This is a question I ask myself daily as I prepare to welcome the new baby into my family. Caia got to have me as a mom with postpartum OCD in the beginning. Will this baby have that too? It scares me daily to think about the potential. I already feel so different now with this pregnancy than I did with my first one. My therapist has been really helping me realize that I am not the same person I was a couple of years ago, and that it is unlikely for me to experience postpartum OCD the same way I did.

It makes me very happy to know that I most likely won’t have to deal with postpartum OCD the same way as before, but on the flip side, I cannot describe the guilt I feel for that feeling as well. My new baby will get to experience me as a happy mom who is confident in herself and is excited for what is to come. Caia did not get that same experience, and I feel terrible for that. I know that what happened to me was not my fault, but I don’t ever want Caia to remember what I went through. She is too little to remember what happened, but I ALWAYS will. That is the feeling I can’t shake.

I know that I am being really hard on myself. I was always a good mom to Caia, but my fears and intrusive thoughts controlled my life. I did not get to enjoy her first year and I wish I could have. Her first year was spent with my crying, shuttling us back and forth between my house and my parents’, and me trying to avoid her. I feel so bad for all of that, but I know I did what I did to survive at the time. Sometimes I think about what it would be like to go back to that first year as I am now and see how I would be different. This is definitely not healthy because I can’t change the past.

Thinking back to my pregnancy with Caia, I know that I was showing signs of OCD behavior. I remember asking my dad very early in my pregnancy if he felt like having a baby ruined his life. He was telling me how much fun he had as a new dad, and how he just immersed me into his life. All I could think about was how I probably ruined mine by having a baby. It was not a good feeling. I was not as excited as everyone around me was, and I felt extreme guilt for that. Feeling that way made me think I could not tell anyone about it. I had to hide my feelings because I thought it was bad, and people would judge me.

I am trying really hard not to be hard on myself with what happened with Caia. I did the best I could under the circumstances, and we have the best time now. I can only move forward. I know that I will be a different mom with this new baby. I already feel excited and happy to meet her. In the future, I hope to one day be able to share with Caia what happened to me to show her how I overcame it and love her so much. I deserve to be a different mom this time around, and Caia gets to experience that too. Letting the guilt go is hard, but I don’t deserve to punish myself for something out of my control. You don’t deserve that either.