I was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder around 2010, it hasn’t impacted my life too tremendously, but throwing twins into the mix has set my condition on fire! I don’t flip the light switch 4 times before bed and tap the window on the door before I leave it, but I do stress out about minor things because my brain won’t accept them until they are perfect. My husband says that I don’t have the good kind of OCD where I clean the house until it’s spotless, instead, I am classified as a person with fears of becoming sick, arranging things and I also have the fear of being harmed by.. people. I’m a checker, washer, arranger.
I really like symmetry, everything has to be equal when it comes to most things. I think back and I laugh because I remember 10 years ago or so, I would always put two water bottles in the freezer - it had to be two. I would drink one when it got cold enough and forget about the other one, so it would turn into a block of ice basically. It was then where I realized my issues - my brother was the one who noticed that and told me that it wasn’t “normal” to need things in twos and to “forget” the one water bottle every time. But - that’s how I needed to do things in order to move onto whatever I was doing next.
For a few years, I felt like I cluttered my mind with life events, so needing to have things perfect was not a priority anymore and was seemingly drowned out by the other things that I had to deal with. Then - I gave birth to twins, totally opposite of what I had planned. This awakened the OCD beast, it brought out all of the thorns and needs of the condition. I am a natural parent, I don’t like chemicals and I like to research everything before it is administered because I realize that most medicines come with side effects and most of the time, the side effects can bring a slew of additional problems and sometimes… you’re better off going a different route. Anyway, when I was finally able to go see the twins in the NICU they had already been given a ton of things…. So many things.. Antibiotics, caffeine, oxygen treatments that could lead to deafness.. Just all kinds of things that I wasn’t able to research like I normally would have and as you could imagine.. That was like an overload for me.
At my hospital, they don’t like to give a lot of information to help the parent through the NICU stay. You could ask for all of the information that you wanted, but they would water it down so that you didn’t freak out. So to this day, I still don’t really know all of the medicines and things that were administered to the boys and I think it’s probably for the better that I don’t open that box.
Now that the twins are six months old, I can tell you that life is much easier than people lead me to believe aside from the OCD. The twins are doing well, they don’t require as much work as I thought they would especially for being preemies. They’re pretty content most of the time and find peace being with one another. One of the hard things that is specific to me, and people like me is the fact that in my mind, I’ve set requirements of what I want before I set out to do something and if that isn’t achieved, my mind refuses to accept it as complete.
Imagine having two babies to dress and you can’t find one of the outfits to dress them in, so.. because your mind just won’t accept that, you’ll search for hours for that other outfit. Sometimes you find that the other outfit somehow got dirty, or it ended up in the dirty clothes or didn’t get washed with the first outfit… that’s where you are forced to accept that you cannot “complete” this task. It can be quite the cycle of emotions sometimes. Other things that tend to tap into my emotions is when one baby is getting more attention than the other. Example; Ryan is playing with one baby while the other one sleeps, I feel bad for the sleeping baby because I don’t want him to miss out on that time with Ryan, this weighs on me heavily because I know that by the time the other one wakes up, Ryan will be back to work.
Then there are toys and items that are necessary for caring for baby. People say that you don’t need two of everything, but for me- I prefer to have two of the very same exact thing for each boy. This is another place where my need for symmetry comes in, for some reason - when I go to the store to purchase something, there are never two of the same color, same product. Why this happens I don’t know because it never happened to me before I had twins, it only happens to me now.. Like the universe is testing me or something haha.
This probably sounds like I’m trapped in some kind of recurring nightmare, but at the end of the day - I do laugh about the things that I’ve done during the day. I always take time to reflect on what I spent my time doing and how I can make the next day better.
But I call on you guys to help me - If you have OCD how do you deal with it? How do you overcome this mental state that seemingly blocks you from doing other things until your tasks are complete? I tried medication when I was first diagnosed, but I didn’t like the side effects or the idea of having to take a pill every day for the rest of my life. So I manage it on my own, but I want to try and manage it better now that I have some kind of a flow down with the 7 little ones (because you know, being a Mom comes first - but now that I have that under control, I'd like to take some time for me.) Leave your suggestions in the comments! (so that others who read this can benefit as well!)
Follow me on IG! @fivekidsplustwins