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My Postpartum Depression Story

One Mom, in Her Own Words

By Kathy Woltman

The doctor put me on Zoloft. It was a hard road. The Zoloft took much longer to work than the Anafranil had. I got discouraged with it a lot, and I also found it made it impossible for me to fall asleep at night, so I needed to take 1 mg of Klonopin before bed in order to sleep. However, once I got to 125 mg of Zoloft I felt consistently good and my OCD was mild ... and tolerable. I decided not to go any higher with the dose because of being pregnant.

I also made the decision not to taper off of the medication prior to having the baby. I had researched this, and with my OB's blessing, decided that it was safe not to taper off. My daughter was born four days late on October 9, 2000, weighing 11 pounds and measuring 22.25 inches! No blood sugar problems or anything else. No withdrawal symptoms from the medication I had taken. In fact, she is very laid-back and her Apgar scores were 8 and 9.

Immediately after she was born, I raised my Zoloft to 150 mg in hopes of kicking the rest of my OCD. After two weeks I could see it wasn't helping and I was having more problems with sweating and headaches. At this time, I am in the process of tapering off of the Zoloft and substituting in my old pal Anafranil. I just prefer it and with the Anafranil I have no OCD. Other than mild OCD, though, I am doing great, sleeping well (as well as you can with a newborn) and have no anxiety or any signs that PPD will rear its ugly head again. Of course, I am 3 weeks and 4 days postpartum and do not consider myself ttally out of the woods yet. I feel pretty good about making it through, though. I have done everything I can to keep the "monster" away.