OCD and Mother's Day

I am just going to spill my guts out here and admit things I haven't before because I need to be honest with myself.

I've been noticing ticks and compulsions that are becoming worse lately. I have to wash my hands twice now. I've been an obsessive hand washer for years, but it was an issue of frequency, not quantity. Now it is both. I wash my hands often and twice each time. And if I'm not paying close enough attention, I have to wash them again, just in case I only washed once. I prefer hot water even though cold feels better. I don't feel like my hands actually get clean in cold water. So I have actually burned my hands and they are almost always raw with cuts or sores from over washing/temperature. I will often notice a word or phrase repeating over and over in my head that I am only partially aware of. I am obsessed with symmetry, especially on myself. If  I get hit on one side, I need to feel the same pain on the other side, so I will hit myself to even it out, because most of the time, it freaks people out when I ask them to hit me so I can feel symmetrical. People think I am ridiculous because my house is rarely clean when I am so obsessed with cleanliness. A large part of that is when I can't get something exactly how I want it, I give up.
I saw a post the other day about postpartum depression, which I have heard of, but it also talked about postpartum OCD. People don't really discuss these things with regard to a miscarriage, which is strange to me. A woman who has lost her child has all the hormonal imbalance problems, but also the grief that comes with that loss. It seems like people don't really give credit to the horrific grief that comes with a miscarriage and it is often brushed aside like it's not that big of a deal. As though because my baby was young and small it was less significant to me. As a pregnant woman, you begin making plans for the future. Your thoughts revolve around your baby and the plans you have for that child. Your body starts to change and so do you. Then one day it is all ripped away. You have to cancel your plans. The life that was inside you is just gone. As time goes on you may think about the things that should have been happening, what your child would have been like if he was with you. How is that not a big deal? How could anyone think that your entire life wouldn't change going through this?

I will never have the excitement, joy or innocence that comes with pregnancy, since my first pregnancy did not result in having my baby. If/when I become pregnant again, I will not be able to just jump to excitement and planning. I will constantly be concerned about my child's well being until I can actually hold them in my arms. Lately I have been thinking a lot about something that happened a few years ago...I had a really horrible period that involved a lot of clots, which had never happened before and hasn't happened since. At the time, I feared a miscarriage, and now I feel quite certain that it was. I try not to think about it too much, since at the time I had no suspicions of pregnancy and thus no connection to that child. So why does it bother me now? Because if it's true, then my body has so far been unable to produce living children. And what if all my babies die?

The past week or so has been especially difficult for me. At first, I just felt extremely depressed; I couldn't focus, I didn't want to eat, I was overwhelmingly tired, nothing seemed to be good. I would randomly start crying, but I find it embarrassing for others to see me cry, so I held it in, which just made the feelings worse. I am somebody who, when needing to cry, just needs to let it out, and with the release of tears, I also feel the release of pain. But if I bottle it up, it's like trying to fit too many things in a suitcase. You can make it work...temporarily. Eventually though, the zipper is going to break and everything will fall out and it is a much bigger disaster than if you had just split things up appropriately the first time around. I couldn't place my finger on what was causing it until my mom asked me if it was about Mother's Day. I hadn't consciously made that connection until she suggested it, but I do believe that subconsciously I had realized it was coming up. I was supposed to be about two-thirds through a pregnancy right now. I was supposed to be able to celebrate Mother's Day as a mother. Instead of it being a joyous day, I came to the realization that I am a mother. To a dead child.