u/Low-Salad-4297

I thought it might be encouraging for folks to read about how OCD truly can fall away from being the central point of your life after having a wild realization this morning.

10 years ago I dropped into an intense existential OCD episode that lasted several years. I ERP’d myself after working with a therapist who really taught me how to stay in my body despite fear and panic. It took probably almost 4 years for me to really crawl myself out from that hole with incremental improvement along the way.

It started as really intense death anxiety and then became existential OCD after getting extremely triggered in a bar by some guy talking about string theory. (I didn’t even know what that meant but my brain made up a story and panicked about it).

So, needless to say, string theory from then on forward was out for me. I didn’t wanna know anything about it or anything related to a whole host of other things that in some roundabout way could’ve had something to do with issues of life and death.

Fast forward through a ton of exposure, lots of somatic work, really learning how to be in my body and slow myself down in moments of panic, learning to not take my panic and fear at face value, and aging (THANK GOODNESS FOR THIS ONE FR), I found myself this morning, 10 years later, actively choosing without even thinking about it to listen to a podcast about string theory as I eat breakfast. Not as an exposure, just because it looked interesting.

Learning how to be afraid without thinking something was wrong deeply transformed my life. And I never thought I’d end up here, wanting to listen to the very thing that started this whole journey in the first place.

Hi everyone, I’m 33F and getting ready to do IUI (our third total, but first in almost 2 years) in three weeks. I was diagnosed yesterday with Sjogren’s, which I sort of already knew I had since January of this year. I’m only positive for SSA and my titer is 1:80 (sorry if this grammar is wrong, I still don’t really understand a lot of this). The rheumatologist suggest I start HCQ now and I’ve been on LDN since January (love it, btw). I see a lot of post on here about Sjogren’s and pregnancy, but not a lot of differentiation between the extent of his disease, as far as the amount of antibodies are concerned. Very curious to hear your experiences. I already have referrals in to MFM and I’m super lucky to have a really solid healthcare team.

Also, this is totally a separate question— how long do you think you had Sjogren’s before you were diagnosed? I’ve been having these exact symptoms since probably middle school. Curious others experiences!

Context: we are (lesbian couple) very interested in a potential sperm donor who is a carrier for 3 very rare genetic conditions. Chances of someone being a carrier are 1 in 250 for one of them and less than 1 in 500 for the other two. I previously had a 106 gene panel done and everything was negative but unfortunately it didn’t include these three results.

Question 1: our insurance said they won’t cover it (based on the CPT code I gave them) even though we do have genetic testing coverage and this was covered before (maybe our plan was slightly different then). So I’m wondering if there’s ways folks have worked with providers and the billing to get the insurance to cover it after all? Out of pocket is $2500 and we just can’t afford that.

And

Question 2: would you even try to go through with getting it done with the odds are less than .1% chance your children could been born with these disorders?

It feels like a situation where having more information has actually created more of a predicament and decision points and I’m not sure if it’s insane to just go forward with the IUIs or not. I’m leaning towards not even wanting to bother with the genetic testing because the odds are so low, but at the same time, it feels really strange to know that I could know something that would have a huge impact on my children and my life, and then just not do it.

We have had a long and complicated journey to queer parenthood and find ourselves back in a donor search process, hoping for a known donor (wife’s brother) but quite unsure if that’s gonna pan out. I do have quite a bit of trust that even if it doesn’t work out, it will allow us to get one lily pad closer to our ultimate donor, but I would love to hear from those of you who have your babies what you would have wanted to hear or what you would tell your past self who was worrying about the donor if you could go back.

For context, I am in my 30s and had two unsuccessful pregnancy attempts with IUI 18 months ago and have been on a pretty intense grief journey since (unrelated, but definitely complicated by not having gotten pregnant). In the time since I tried getting pregnant about 15 people in my sphere have gotten pregnant.

I’m not sure that that context is super important but recently I had two dreams where in one my sister-in-law who is actually pregnant right now had the baby, but it was actually a cat, and the most beautiful cat I’ve ever seen. And everyone related to the cat as if it was the actual human baby.

And in the second one I was pregnant and kept getting worried that I wasn’t feeling enough movement from the baby in the womb and when I went to the hospital to get an ultrasound, the picture that displayed was of two cats in the womb (kinda a void-like image) lying next to each other. They didn’t look alive, but the longer that we looked, they started to curl up and move, and then they started spinning in a circle and sped up faster and faster, and eventually turned into a human baby.

I have often had dreams where babies turn into cats, particularly my cat, and vice versa. Almost like the two are interchangeable, but what was kind of weird about these ones is that it wasn’t my cat this time, they were just really incredibly beautiful cats.

My interpretation has always been that my first experience of motherly love has been towards my cat and that’s why she often shows up as the placeholder but with these recent ones I’m wondering if the cats are sort of serving as an initial buffer to allow me to feel the positive emotions associated with having a baby instead of all of the fear and grief that comes with the idea now.

Thoughts?

For context, I am in my 30s and had two unsuccessful pregnancy attempts with IUI 18 months ago and have been on a pretty intense grief journey since (unrelated, but definitely complicated by not having gotten pregnant). In the time since I tried getting pregnant about 15 people in my sphere have gotten pregnant.

I’m not sure that that context is super important but recently I had two dreams where in one my sister-in-law who is actually pregnant right now had the baby, but it was actually a cat, and the most beautiful cat I’ve ever seen. And everyone related to the cat as if it was the actual human baby.

And in the second one I was pregnant and kept getting worried that I wasn’t feeling enough movement from the baby in the womb and when I went to the hospital to get an ultrasound, the picture that displayed was of two cats in the womb (kinda a void-like image) lying next to each other. They didn’t look alive, but the longer that we looked, they started to curl up and move, and then they started spinning in a circle and sped up faster and faster, and eventually turned into a human baby.

I have often had dreams where babies turn into cats, particularly my cat, and vice versa. Almost like the two are interchangeable, but what was kind of weird about these ones is that it wasn’t my cat this time, they were just really incredibly beautiful cats.

My interpretation has always been that my first experience of motherly love has been towards my cat and that’s why she often shows up as the placeholder but with these recent ones I’m wondering if the cats are sort of serving as an initial buffer to allow me to feel the positive emotions associated with having a baby instead of all of the fear and grief that comes with the idea now.

Thoughts?