How having a baby can give you OCD
Astonishingly, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is now as common among new mums as post-natal depression
ELEVEN months after Rebecca Lopez gave birth to her third son, Noah, her husband James announced he was leaving her. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her any more — rather, he was finding it impossible to live with her increasingly erratic behaviour.
Rebecca had developed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder — a medical complaint in which sufferers experience extreme anxiety and irrational urges to counter their fears with rituals or repetitive thoughts.
For Rebecca, that meant scrubbing her bathroom grouting with a toothbrush at 2am, endlessly bleaching the skirting boards and repainting any doors she imagined had the slightest stain.
It involved washing Noah after every feed, colour- coding his Babygros and being terrified of anyone — including James — holding him.
It is a complex disorder, but in Rebecca’s case its cause was simple: giving birth. New research has revealed that OCD affects an astonishing 11 per cent of new mothers, as many as those affected by the far more widely recognised postnatal depression.
Fortunately, Rebecca and James resolved the conflict her OCD caused, but it has nonetheless cast a huge shadow over her experience of motherhood.
She has suffered from crippling OCD following the births of all four of her children: Connor, seven, Theo, four, Noah, two, and Matilda, who is just three weeks old.
‘There is no doubt that motherhood gave me OCD,’ says Rebecca.
‘I developed it only after I became a mother and it has flared up every time I’ve had a baby.
‘It’s a demon on my shoulder that has nearly ruined my marriage.’
Post-partum OCD is caused by a new mother’s need for control and perfection. In an age where celebrities seem to adjust to motherhood effortlessly, there’s more pressure than ever on the rest of us to do the same.
Then there is the upheaval that becoming a mother entails.
‘Times of transition are known to trigger OCD,’ says Dr Fiona Challacombe, a clinical psychologist.
‘Having a baby makes women vulnerable because it is so stressful. This is their way of dealing with responsibility and the concept of danger.’
Before she had children, Rebecca, 28, was assistant manager of a hotel — she was an ambitious career woman for whom domesticity was a low priority.
But that changed immediately after she had her eldest son, Connor, in August 2005. She was just 21 and felt overwhelmed.
‘He wasn’t planned, and I felt pressured to prove I wasn’t too young,’ she says. ‘My job had provided me with a structured environment and I tried to recreate that with a perfect home and child who thrived.’
Terrified Connor would fall ill, she bathed him twice a day and washed her own hands every 20 minutes.
‘If anyone else held him, I worried he was being contaminated,’ she says. ‘I was too frightened to leave the house in case he was exposed to germs.’
J17 The number of years from the time OCD begins for people to obtain appropriate treatment
AMES, 28, an aeronautical engineer whom she met ten years ago and married in December 2008, was accepting at first. ‘I would hover over him and insist on taking back Connor after a couple of minutes. James put it down to overprotectiveness on my part,’ she says.
Neither did Rebecca think there was cause for concern: ‘I wasn’t depressed. In my mind, I was being entirely sensible.’
Rebecca suffered from OCD for three years until her second son, Theo, was born in March 2009 — when her condition worsened.
‘An untidy bookshelf was the end of the world. We couldn’t leave the house until everything was spotless,’ she says.
Worse still, Connor, then three, began to mimic his mother’s behaviour.
‘He grew quite agitated if his toys weren’t lined up properly,’ she says. ‘I was horrified.’
Weeks after Theo’s birth, Rebecca confided in her health visitor, who said she could have OCD.
‘I researched the condition online and realised she was right,’ she says. ‘But I didn’t think it was a medical problem that my GP would take seriously.
‘I thought he would tell me I was neurotic and an incompetent mother.’ Sadly, she may have been right. ‘Professionals don’t know much about OCD,’ says Dr Challacombe. ‘ Misdiagnosis is a big problem.
‘It’s taken many years to get post-natal depression recognised. Now everything falls under that umbrella and women aren’t getting the right treatment.
‘One study has shown that it is similar to having a family member suffering from schizophrenia.’
Rebecca’s marriage began to suffer after Theo’s birth, but the OCD subsided when he turned one.
Thinking the worst was behind her, she became pregnant again. But after Noah’s birth in January 2011 the OCD returned with a vengeance.
Rebecca started making lists of the contents of her kitchen cupboards and rearranging Theo’s toy farmyard animals after he had gone to bed.
She got up in the dead of night to clean her windows and would take the children out for meals so she didn’t dirty the kitchen by cooking.
IN DECEMBER 2011, when Noah was 11 months old, James decided he’d had enough. One evening after Rebecca had frenetically re-cleaned their immaculate home, he left to stay with a friend.
‘I still loved Rebecca and felt terrible, but I didn’t feel I had a choice,’ says James. ‘I hoped that leaving would shock her into changing her behaviour.’
It was the wake-up call that Rebecca needed. After a week apart, the couple came to a compromise — Rebecca agreed not to clean or tidy in front of James or the children. ‘It meant that I had to spend even longer cleaning after everyone had gone to bed, but James found it easier,’ she says. Within a year of Noah’s birth, Rebecca’s OCD had tapered off. But she and James knew a fourth child could jeopardise their marriage again.
‘ Deciding to have Matilda was tough, but we agreed that the joy of parenthood outweighed t he burden of OCD, ’ says Rebecca. Nonetheless, she says some symptoms have been worse this time round. ‘ Having a daughter makes me feel even more anxious. Matilda seems fragile and I’m terrified I am going to drop or hurt her. I carry her in a sling to be extra careful.’
Dr Challacombe says a fear of hurting their baby is common among post-natal OCD sufferers.
‘Mothers often have intrusive thoughts of harming their children,’ she says.
‘I’ve known cases where child protection proceedings have gone into place, which is inappropriate because sufferers — who are terrified of the thoughts — don’t act on them.’
Though OCD, which affects 2 per cent of the population, is not a genetic disorder, those who are predisposed to anxiety are more likely to suffer.
It can occur in conjunction with postnatal depression, as was the case with Sarah Straker, 35.
Her daughter Alexis was induced after her heart rate dropped and had to be resuscitated when she was born in May 2008. ‘I was immediately obsessed with her dying,’ says Sarah. ‘I was sure Alexis would stop breathing if I didn’t watch her constantly.
‘The first week I didn’t sleep for four days. After that, I would go to bed only if my husband Scott watched her while she slept.’
Scott, 36, an engineer, told his wife she was acting irrationally. But when his paternity leave ended after two weeks, Sarah’s OCD began in earnest.
She started meticulously bleaching and sterilising all of Alexis’s baby equipment. ‘I’d never been obsessively clean before, but now my hands bled from being in
contact with so many chemicals,’ she says. ‘I was convinced that if there was a speck of dust in the house, Alexis was going to die.
‘If Scott made a cup of tea, I’d shout at him for contaminating the kitchen.
‘ Fortunately, he remained calm and, though he didn’t understand, he was supportive,’ she says.
Sarah put Alexis on a rigid routine. ‘I wrote down in a notepad every minute she slept and fed,’ she says. ‘I felt like a failure if she went to sleep a minute late.’
When Alexis was four months old, Sarah fell pregnant again, which helped mask her OCD.
It was only in March 2010, when baby Jake was one, that Sarah realised she was ill.
She returned from maternity leave to work as an office administrator for House of Light, a post-natal depression charity based in England.
Her appointment to the role was coincidental, but she says: ‘Speaking to the counsellors there made me realise I was out of control.’ By June 2010 she was suicidal. ‘I was convinced the children would be better off without me,’ she says.
Jane Riggall, a counsellor at House of Light, urged Sarah to seek help. She says GPs and health workers are encountering increasing numbers of women affected by OCD. ‘They should speak to their health visitor, GP or mothers at their local children’s centre. The worst they can do is keep it to themselves,’ she says.
That month, Sarah’s GP finally diagnosed her with depression and OCD.
She was given anti-depressants and counselling once a week.
For Sarah, seeking help was a turning point. ‘Suddenly everything fell into place,’ she says. ‘I clean only every other day now, and we are far happier as a family.’
LIKE post-natal depression, OCD can last from a few weeks to several years, and, unfortunately, treatment isn’t always successful. Jackie Herrington, 28, developed the condition after the birth of her daughter, Olivia, in October 2006.
Even though Olivia is now six, Jackie still cleans the family’s three-bedroom semidetached home for nine hours a day.
‘It is an addiction that has come at the cost of the rest of my life,’ says Jackie, a stay-at-home mother who also has a son, Lucas, eight.
Within six weeks of Olivia’s birth, Jackie had become obsessed with cleaning. Be- tween the hours of 8am and 5pm, she would change all the bedding, do three loads of washing every day and keep folders detailing the contents of every drawer.
She says that her husband, Gareth, 28, a security officer, didn’t realise the extent of her problem because he was out at work all day.
For three years she refused to see her GP. ‘I didn’t want to be judged,’ says Jackie. ‘Admitting that I had a problem made me feel like a failure.’
It wasn’t until the autumn of 2009 that Jackie, exhausted, finally sought help.
She visited her GP and was diagnosed with OCD.
She was given a ten-week course of counselling and says it helped a little, but she was soon back to her old habits.
She says of her OCD: ‘It causes arguments with Gareth. At the weekends he wants us to go out as a family, but I need to stay in and clean.
‘The children accept that mummy is forever cleaning, but I feel so guilty that I don’t spend quality time with them.
‘I know it’s irrational and I don’t need to do it every day. I’d love to be able to stop.’
Sadly, it seems that there are untold numbers of other new mothers who feel exactly the same way.