Have you ever wondered why something took you by surprise that you should have known all along? That's how I felt when I came to the realization that I had experienced <strong>postpartum OCD</strong> after my babies were born.

We have all heard the tragic and scary stories of women with thoughts of harming their baby.  I am grateful to say that I never had a single thought of harming my babies and I feel deep sympathy for women who have to survive postpartum psychosis.  But it makes me wonder if what happened to me is even more common that we realize.

I had intruding thoughts, well not even thoughts really, more like visions.  Ok I know that sounds weird, but there is no other way to explain it.  And if you think it <em>sounds</em> weird, you are right, it was!   If you've had these visions unexpectedly pop into your head then you know what I'm talking about.  I had never heard of such intrusive visions and I told no one that I had them.  Fortunately for me I didn't have them often.  And for me they mostly centred around one specific incident - my baby's head hitting the counter or the wall.

I would be walking past the corner of the kitchen counter with my baby in my arms and as I rounded the corner a vision of my baby's heading striking the counter would pop into my head.  The bizarre truth is that my baby's head wouldn't even be close to the counter when the vision would pop into my head.  The visions were so disturbing to me that whenever I walked past a counter with my babe I would worry about his head hitting the counter.  For some reason this also happened with the corner of the wall.

I recall wondering where the hell did that just come from?!  It was jarring - what a random and bizarre thing to pop into my head!   Not once have any of my three babies been struck in the head by a wall or a counter, so where did such a vision come from?  Searching my memory for an answer the only thing I could think of was a time my friend's husband was walking past my counter with his baby in his arms and he<em> did</em> accidentally bump into the counter with his baby's head.  The baby woke up and I was horrified, as was the father.   Did that scene linger in my memory for years just waiting to pounce when my own baby was born?  The interesting thing is I wasn't conjuring up some memory, in fact I didn't recall that scene with my friend's baby until much later when I began to question where those visions could have originated.  I also didn't consciously think of my baby getting hurt, it was rather just a quick picture of it happening entering my conscious thought.

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

&nbsp;