why I started taking Zoloft 6 months postpartum
On Wednesday, our realtor notified us of a house that was about to go on the market. On Thursday, we saw that house and made an offer. On Friday, our offer was accepted. On Saturday, I broke.
Instead of celebrating such a momentous and highly anticipated moment with my husband and daughter, I spent my afternoon alone, by choice, sobbing in the bathtub.
Something was off.
And I knew it, in the moment. With my knees curled up to my chest and hot tears running from my face into the tepid water, I kept crying, what is wrong with me? Why do I feel like this?
I wanted so badly to feel joy, but I was blinded with worry. Could we afford it? Was this the right move? Was I ready for more change?
The month was already full of so much change. I had just weaned my daughter off of breastfeeding, introduced a nanny into our lives, and returned to work after six months of maternity leave. To my happy surprise, all of those transitions happened easily. The hormonal shift caused by weaning made me more sensitive and sad for a period, but I allowed myself to move through the hard feelings with grace. Once I was done breastfeeding, I felt like I truly had my body back to myself for the first time in fifteen months, and I leaned into that positive mindset. It made it easier for me to hand my daughter’s care over to our nanny, who came into our family as effortlessly and happily as if she had been around from the beginning, and I was grateful to return to work, if only to have a bit more of a regular routine and more freedom of movement throughout my day. Because everything happened so, well, easily, I don’t think I processed how much of an impact those changes had on me subconsciously.
Until we bought a house, and all of those unprocessed feelings came crashing down.
The night that our offer was accepted, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned, thinking, we shouldn’t do this, I don’t want to move, I’m scared to leave the setup that we have. Under it all I knew that buying the house was right for our family, but I couldn’t tamper down the anxiety that flooded from my head into my chest as I thought about everything that could go wrong.
I went to brunch with girlfriends the next morning, and they were all so excited. Still, I was wary. Later that day, when my husband made plans with friends to go to a brewery, exhaustion had set in, and I decided to stay home and try to nap.
But I couldn’t sleep. I was exhausted, but couldn’t shut my mind off. Insomnia plagued me throughout pregnancy and the early months of motherhood, one of the cruelest kinds of torture. On that day, all that I needed was sleep. All that I needed was a break from my thoughts.
I wasn’t getting one, though. I tried taking a bath to relax, and, well, that’s when the tears came, wouldn’t stop coming. I felt alone and guilty and sad and, well, wrong.
It was then that I decided something needed to change. I decided that I wanted to start taking medication to help ease my anxiety.
I have carried anxiety within me throughout my entire life. It showed up in the form of nightly crying when I was a child and panic attacks when I was an adolescent. As a teen, it made me too nervous to ever enjoy performing or competing or anything that put me remotely near the center of attention. It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I learned that there was a name for this persistent feeling of unrest and worry that I carried around, and it was called anxiety.
Learning that I had anxiety immediately brought forth two things:
an understanding that there was something that I could do about it
the feeling that I was not alone
Both brought an immense sense of relief.
With time, self-observation, and work, I learned how to manage my anxiety. Things that helped keep it at bay were:
a good night’s sleep (8 hours)
daily exercise (walking counts!)
a balanced diet
reduced alcohol intake
communicating to my husband when I felt anxious
talk therapy
a creative outlet
keeping my surrounding spaces tidy
The top four items in that list — sleep, exercise, diet, and drinking — have had the biggest impact on how I feel, mentally. All of these things take work; sometimes I’m good at putting the work in, and sometimes I’m not. Ultimately, I pull these tools out of my back pocket when I’m either trying to proactively (AKA being my healthiest self) or reactively (say, for when I’ve drank too much wine the night before) manage my anxiety.
Having this self-awareness and putting these habits into practice felt like enough for me. There were periods of the past decade that were harder than others (like when we were stuck on our sailboat in Nicaragua during Covid, for example), but overall, I did not think that I needed to take medication for my anxiety.
Until I found myself six months postpartum, on the cusp of buying a house, in a moment that I wanted to be happy, but was instead crying nonstop in the bathtub.
As a precautionary measure before I gave birth, I spoke to my midwife about my personal and family history with mental illness and the possibility of postpartum depression. We decided that the best course of action was for me to continue seeing my therapist bi-weekly, and to have a low-dose prescription of Zoloft called into the pharmacist in case I ever wanted to fill it.
I won’t lie—the early days of motherhood were hard. I was sleep deprived, managing the fact that my body made milk all of the sudden, healing from nineteen hours of labor and three hours of pushing, all while learning to take care of and sustain this wonderful, tiny, helpless baby. It was all so intense. But I was so happy. Every day, I fell more and more in love with my daughter. I felt alive, inspired, whole. There were certain things that made me anxious, of course, but I felt that they were all typical new-mom anxiety scenarios.
I never felt depressed, but I did have the baby blues in the beginning. I’d only heard of the baby blues through my other mom friends, and by listening to the audio version of Transformed by Birth by by Britta Bushnell, PhD. The baby blues tend to show up in the first ten days postpartum, and can affect new moms with mood swings, sadness, worry, insomnia, and other unstable feelings. When you give birth, your estrogen and progesterone levels suddenly decrease, and if/when your milk comes in, your prolactin and oxytocin levels spike. I can’t find the direct quote in Transformed by Birth, but remember the author saying that, until menopause, this is the biggest hormonal swing that a woman will ever go through in her life. Having this knowledge going into the postpartum period was extremely valuable.
Feelings of anxiety and the need to cry came on the night before my milk came in, and periods of big crying lasted off and on for a couple of weeks. Other than the extreme exhaustion, I had no conscious drivers of these tears. Knowing the general science of what was happening to me subconsciously allowed me to give myself grace, and not suppress my emotions.
My husband, of course, had a harder time understanding this. He was concerned about postpartum depression, and couldn’t grasp the difference between depression and baby blues. We did our best to keep an open dialogue, but ultimately, what helped him be more understanding was talking to other parents who had experienced their own version of baby blues. It helps so much to know that you are not alone.
I will note that during this period, we never doubted my abilities as a mother, or were concerned about the care I could provide to my daughter. I was weepy, and tired, but my greatest joy came from holding, nursing, and loving my baby.
About six months later, when I tried to understand why I was suddenly struck with so much anxiety after we made an offer on the house, I recognized that this was not a time in my life when I had control over exercising the tools that typically helped me feel better. As a new mom, I was not sleeping eight hours a night. My diet consisted mostly of food that could be eaten quickly (hello, CLIF Bars), and while I did walk almost daily, I couldn’t find the time to get in a good workout. I was too tired to feel creative. Cleaning up after my baby was constant work, and somehow the apartment still always felt messy. I tried my best where I could, but my main focus was on taking care of my daughter. I needed to add another tool to my kit. It was time to fill my Zoloft prescription.
I’m not sure when it started to kick in—maybe after a few weeks? But the knowledge that I was making the move to take care of myself made me feel better almost instantly. With time, I started to feel more at ease. Bigger changes became easier to handle, and less of my time was spent worrying about the small things. I began walking around with an inner peace that, quite frankly, I’m not sure that I’ve ever had before. The impact was not sudden and big in a way that it was noticeable; instead, I’ve found that Zoloft has helped me in smaller ways throughout my day that add up to make a bigger improvement overall.
It’s working, and I’ll continue to take it as long as I feel that it serves me. It has not been the be-all and end-all solution to my anxiety, but it is certainly pulling its weight when my other self-care practices such as sleep, exercise, and diet aren’t up to par. I’m doing my best to take care of myself, so I can be the best version of myself for my daughter, husband, family, and friends.
And the house? We bought it. We’ve been living here for a few months and it was 100% the right move for us. I am finding joy in building our home, hosting in our new space, and taking advantage of the access it gives us all to the outdoors. This has been such an exciting year, and I’m glad that I am managing my anxiety in a way that allows me to be present and grateful for the life that I am leading every single day.
I wrote this post to help destigmatize the conversation around mental health. If you are in need of postpartum mental health resources, check out Postpartum Support International or call their hotline at 1-800-944-4773.