedies because it\u2019s a louder intuitive signal. It\u2019s like if you\u2019re driving up the freeway, your attention goes to the accident rather than the happy family driving down the street.\u201d<\/p>\n This intuitiveness can manifest itself in a number of ways\u2014agitation, dreams, voices, even physical symptoms like higher blood pressure. Orloff had one otherwise healthy patient who experienced intense stomach pains. The woman called her son, who was away at college, and discovered he had appendicitis.<\/p>\n In the case of Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, a grief counselor and associate professor at Arizona State University, mother\u2019s intuition presented itself in the form of disturbing behavior she couldn\u2019t explain.<\/p>\n Cacciatore was pregnant with her fourth child when she got an overwhelming sense that \u201csomething\u2019s wrong, something\u2019s wrong, something\u2019s wrong\u201d\u2014a feeling she hadn\u2019t experienced with her other pregnancies. Doctors dismissed her uneasiness.<\/p>\n Then things got strange. In her third trimester, she came across infant obituaries in the newspaper. She instantly became tearful and felt sick to her stomach. Soon after, she read something in a library book about a baby who died at birth.<\/p>\n \u201cThe book fell from my hands,\u201d she remembers. \u201cI was very upset by it.\u201d Three days later, she lost her baby.<\/p>\n Today, Cacciatore counsels grieving parents, many of whom have also experienced an intuition that their child was in danger. Cacciatore recalls one patient who woke up in the middle of the night at the exact time her son had been in a fatal car accident.<\/p>\n Another mother heard a distinct voice when her newborn son was placed in her arms. It said, Enjoy every moment because you\u2019re not going to have him long. <\/em>The boy died of cancer in his teens, and his mother had indeed cherished every moment he was alive.<\/p>\n Orloff stresses that many instances of mother\u2019s intuition are positive, even joyful. She recalls one patient who felt an inexplicable rush of elation, miles away from where her daughter, unbeknownst to her, had just scored a big goal on the soccer field. She found herself practically jumping up and down, as if she were on the sidelines.<\/p>\n Orloff believes the phenomenon is a kind of unusual survival instinct. Mother\u2019s intuition is a gift from God, she says, a \u201csixth sense that allows mothers to have information about their children.\u201d She estimates that, in patients she\u2019s worked with, mother\u2019s intuition is correct almost 80 percent of the time.<\/p>\n So how can you tell the difference between a nudge from God and just nerves? At what point do you storm the pediatrician\u2019s office to demand an MRI for your kid?<\/p>\n Make sure you\u2019re listening to the right thing, Shamas cautions. \u201cIntuition is a guiding voice that is subtle and doesn\u2019t feel like it\u2019s being influenced by me, <\/em>by my conscious desires.\u201d If you\u2019re an overanxious parent, examine your feelings carefully and reasonably. Don\u2019t confuse intuition with a desire to control your children\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n Know and trust yourself\u2014confidence is crucial, Borba says. She warns that self-doubt, fear, distraction and even advice from other parents can all distort your feelings.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it\u2019s deep in your heart and it\u2019s gnawing at you and it keeps coming up and resonating with you,\u201d Borba says, \u201cand no matter what you hear from somebody else\u2014regardless of their authority, their degrees or their age\u2014something tells you what they\u2019re saying isn\u2019t right and it\u2019s not working for your child, chances are you are correct.\u201d<\/p>\n Doctors too should employ a \u201cbetter safe than sorry\u201d approach, Cacciatore says. Mother\u2019s intuition may not always make sense or even be correct, but it\u2019s still a force to be reckoned with.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s this great mystery that persists,\u201d Cacciatore says. \u201cBut it\u2019s a powerful mystery.\u201d<\/p>\n One that might very well have saved my own life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My mom isn\u2019t a doctor. She\u2019s not a scientist. In fact, biology was her worst subject in school. She gets squeamish around blood, and hospitals make her nervous. Yet she was the one who challenged a physician\u2019s diagnosis and saved me from a puzzling illness. I\u2019ve often wondered how she could know something my doctor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[184],"tags":[151],"ppma_author":[2478],"class_list":["post-19459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-children","tag-mysterious-ways"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n