While holding her newborn son, Erin F. saw herself tripping on the single step into the living room and knocking a pair of scissors over the railing. As the scene replayed vividly in her mind, her scissors pierced her arm, killing the infant she was carrying. (Erin asked WebMD not to use her last name, citing the stigma associated with her mental illness.)
Since then, the 41-year-old first-time mom has become afraid of going down any stairs with her baby. And for a while, she didn’t. However, she could not shake off her sense that harm might come to her child in some way and needed to take precautions to protect her child.
She sewed small tracking devices into his shoes in case of a possible kidnapping and had suffocation rescue devices hidden everywhere. She spent her sleepless nights crying on the couch, worried that someone would rear-end her on the way to daycare. And forget about her going into the ocean. In her mind’s eye, she saw sharks everywhere.
Looking back, Erin says she probably had undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) for most of her life. But after her birth and traumatic hospital visit for postpartum preeclampsia, her thoughts became even more dire.
“It’s driving me crazy because all the things that aren’t normally scary are now scary,” Erin says. “And everyone trivialized what I was going through and said it was normal and ‘you’re doing fine.’ But no, I fell apart. Ta.”
About nine months after her son was born, her psychiatrist diagnosed her with perinatal obsessive-compulsive disorder, or perinatal OCD. (Perinatal OCD includes the entire pregnancy period plus the year after giving birth. Her OCD, which occurs after the birth of the baby, is sometimes called “postpartum OCD.”)
OCD causes intrusive, repetitive, and often distressing thoughts, along with obsessive-compulsive behaviors, and can relieve anxiety about those thoughts.
Neha Hudepol, a reproductive psychiatrist in Greenville, South Carolina, says perinatal OCD commonly causes thoughts of harm, illness, and death about the baby. Mothers may also repeatedly check to see if the infant is breathing or take other excessive measures, she says. She said: “They may have difficulty leaving their baby or letting someone else care for or hold the baby.”
Some studies have shown that OCD can develop or worsen during the perinatal period in 17% of pregnancies, but more research is needed to be sure. According to Lauren Osborne, MD, a reproductive psychiatrist at Weill Cornell Medicine NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, the odds are highest after childbirth, a time of biological and psychosocial vulnerability.
People with a personal or family history of OCD, anxiety, or depression are at higher risk, Osborn said, but some people can develop the condition even without a history. Many people don’t get the care they need because they think they can’t take medication “for the baby,” Osborn said. But it’s not something doctors recommend. She says mental health conditions are common complications of pregnancy and childbirth and can be treated safely in most cases. “[The] The risks of the drugs we use for depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder during pregnancy are very low. We also know that the disease itself can have a huge negative impact on babies and pregnancies. ”
It’s natural for new parents to experience some level of anxiety and awareness of danger. However, if your obsessive thoughts and behaviors interfere with your daily life or caring for your children, you may need to seek treatment.
In some cases, new mothers or parents may have vivid or disturbing thoughts that they did something to hurt their baby. However, it is important to note that patients with perinatal OCD typically do everything they can to avoid harm to the infant. Some people confuse perinatal OCD with postpartum psychosis, which can be more dangerous to the baby.
“Women are afraid that someone is going to take their child away, so they’re afraid to say, ‘I have this horrible image of me dropping my baby down the stairs,'” Osborne said. To tell. “As a result, they end up feeling even more ashamed and hiding what these symptoms are.”
Sometimes the obsession isn’t about the baby. Ruth Zalta, 30, was diagnosed with perinatal OCD after panic attacks left her paralyzed, shaking convulsively and unable to sleep. Her obsessions extended not only to her role as a mother, but also to the possibility of her death, the meaning of her own life, images of herself harming, etc.
Zalta’s doctors prescribed drugs such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which are generally considered safe during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Zalta was also working on a type of evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy that involves exposure and response prevention, where she surrounds herself with words and thoughts that frighten her.
She wrote words such as “suicide,” “existence,” and “life” on sticky notes and posted them around her house, including on her daughter’s changing table and in the kitchen. “And I started to become a little desensitized and realize that just because I think something is, it doesn’t mean I’m going to do something.”
Thanks to treatment, Zalta felt much more in control by the time her daughter was born, and her symptoms have not returned in the five years since, including before and after the birth of her second child. And she is currently focusing her counseling work on her OCD and her perinatal mental health.
“My whole fear then was what would happen if I did something to leave my children behind, and that still happens today,” Zalta says. “But I realized I was stronger than I thought. It was very, very empowering and a big change for me.”
Erin’s intrusive thoughts are still there, but I can sit comfortably with most of them. It helps that she’s giving her son the tools to protect himself, such as enrolling him in self-rescue swimming classes.
“My therapist, my psychiatrist, my doctor all told me, ‘You have a helpless toddler at home, so put him in a place where he’s not helpless,'” she says. “And if something happens and I take my eyes off him for a second and he falls into the water, I worry less knowing that he’s going to be okay and he’ll know what to do.”