Experiences of taking sertraline postpartum and coming off it later

[LolaBumble]

After some experiences of anyone who has taken sertraline, and then come off it?

I have just started taking it at 5 months postpartum, I am hoping I’ll only need it for 6 months or so for anxiety. Will be seeing the perinatal team for counselling. I have just been reading on other forums about people’s experiences coming off it and it’s worried me.

Coming off SSRIs like sertraline and citalopram can be difficult because of discontinuation reaction which are brain zapps and short lived (seconds) dizzy spells but they can be minimised by coming off very very slowly. I was on citalopram for many years and it took me some months to come off. As long as you taper the dose you should be ok so half and half again then leave out a day each week and gradually I crease the drug free days. You can go cold turkey but it's a bit disconcerting.
Sertraline was wonderful for me with pnd. I felt better within day s.

If you haven't started it yet I would advise 25mg daily initially then up to 50after a few days. Stops the wired feeling.

Thank you for your reply! Glad to hear it helped your postnatal depression. Reassuring to hear you managed to come off it okay, some good advice thank you :)

I was prescribed sertraline 8 weeks postpartum, I found out I was pregnant again 8 months pp and I stopped taking the tablets immediately. The midwives etc reassured me that my health matters too, and that sertraline is commonly used in pregnancy. But at the back of my mind, I couldn’t shift the worry that the tablets might affect the foetus. I didn’t have any symptoms or withdrawals because morning sickness kicked in.

I've been taking 50mg sertraline since about one year postpartum and I'm still taking it two years later. Like you, I was keen to stay on it for the shortest time possible but after being on it for a while I really started to feel the benefits and for the first time in a long time I felt quite balanced. I was told that I shouldn't think about coming off them until I had experienced a good six months with no issues. I possibly could have come off it at that point but I wanted to TTC then when I fell pregnant, it didn't feel like the right time because of the big life change. Midwives said it would be better for me to be well than come off it and trigger a relapse. I also had awful side effects when I first started and the thought of possibly having withdrawal then needing to go back through it all again if I needed to go back on it just put me off coming off them.

Baby is one now and absolutely fine. I've been thinking about coming off them soon but I'm due back to work in a few months and I think I'd want to get through that before thinking about it. I honestly hate that I still need to take the sertraline but I'm a better person for it and I absolutely will come off them as soon as I'm able. Doctor did talk me through it previously but I think I'd probably do it slowly and reduce the dose over a longer period of time - half dose every second day then every day then miss every second day etc.