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Kimberley Nixon’s memoir, She Seems Fine to Me, is retired connected 7 May, and she’s rather terrified. This isn’t an writer worried by income figures aliases reviews. Nixon’s book is an up-close-and-personal relationship of perinatal OCD. It tells of nan dark, disturbing thoughts that taunted and haunted her aft nan commencement of her son: her racing mind, relentless rumination, nan Technicolor scary stories that played wrong her head, ever centred connected harms to her baby. The book holds thing back.
“Is it really brave aliases is it really stupid?” says Nixon. “In my head, I’ve written a book astir what a horrible personification I was and put it retired successful nan world – and I person to support reminding myself that’s not it. I’ve written a book astir a intelligence wellness information and trying to conflict it.”
Its publication coincides pinch maternal intelligence wellness consciousness week. “The quality of this – nan content, nan item – is truthful taboo. You don’t want to stock it. You support it hidden, and that made maine worse and stopped maine getting amended for a agelong time. I’m genuinely worried that group will misunderstand aliases publication snippets and look astatine maine otherwise and deliberation I must beryllium a horrible personification to person those horrible thoughts – past each my insecurities astir my OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) will travel true.” On nan different hand, this book mightiness thief group her free. “If I tin do this,” she says, “if I tin opportunity it retired large and fto it lavation complete me, it’ll beryllium nan biggest measurement successful my betterment yet. Fingers crossed!”
Most group will cognize Nixon arsenic nan Welsh character who played “Slaggy Lindsay” successful Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, and nan bad boy Josie successful Fresh Meat. Now 40, Nixon says she seems to person “moved casting brackets” – successful nan caller crime play Under Salt Marsh, she played Shell, nan bereaved mother whose boy was recovered dormant successful a ditch.
There will beryllium immoderate people, though, caller mothers especially, who cognize Nixon not for immoderate of this, but much for her Instagram and Substack wherever she shares her analyzable acquisition of motherhood. Talking astir her son, now 5 and a half, she lights up. “He’s nan happiest, astir well-adjusted kid,” she says, “full into superheroes, funny astir everything – he asks nan champion questions.” But his presence dropped her into a acheronian abstraction wherever she mislaid herself, feared for his safety, wanted to dice and planned her suicide.
We meet successful a cafe successful Pontypridd, adjacent to wherever Nixon grew up and wherever she now lives pinch her boy and husband. (He attended nan aforesaid schoolhouse and they person been together for 21 years.) Neither are named successful her book. They didn’t take to beryllium successful nan nationalist eye, she says. “The slightest I tin do is fto them support their names.”
She Seems Fine to Me sounds for illustration Nixon speaks – it’s sparky, crackling pinch rage, but also, somehow, laugh-out-loud funny. She describes her acquisition of infertility, IVF, past becoming pregnant, giving commencement and bringing location her babe successful a pandemic pinch small support available. Maybe its powerfulness is that, by nan end, you mobility who could get done each that unscathed. Instead of seeming “abnormal”, Nixon’s mediocre intelligence wellness makes a batch of sense.
She and her hubby had been trying for a babe for 4 years earlier nan IVF that brought them their son. Her book digs into nan detail, each spot of bully news, past bad news, nan hormonal highs and lows, nan tests, ovum postulation and transfer, past changeless monitoring. One time, recently pregnant, Nixon is successful London for a voiceover, waiting to participate nan studio, erstwhile her session calls to pass her that her latest humor tests show that she is astir to miscarry. (She didn’t.) For each consequent scan, braced for bad news, Nixon is unsocial because of lockdown rules. As her owed day approaches, she becomes progressively anxious – and writes to her MP – astir nan rules surrounding labour, which meant her hubby couldn’t subordinate her until she was 5cm dilated, and would person to time off 1 hr aft nan birth. (This was while nan remainder of nan UK was being urged to “eat retired to thief out”.) “If I’d fixed commencement successful this cafe, I could person had 5 friends pinch me,” she says, “whereas successful infirmary I’d person to beryllium connected my own.
“It’s really absorbing – I didn’t remotely put 2 and 2 together and deliberation that possibly years of infertility and past IVF and nan precariousness of being pregnant successful a pandemic made maine ace susceptible and anxious and alert of risk,” Nixon continues. “Then suddenly, they put this babe successful my arms, I’d mislaid 2 pints of blood, my hormones plummeted – and thing happened. As soon arsenic they lifted him up and showed me, it was for illustration personification flipped a move successful my brain. The lights went out. It was bizarre because I’d publication truthful overmuch astir instantly falling successful emotion pinch your baby. What were they talking about? I felt nan crushing weight of responsibility.”
Her infirmary enactment was, she says, a “waking nightmare”. Shortly aft his birth, her boy was transferred to nan typical attraction babe portion pinch imaginable sepsis. Nixon couldn’t spell pinch him – she was having a humor transfusion – truthful her hubby had to determine whether to stay pinch her, aliases spell pinch their son. Whichever he chose would beryllium nan only 1 he’d beryllium capable to spot from past on. (Covid rules prohibited moving betwixt nan 2 spaces.) Though Nixon pushed him to nan door, that first agelong unsocial connected nan ward was possibly nan commencement of her spiralling, of believing nan worst and seeing it successful her mind’s eye. She became convinced her boy had died and nary 1 was telling her. In truth, he was fine, and was returned to Nixon hours later.
For nan adjacent fewer days until her discharge, she remained sleepless and hypervigilant successful a hot, eerie, empty, brightly lit ward sealed disconnected from nan world. On returning home, different lockdown was announced and nan clocks went forward. “Maybe it wasn’t each successful my head,” she writes successful her book, “that I was plummeting into some a acheronian and an isolation, nan likes of which I’d ne'er known.”
Almost immediately, Nixon recovered herself second- and third-guessing each small determination involving her son. Some of her exhausting thought trails are successful nan book. Should she return him pinch her to nan bath erstwhile she had a shower, to guarantee he was safe? Or was that inappropriate? If she turned her backmost connected him to sleep, did it mean she didn’t emotion him? She saw threat everywhere. She imagined her son’s decease from hypothermia, aliases dog-attack, a fatal fall, aliases him being kidnapped and abused. Often, her thoughts were intersexual aliases violent. Had a paedophile ordered her boy connected nan acheronian web? Had his beverage powder been spiked pinch anthrax?
She doubted her powerfulness to support her boy safe, and feared she was a threat to him, too. “It’s each nan time, each infinitesimal of each day, variations connected a theme,” she says. “You can’t unrecorded for illustration that. After 4 months, I started thinking: ‘Oh my God, possibly location is simply a measurement out.’” Her thoughts became suicidal.
OCD, which has galore subtypes, is believed to impact 3% of nan population, and often worsens aliases appears during gestation aliases aft birth. Intrusive thoughts are acold much communal – successful fact, there’s investigation suggesting that more than 95% of caller parents person them. In cases of OCD, though, they spiral, they’re obsessional and all-consuming.
“What I didn’t cognize past was that nan thoughts themselves don’t matter – it’s really we respond to them,” says Nixon. “The much you effort to extremity them, nan harder they come. Your encephalon is sending mendacious emergency flares each nan time, arsenic you’re trying to analyse each thought and what it says astir you. It’s for illustration my assemblage was saying: ‘Oh my God, this thought is really important, we request to salary attraction to this and lick it aliases someone’s going to die, there’s a weapon to our head!’ You person to retrain your encephalon to conscionable fto nan thoughts travel in. Don’t judge them, don’t hit yourself up, and they driblet off. Your assemblage starts saying: ‘Yeah, we’ve seen this, don’t interest astir it.’”
Nixon learned each this done vulnerability and consequence prevention (ERP), a highly specialised cognitive behavioural therapy, and nan golden modular curen for OCD. She had to find and salary for it herself astatine £100 a session. (She spent her full “actor’s nest egg” connected therapy.) The deficiency of support from perinatal intelligence wellness services is nan astir enraging facet of her story. “Everything was done by telephone and nary 1 really saw you,” she says. “It’s really difficult to talk astir nan darkest clip of your life complete nan telephone to a alien and moreover harder doing it for nan 20th time, erstwhile you ne'er speak to nan aforesaid personification again.”
Besides nan ERP, what other helped her through? Her husband, for sure. “I was fortunate we’d been together a agelong time,” she says. “He knew maine – because really nan hellhole do you explicate each this?” Years earlier, arsenic a play student, Nixon had knowledgeable thing akin complete a six-month period. Watching an interminable Shakespeare production, her mind wandered to a gross intersexual image of a family member. “I couldn’t fto it go,” she says. “I couldn’t extremity reasoning astir nan truth that I’d thought it.” She was misdiagnosed pinch generalised worry upset (GAD) and fixed 3 therapy sessions. “So each these years later, erstwhile I said to my husband: ‘I deliberation it’s happening again,’ he conscionable sewage it successful a measurement that I deliberation saved my life.”
His support and quiet religion ne'er faltered. “He believed successful maine wherever I didn’t,” she says. “He didn’t person to opportunity it each nan time, but moreover successful my OCD-addled ‘you can’t spot anyone’ brain, I knew I could spot him. I’d inquire him: ‘How tin you time off maine pinch nan baby? What if I’m a threat to him?’ and he’d say: ‘Because I person perfectly nary worries whatsoever. You’d springiness your life successful a 2nd for nan baby.’ I clung connected to that.”
Perhaps nan biggest breakthrough, though, was posting astir each this connected Instagram. “If personification had told maine that societal media would play a portion successful my recovery, they’d person sewage nan biggest eye-roll,” she says. “I wasn’t moreover connected Instagram earlier I had a baby.” (She downloaded nan app only because personification had told her location was an relationship offering free dungarees.) “When I started posting, I didn’t person nan bandwidth to put a beforehand on, I didn’t person nan power to lie.”
The overwhelming consequence to her first tentative posts astir struggling pinch motherhood made her braver. “It made maine stock much and more,” she says. “I was getting hundreds and hundreds of messages. There’d beryllium women who were 18 months postpartum going to spot their GP because of a post. There were women successful nan mediate of it and women successful their 50s and 60s saying they’d ne'er forgiven themselves for really sick they were successful nan first mates of years of motherhood – and they’d ne'er told their husband. I had loads of messages from partners saying: ‘This is my wife. How tin I thief her?’ I’d beryllium reference them and crying – but it was a different crying. I wasn’t hiding immoderate more.”
Mental unwellness thrives successful nan dark. “Your OCD tells you that you’re a unspeakable person, and group only for illustration you because they don’t cognize nan ‘real you’,” she says. Opening up connected Instagram was, successful her words, “the biggest fuck you to OCD I’d ever done”. Writing a book is nan adjacent level up.
Nixon is engaged now – pinch her son, nan book motorboat and besides a one-woman drama show, Baby Brain, group successful a mother-and-baby unit, which she’s taking connected tour. Recovery isn’t straightforward. It was 18 months earlier she stopped wishing she was dead, possibly 2 years earlier she began to spot – and forgive – herself. “I still person a small stumble now and again,” she says. Medication, journalling and breathing exercises each help. Last June, Nixon was besides diagnosed pinch autism and ADHD, which shed much ray connected her life. “Theres a immense crossover betwixt OCD and autism,” she says. “It helped maine understand nan measurement I think, nan measurement I process things.”
One mobility Nixon is often asked – particularly by mothers successful nan midst of it – is really agelong was it earlier she felt for illustration she utilized to? The reply is that she doesn’t and ne'er will. “I can’t ever spell backmost to being nan personification I was,” she says, “and wanting to spell backmost stopped maine getting amended for a very agelong time.” But she tin beryllium stronger – happier, even.
“All my life, I was looking to spot if I was successful problem somehow,” she says. “I utilized to attraction excessively overmuch astir everything, astir what group thought of me, aliases if I’d upset personification without knowing it. I’ve learned not to do that now. If each this hadn’t happened, my boy wouldn’t beryllium here, I wouldn’t person written a book, I wouldn’t person recovered retired truthful overmuch astir really my encephalon works. I’m truthful overmuch happier for it.”
She Seems Fine to Me: Behind nan Scenes of Birth, Babies and My Broken Brain by Kimberley Nixon (Gallery UK, £20) is published connected 7 May. To support nan Guardian, bid a transcript at guardianbookshop.com
In nan UK and Ireland, Samaritans tin beryllium contacted connected freephone 116 123, aliases email jo@samaritans.org aliases jo@samaritans.ie. In nan US, you tin telephone aliases matter nan 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline astatine 988 aliases chat astatine 988lifeline.org. In Australia, nan situation support work Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other world helplines tin beryllium recovered astatine befrienders.org
In nan UK, nan kindness Mind is disposable connected 0300 123 3393 and Childline connected 0800 1111. In nan US, telephone aliases matter Mental Health America astatine 988 aliases chat 988lifeline.org. In Australia, support is disposable astatine Beyond Blue connected 1300 22 4636, Lifeline connected 13 11 14, and astatine MensLine connected 1300 789 978
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