Kimberley Nixon, Welsh actor of *Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging* fame, has written a memoir about perinatal OCD that she fears might make people think she's a horrible person. She's probably right to worry, but she's publishing it anyway during maternal mental health awareness week, because apparently that's what recovery looks like - letting the world judge your darkest thoughts.
Her book, *She Seems Fine to Me*, out on 7 May, details the 'Technicolor horror stories' that played in her head after her son's birth during lockdown - including fears of hypothermia, dog attacks, fatal falls, kidnapping, and anthrax-spiked milk powder. Because nothing says 'new motherhood' like suspecting a paedophile ordered your baby on the dark web.
Nixon's descent began after four years of infertility, IVF, a pandemic pregnancy, and a hospital stay where her husband had to choose between staying with her after a blood transfusion or accompanying their possibly-septic newborn to special care - because Covid rules forbid moving between wards. She became convinced her son had died and no one was telling her. He was fine, but her brain had already booked a one-way trip to 'what if' hell.
She paid £100 per session for exposure and response prevention therapy - the gold standard for OCD - out of her 'actor's nest egg', because the perinatal mental health services she contacted were apparently too busy doing everything by phone with different strangers each time. 'It's really hard to talk about the darkest time of your life over the phone to a stranger,' she notes, 'and even harder doing it for the 20th time.'
Nixon credits her husband of 21 years with saving her life by believing in her when she didn't, and Instagram - which she only downloaded for free dungarees - with providing the 'biggest fuck you to OCD' she'd ever done. Hundreds of messages from struggling mothers and partners followed her first tentative posts, which she now says helped her stop hiding.
She was also diagnosed with autism and ADHD last June, which she says helped explain the crossover between OCD and her way of thinking. Recovery took 18 months before she stopped wishing she was dead, and two years before she trusted herself. She still has 'little stumbles', but she's also taking a one-woman comedy show, *Baby Brain*, set in a mother-and-baby unit, on tour. Because nothing says healing like turning your near-psychotic break into stand-up.