Severe OCD and Pregnant - Can anyone help me please?

[Louise990]

Hi all

As the title says, I'm almost 36 weeks pregnant and suffer with very severe anxiety and OCD.

Recently my OCD has manifested itself in quite a few different ways but at the moment it is very much focused on alcohol and this particular 'episode' seems impossible to shake off. Im due to give birth in the next few weeks so I'm becoming more and more desperate for help.

Let me just start by saying that I don't have a problem with alcohol nor have I ever. Before I became pregnant I used to enjoy a drink every now and then and I definitely don't mind being around others whilst they drink but since finding out about my pregnancy I haven't touched a single drop.

I'm aware that some women do drink whilst pregnant and have healthy babies but personally I couldn't even justify a sip (please note that I'm not judging). Because my OCD has latched onto the thought of alcohol, I can't find any comfort in people telling me that a small amount of alcohol is OK as to me it definitely isn't.

The other night I was sat on the sofa with my boyfriend. We were looking at baby things that we'd bought and I excitedly turned to him and kissed him on the lips (just a peck!). It completely slipped my mind that at the time he was drinking a can of beer and as soon as I realised I completely froze and had the biggest panic attack.

I wiped my lips with my sleeve straight away and then got a baby wipe and scrubbed them again. I didn't taste or even smell any alcohol on his breath but feeling that his lips were cool and moist was enough to send my OCD out of control.

I don't know what I'm looking for people to say as I'm typing this. I know that this is my OCD and that my reaction is completely over the top but I can't stop obsessing over it in my mind, even to the point that I can smell and taste beer. It's like my brain is trying to convince me that I actually had a drink when I know full well that the worst case scenario was that I had secondhand saliva on my lips from someone who was drinking beer.

For once my obsession and worry is not related to the health if my baby as I know that I didn't ingest a molecule of alcohol never mind drink any! I just feel like I've managed to go 35 weeks with no alcohol and now somehow this feels ruined and I can't cope with going over and over it in my mind when I should be focusing on my pregnancy and looking forward to meeting my baby.

Can anyone offer any advice or support? I have CBT every week and earlier I even called the crisis team who were no help to me whatsoever. I've been crying hysterically and I can't concentrate on anything.

I would really appreciate any help. Thank you.

Can you contact your midwife for reassurance? Gp or your MH support - just because one worker at crisis team were useless to you does not mean calling again will not help you.

You know this is your OCD talking and you know it's not rational. Keep telling yourself this.

Are you on any meds OP? I was on 100mg sertraline from 20 weeks for both pregnancies, it helped enormously. Are you under consultant care and seeing a consultant psych?

It is great that you have recognised there is no actual risk, and that the problem is worry. That means you should be able to begin to try and stop re-playing the incident in forensic detail - it not only doesn't matter, but your memory will deceive you anyway, and it will just prolong the agony. Just accept that you are going to let this worry wash over you and take its time to pass. Don't engage with it by feeling you need to find a 'solution' that will calm you down, or trying to reassure yourself that it was all ok. So long as you pay it any attention other than saying 'I will just have to feel this worry till it passes', it will carry on. Once you stop responding to it and just tolerate it, the worry will die down. I know it is hard, I mostly don't manage it so I'm a big fat hypocrite, but it is true so we'll have to keep trying.

Can you say what you mean by 'somehow this feels ruined' - maybe it would help to break that down and see that it doesn't have any substance.

I have been hysterical so many times over OCD, and you need to just focus on trying to calm the physical side of it. If you can, at least tell yourself you will sit down and take a short break from the obsessing. Postpone it as much as you can till 22.10, then you can go back to paying it attention or postpone again. So you won't have to worry you're taking a risk and just letting it go if that is too big a step for now.

In this hour of postponement have a nice hot sugary cup of tea or whatever you like or a snack, curl up under a blanket, put some silly tv on and cuddle your husband or a teddy bear. Just tell yourself all you have to do is try to be calm for an hour then you can resume if necessary. There is nothing you can do in that hour to change anything (not that anything needs changing, but if that doesn't sit right with you just remember you can't do anything better with that hour).

Or if you like chat to us on here - maybe about something different. Have you thought about names for your little one? Have you started getting the nursery ready - I'd love to hear what it's like?

Btw I am not assuming everyone has a 'nursery' but I seem to remember you mentioning one..

If you feel really severely panicked, maybe get into bed with everything quiet and dark and just try to breathe/recover. Sometimes tv/distraction is better but sometimes you need to work up to that.

I'm not currently on any medication but after the baby is born I'm definitely going to see my GP to see what she suggests. In hindsight I should have probably been on sertraline or similar for a while now but I was coping reasonably well up until the 28 week mark. I'm under midwife and consultant-led care and this is how I got my quick referral for CBT. I'm really trying not to lose faith in the system but I've been feeling desperate for weeks now and nobody seems to realise how much I'm actually suffering. The crisis worker on the phone earlier told me that I was experiencing 'normal' pregnancy anxiety due to the prospect of becoming a new mum and what it entails.. I wish to god that this was the only thing on my mind right now. I got off the phone feeling worse than when I picked it up.

temporaryusername thank you so much for replying to me once again. You have no idea how grateful I am that kind and friendly people like you are not giving up on me. Everything you have said makes a lot of sense. Having gone through similar agonising episodes of OCD like this one in the past, I'm hoping that soon I will be able to stop replaying the event over and over in my mind like you say as I'm still very much seeing the OCD's version of events rather than what happened in reality.

In the past when I've been strong enough to accept that nothing can be done to change what happened and that it's simply a matter of waiting for it to pass me by, this usually works very well and I can look back and see things how a 'normal' person would see it. Where I've been going wrong is desperately seeking a solution to this specific issue and looking for reassurance that everything's ok. All that matters to me is that my baby is safe and healthy and also that I haven't done anything to harm her in any way - I should be satisfied that both of these are true but my OCD obviously wants to make me feel like scum.

When I say that it feels ruined, I'm not completely sure what I mean to be honest. In my mind it feels like my alcohol-free 36 weeks of pregnancy have now been interrupted but when I take a step back I can see that I've still gone 36 weeks without any alcohol - kissing someone who is drinking a can of beer doesn't constitute as me drinking the can of beer. As I'm typing this a huge knot of anxiety started to form in my chest to try and make me think otherwise.. It's awful because I keep getting feelings of anger and resentment towards my boyfriend for drinking that night even though he did absolutely nothing wrong. I look around the room and think how nice and 'perfect' the baby things look such as her Moses basket and I just feel sick with dread and guilt, wishing that I could turn back time to before that kiss. It feels like everything would feel and look so much better if it wasn't for what happened.

I will try having the hour of postponement as you mentioned. I've been trying to do this throughout the week but I end up giving in and obsessing again. It's very difficult!

Sorry for my very long post! Hope I'm not boring you.

I do have a (very small!) but lovely nursery ready and waiting for her. I've tried not to make it too girly as I wasn't fully convinced when the sonographer said it's a girl but that was probably my OCD doubting things in hindsight lol.

There's lots of pastel colours and we've kinda gone for a zoo animal theme with lots of elephants, giraffes, lions and so on.. I'm really happy with it. The only problem is that I feel incredibly anxious when I go in there as it all feels too good to be true and looks too perfect. But again, I'm trying out the exposure therapy by making myself go in there and spend time sorting through her clothes and things.

It's so overwhelming! All I want to do is be a good mum and be the best that I can be for her. But every time I have an episode like this one, I feel like the worst person in the world (just for kissing my boyfriend when he was drinking a beer). I've gone off topic and turned what should be a positive post into a negative one..

Oh sweetheart.

I would talk to your midwife.

It sounds like you are very anxious and have fixated on something as the focal point. When you stop worrying about alcohol, it will be something else. Maybe it's good it's alcohol - as you recognise the thoughts are absurd? It could be harder to control if it is something more esoteric.

I would talk to the midwife now and try to get this a little more under control in the next few weeks....

I know what you mean about OCD wanting you/us to feel like scum. It does feel malign in that way. I think the ocd does not want to give up on making you worry, so it grabs hold of a concept like 'somehow ruined' which is vague and so hard to define and challenge. But really the only thing damaged in any way is the ocd itself that wants to keep you running scared and obeying its horrible rules. It will summon up doubts out of thin air - I find that even if I avoid certain things that isn't enough for it. It will say 'ok, you avoided touching abc but are you sure you didn't accidently brush against it and not notice?' - even when all my normal senses tell me I was metres away.

at the crisis worker, she is 'phoning it in' literally.

It's hard because the truth is you didn't drink at all. You carried on with what you have been doing - avoiding all alcohol. You had no intention to go near it, and you didn't ingest any. You took precautions even to wipe it away, so you really kept up your precautions. So part of me wants to reassure you of that, but also I know that what the therapists/books would say is the opposite - don't reassure but tell yourself, 'perhaps I did ingest alcohol, I'll just have to live with that'. Obviously it would have been fine to drink anyway, but the exposures seem to involve letting yourself live with the ocd fears, don't they? I suppose that way the ocd is trapped - if we accept the fears without running from them it would lose all its power.

Anyway your nursery sounds lovely - I like the sound of anything involving elephants! My dn had a cute zoo pattern onesie type thing which was one of my favourites. I think it is going to be a really special place where your baby will be happy and loved.

I hope you get a good night's sleep and feel a bit better tomorrow.

I've had an absolutely awful day. I think my boyfriend is just giving up on me because of the way I am and I've just been sat here sobbing feeling so alone. He supposedly stopped smoking last Christmas but a couple of months ago he came home smelling of smoke and told me that he'd been doing it at work but promised he stop. Anyway because of the stress of living with me apparently he's turned to smoking again.

Earlier he went to the shop and when he returned he cracked open a can of beer and went outside for a smoke. I was beside myself in tears and ended up having to call my Dad for help. He came back in the house absolutely stinking the place out and making me feel sick.

I honestly don't know what to do. I can't cope any longer. I'm trying my hardest to get better but it feels like I'm just getting punished for something. I'm so scared :(

Louise

It is really difficult for relatives or partners living with people who are going through a tough time with ocd. He needs to understand though that it isn't you causing the problems, it is the illness causing problems for both of you. Perhaps he could speak to your therapist to get some advice on how to look at things. He could say the stress of illness in the family is making it hard for him not to smoke, but must realise it is illness and not 'you'. Blame of any kind is so bad for ocd. You're not to blame and he needs to know that implying you are will only make things worse.

This is a really stressful time for both of you but it will get better, you both need to just get through this. I really feel for you because doing this with no medication would be so hard. I think gradually the drugs will kick in when you take them and they will help you.

How are you feeling now?

Thank you for replying again temporaryusername

I think my boyfriend is still under the impression that I have the ability to control my reactions to the OCD and he gets so frustrated and angry when he thinks I'm just ignoring his advice. It's not that I'm being ignorant, it's just that the suggestions he makes to help me are comparable to treating a bullet wound with a plaster. I truly appreciate that he tries but when he tells me that I'm reluctant to help myself and that I'm just wanting other people to do all the hard work for me, it really hurts.

I'm so grateful that he's stood by me throughout everything but being 36 weeks pregnant and suffering with severe OCD is more than I can handle at the moment. I wish I could be better for both of us.

I'm feeling a bit better than I was earlier.

I've been practicing exposure therapy this week in the hope that it will help me. Since the 'dreaded kiss' I've slowly been exposing myself to what is currently making me anxious - the (thought of) alcohol.

It started off earlier this week with me just watching my boyfriend drink a can of beer. It was difficult at first as each sip he took just made me feel very anxious and angry towards him and myself for leaning in for a kiss in the first place and triggering my OCD. I then let him kiss me on the cheek afterwards and I got close enough to be able to smell the alcohol on him. Another day I passed him a can from the fridge and also put more in there to chill. He then asked me to pass him an open can that he'd left on the side which was quite hard for me to do.

Finally tonight (in between being stressed out with each other) we were relaxing on the sofa watching TV and I kissed him on the lips. He'd had a drink about 30 minutes or so earlier but had eaten something since so I was confident that there was no alcohol left on his lips. I felt incredibly anxious afterwards and wondered whether I'd done the right thing or gone too far. I obviously couldn't taste or smell any beer as there wasn't any there so it was good to see that there was nothing to be afraid of. I'm not sure whether it was a brave or stupid thing to do! I'm sure my OCD would say the latter.

By the way I've probably made it sound like he drinks a lot but he really doesn't. He's been off work all week so he's been taking advantage of his spare time while he can. I'm looking forward to him going back to work though so I can have my own space, is that bad?

I just want to draw a line under this week and start a fresh one tomorrow hopefully feeling stronger and like something good came out of this awful time.

It was brave!! I think you're doing really well with those things you done. Keep going, because they might sound small things to others but we know they are not small when you have ocd. Those were big triumphs, and if you keep going I'm sure they will lead on to other things seeming less scary. I'm going to try and be inspired by how brave you've been there, I really am.

Sorry about your boyfriend's comments, I know how upsetting that kind of misunderstanding can be when you're really suffering. I still think him reading/talking to your therapist might help.

Here's hoping for a better week and building on your progress.

ps no need to thank me, I think you must be getting sick of me always replying

Correction -you've done!

How are you doing now, Louise? I too have been inspired by your bravery and determination to get the better of this episode by exposing yourself to the focus of your anxiety. It's so, so difficult though so well done you!

Do keep chatting here if you need to. I find OCD to be very lonely place - constantly hiding who you are from others and living in an internal world of fear and despair whilst seemingly just getting on with it on the outside. It's exhausting and relentless, please don't feel you're alone in this.

Temporaryusername, I have read a number of your responses on this topic and you write with such care and understanding - you are a comfort and I hope you are doing well at the moment.