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Most pregnant and postpartum parents have never heard of intrusive thoughts or images.

They arise completely unbidden and can be graphic and disturbing.

Though intrusive thoughts and images are common, they’re also highly treatable. You’re not alone.

Once upon a time, my grandmother told me a bizarre story: After she delivered my father in the early 1930s, she began having graphic and disturbing, unbidden thoughts and images (trigger warning; a bit gruesome here). Over and over again, she imagined herself cutting off her mother’s head.

These thoughts were so tortured that my grandfather had to find a psychiatrist who would make a home visit. Needing psychiatric care was so shameful at the time, very hush-hush—you had to be really “crazy” to need a psychiatrist.

Decades later, when Granny recounted this story, I had the feeling she was repeating it for the first time. I was a newly-minted nurse-midwife, and the whole tale sounded excruciating. It was not like anything I’d ever heard of or been taught, even as an obstetric provider. Granny intimated it happened again—maybe even more........

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