Mamas with depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders

Postpartum anxiety & sertraline

Has anyone else been suffering with severe anxiety? I’m 7 weeks PP and I’ve been put on sertraline and I was told to be prepared it might get worse before it gets better but I’m day three and the anxiety is unbearable 😓 I am in such a state worrying about everything, and typically I’m under the weather so I’m stressing the baby will get poorly so I’m afraid to breastfeed him and let him get too close incase he needs to go to hospital (I’m traumatised and phobic of hospitals after numerous bad experiences and my anxiety since birth has developed into health anxiety). We literally had his six week checkup yesterday and I’ve had numerous health visitors, feeding specialists and the perinatal mental health nurse confirm he’s a healthy baby but in my head I’m convinced we are already need to go to hospital and that somethings already wrong. Is anyone else suffering with anxiety or had it before that can give me some hope? I am so lonely and struggling, my husband is amazing but other than constantly reassure me things are ok there’s not much he can do. Even if someone can tell me they’ve had a cold and their baby caught it but they were ok? I just need constant reassurance all the time. I’ve had anxiety my whole life and it’s been bad but this is something else, absolutely unbearable 😭 it’s ruining my newborn experience completely

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Hey Molly, I’m so sorry this time is not going as planned. To be honest, I could have written this post myself. I was diagnosed with PPA and PPD after flagging my concerns at 4 weeks. I was put on Sertraline too. It’s true that you really need try and get through that first week or so after going on it, it’s really hard. But it really has helped me. My LO is now 4 months old and I have gone from having multiple panic attacks a day to one every couple of weeks.
My anxiety is also around health and needing constant reassurance. The reassurance only lasts hours before I was spiralling again.
My advice is to be completely honest with those close to you about what it is you need them to do. I told my husband, dad and MIL that I needed them to show me why I was wrong and repeat back to me what we knew for certain. Also, when you feel yourself starting to panic, I have found that if I run my wrists under cold water, I can bring myself back to the present instead of ‘what if land’. Xx

Please feel free to message me direct if you want to talk xx

Is sertraline Zoloft? If so, that’s an SSRI and it will take 6-8 weeks to take effect.

I saw the bit in your post about having a cold and baby catching it . I don’t think that’s always the case I caught covid in hospital and had to have Emergancy c section while having covid and me and my son had to be in a room by ourselves and he was perfect didn’t catch it from me . I suffer with anxiety also .Hope things get better for you x

thank you so much for sharing that with me, I am feeling much better 7 days in but it’s been rough and now we’re increasing the dose so goodness knows what that will be like. I just panic all the time, even if the baby sneezes I stress that he’s getting poorly, it would just be nice to not be so afraid of life and living, I’ve been avoiding going to busy places incase one of us gets ill and we have to go to hopsital. I’m just so fed up of feeling like this and I don’t know when it’ll get better 😞xxx

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