Hello everyone, I am looking for some support as I am really struggling at the moment.
I have had OCD for the last few years, but it has been manageable and I have been able to live a happy and normal life. When I was pregnant with my first child I made an effort with exposure tasks and resisting all compulsions (with the help of some books), and I pretty much 'cured' myself of OCD for a while.
When my son was born, the responsibility and worry that something could go wrong led to a gradual return of my symptoms, but it was nothing major.
I am now 7 weeks pregnant with my second child and my OCD has spiralled completely out of control. 8 weeks ago I felt great. But soon after I found out I was pregnant, I became obsessed with the fact that I had caught HIV because I cleaned up a drop of blood several months ago. Even though I knew that it was pretty much impossible to get HIV this way, I became convinced that I had it and was going to infect my children. I went to the doctor's and got a test, which came back negative and I was overwhelmed with relief. I thought I would then be free to enjoy the rest of my pregnancy.
But not long after, I became obsessed with getting a virus from animal faeces and things being contaminated, I have thrown loads of things in the bin and spend all my time cleaning and disinfecting. At the moment, I am completely terrified of toxoplasmosis and causing damage to my unborn child. We used to have a cat (who did have worms) and even though we gave her away about a year and a half ago and now live in a different flat, I am terrified that there are worm eggs on some of my belongings. Do you think it is possible that there are worm eggs on my things? For example, my vacuum cleaner is really worrying me because it was used to hoover up a bit of cat litter and although I have cleaned the nozzle etc, there are some bits that can't really be cleaned and I am scared that there are worm eggs on them. Do you think it is possible? As I write this I realise it's all a bit far-fetched but I am so anxious that I just want to clean and disinfect everything that I think is contaminated.
I have really reached a crisis point as I'm not sleeping properly or functioning well so I am going to make an effort to resist EVERY compulsion from now on as I know that's the only way to beat this. Like I beat it before. But just now I want to throw all my belongings out because everything is contaminated!
If there were worm eggs on the vacuum cleaner could they still be active and infect me? I desperately want to throw the vacuum cleaner out but my partner would kill me if I threw something else out because I think it's contaminated :-(
Any advice appreciated x