Motherhood

Please don’t be discouraged! Being a parent is the biggest blessing and my OCD has been 100% manageable with my three children. OCD will not make you a bad parent.

I’m very interested in reading your post on Facebook. My son is 17 and I think OCD affected so much. It would ease my mind a tad.

To preface this, I am an 18 year old male, so I am honestly a bit double unqualified to discuss this, but what I am going to say is fits with the eitirety of OCD and I have gone through a lot of treatment. First of all I believe it is important to look at deep down what you would want if you didn't have OCD. If you really don't want kids anyways, then don't have them. Plenty of people have fulfilling lives without kids. However if deep down you want kids and your ocd is preventing that, or it is trying to make you doubt that you want them when you do, then that is a different story, and if that is the case, then this next paragraph applies. Plenty of people with OCD are wonderful mothers. OCD is very treatable, and with the right treatment, it would not interfere with your ability to be a good mother. Honestly, the level of insignt into mental health that OCD therapy and recovery gives you would make you more qualified than most to help support a young mind. All of this being said, I am personally leaning towards adopting a non-infant child. My reasons for that are I don't want to put my future wife through the pain of childbirth, and it would be cool to help a kid in an orphanage, but an option like this may make you feel better about parenting with OCD, because an older kid would not be in their most vulnerable years, and nothing would compare to the conditions of some orphanages.

Hi 👋 I love my son more then anything. Wouldn’t trade him for the world. I have had the hardest experience of my life with postpartum depression and ocd. It is very hard, I struggle a lot. But I also love that little human more then life itself. Pregnancy was oddly not difficult. Birth was traumatic for me. I got off all SSRIS during pregnancy. After a traumatic birth I’ve had an extremely hard time. My baby is 10 months and I’m struggling really badly.

I'm a father of two young kids and I have health ocd. As long as you have a loving and supportive partner, it's absolutely doable. Just recognize when the ocd requires therapy or medication and get it.