Breathe through It

Ruchy was a European-born chassidish young mother with OCD who had come to me for an evaluation after the birth of her second child. She experienced a relapse toward the beginning of her third pregnancy, and with the encouragement of their rebbe, restarted her medication therapy.

Part III

Baruch Hashem, Ruchy had delivered a healthy baby back in the pre-coronavirus world that was the start of chodesh Adar, when a crowd could still attend a bris. I couldn’t have been happier for Ruchy, who’d been a real trooper throughout her pregnancy, and for Heshy, who’d been a true mensch in supporting his wife. Although I usually don’t attend simchahs of my patients in order to preserve discretion and maintain their privacy, because their rebbe would be the sandek, many people unconnected to the family knew that this was an opportunity to have a quick audience with the Rebbe, and so I was able to break my rule and attend as well.

I was honored to meet with the Rebbe again — we’d actually met on a previous occasion. I kissed the Rebbe’s hand (something you could still do then), while he bentshed me, “You should be zocheh to keep giving good eitzos, Dr. Freedman. And your patients should be zocheh to follow them.”

We had a follow-up appointment the following week, where we discussed that, given Ruchy’s history of worsening symptoms during the postpartum period, we planned to slightly increase the dose of her current medication. Naturally, she was concerned about the safety of the meds during nursing, especially since some medications have been found to appear in significant concentrations in mother’s milk. That was why we chose this specific medication in the first place — found to be safe for both pregnant and nursing mothers.