My husband and I are looking to start a family soon but I am a little scared of being pregnant. I get health anxiety (from a history of chronic Lyme disease that I am still treating), and just worry OCD and intrusive thoughts will spike with hormones and no sleep. Anyone able to get through their pregnancy and early baby months ok on here? Thank you!

Hi everyone, this is giving me so much anxiety even saying this out loud because my OcD is telling me that somehow someone will know who I am on here and report me this goes with what I’m about to say about my irrational stuff. Since my baby was born I’ve had a lot of majorrr anxiety about him getting sick. From there my postpartum ocd spiked. I had this irrational fear someone would falsely report me as a bad mom and I’d get my baby taken from me. I’ve NEVER had anyone tell me I’m a bad mom, as a matter of fact, almost every day I get praised for how good of a mom I am. My child is so loved and taken care of. So why did I have that fear? it CONSUMED ME. Obsessively cleaning my house in case a social worker came. Stopped posting myself having occasional girls nights out for dinner because I thought one of my followers would think I’m a bad mom for getting a break. Not being able to talk about ANYTHING or send pictures of my baby to family and friends to update them since we live out of state because somehow I thought I would say something wrong or do something that would make someone think I’m a bad mom. I was convinced my baby was gonna be taken for zero reason. I still sometimes catch myself over analyzing myself and what I say because I don’t want to say the wrong thing and someone think I’m not a fit mom. I would even replay every scenario I remember and then second guess myself if that really happened or if I said something or not and freak out and spiral from there. with driving, if I go over a speed bump I have to double check it wasn’t magically a person. Then I panic even though I know for a fact it was a speed bump. I hate living like this. I feel crazy. I don’t open up because I feel like I’m the only person in the world. The one time I opened up about driving it was used against me. I feel like I’m drowning and I’m failing as a mom. I don’t even open up to a therapist about my irrational fear about baby being taken bc I don’t want them to think I’m a bad mom. It just doesn’t stop.

I just wanted to ask any mothers their experience with having children & the positive experiences they’ve had despite their diagnosis (even the small moments of joy)? I have always yearned to have children & grow a family however recently OCD has made me question this desire (though when I’m back to thinking rationally my heart knows I’m meant for motherhood). though I’m not oblivious to how difficult it must be, I thought it would be nice to see the good amongst the bad, not just for me but for anyone else feeling a similar way 🫶🏼

I'm roughly 2 months pregnant and I'm struggling so bad with OCD (specifically surrounding psychosis/postpartum psychosis, postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, etc). I'm so discouraged because I was sub-clinical for over a year and this pregnancy and the hormones are undoing all of my progress. And it actually seems so much harder than BEFORE when I was at a low point. It feels like the hormones are ruining my brain and making me lose my mind. I keep looking over my shoulder, getting intrusive images of scary hallucinations that I might start to get, i fear hurting myself or my baby, etc. Psychosis in pregnancy is 1 in 1000. That's not that rare. I feel like I just upped my chances of my biggest fear happening and I have so much regret and fear around that. I'm also a Christian and I'm relying on God so much more now than ever, but I'm afraid of that too because people in psychosis often have religious delusions and I can't tell if I'm slipping into that or if God is really just using this trial to pull me closer to him. I just feel so defeated. I feel like ERP just isn't going to work for me because the hormones are a whole different animal that "normal" people with OCD don't have. Like they're making me immune to ERP or that ERP isn't for people like me and I'm hopeless.