My COVID Crazy Era

OCD, COVID, and being addicted to Twitter turned out to be a bad combination, who knew?

I was initially a bit afraid to write/publish this because I had a feeling that about 90% of people who read it would double down on how crazy I was/am (I know! That’s the whole point!) and then the other 10% would accuse me of eugenics for becoming less crazy eventually, or for thinking any of this was crazy in the first place.

Also, at the risk of disclaiming too much (so CHH-coded, honestly) I acknowledge that the pandemic’s effect on my mental health (which was quite bad if not downright embarrassing, as you’re about to see) was not the worst thing to come out of the pandemic. I do not consider myself the number one tragic victim of COVID (after all, I’m alive.) If you’re here to tell me to check my being-alive privilege, you should probably just read something else because you’re not going to find that argument here.

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When I first found out I was pregnant, it was November 2019. I peed on the pregnancy test but left it in a separate room, and had Nick watch it while it developed. I couldn’t bring myself to look at it. I had just finished my first IVF transfer five days earlier. Nick took the test into the living room as I perched on the sofa, sweating through the blue filigree print sweatshirt that I superstitiously wore because I was wearing it the first time we kissed. There were two lines.

Nick took me out to a hot chocolate place to celebrate, and I dutifully ordered the white hot chocolate because of the caffeine in dark chocolate. I promised myself I would do anything and everything to avoid miscarrying, even if I was only limiting my risk by a fraction of a percent. There was no risk worth taking when it came to this miracle baby.

During this treacherous time of weekly ultrasounds at the IVF clinic, praying we would continue to see a heartbeat, I researched all the things that could cause miscarriage or birth defects. There were the obvious rules about avoiding sushi and alcohol (which I knew many people ignored) and then the stranger things, like the fact that listeria, which can cause miscarriage, can live on any food that isn’t heated up, even though only a few cold foods are cited by the CDC. So I stopped eating all cold food unless it could be washed. Then there was CMV, a usually harmless virus often passed by toddlers that could be dangerous to my baby if I were to contract it. I found myself avoiding children as they passed me on the street, frantically running out of a Carter’s when a little boy made fart noises with his mouth in my direction.

Because of my history with OCD and associated germophobia (for years in high school I lived in paralyzing fear of contracting herpes from public surfaces) I knew this was probably a bit deranged. But it also seemed so temporary. Surely, I imagined, I’d chill out once I was past the danger zone.

Although I had the insight to recognize my OCD was slowly taking over, I wasn’t in therapy or on medication. Previously, I had good experiences with therapy, but I hadn’t found anyone good on my new insurance plan and I figured I’d deal with that later. This would turn out to be a pretty big mistake.