Sertraline - Experiences with extended hospital stays

[Joinedin2020]

Hi, just reaching out to see if anyone has had experience with taking sertraline throughout their pregnancy and had to stay in hospital longer or if they were able to avoid it?!

My first was born in 2020 and it was peak covid, I had a super quick labor and was out within 6 hours of arriving. Needless to say the thought of staying is really daunting for me and it’s making all my anxieties around giving birth much worse. I’m on 150mg at the moment at 36 weeks so I’m going to call my doctor to see if I can reduce it to stop the need for me and the baby to need stay in (from what the midwives have said, it would be to monitoring his breathing) or if it’s too close to the birth to be a possibility now! Only thing is is the doctor told me there was no reason we would need to stay in but the midwives are telling me otherwise which is really confusing!

If you have been in a similar situation, I’d love to hear your experience if you don’t mind sharing, just think I need to be proactive and start getting my head around the idea of us being alone in hospital for 48 hours when I think I got used to the idea of it being a repeat of the experience I had with my DD.

I think I’ve rambled but thank you if you persevered and read this!

Ask the midwife to see the guidelines about this. In our trust women on sertraline are advised that their baby has their newborn check done in the hospital and a set of saturation observations on both hands prior to going home. Baby can’t have the newborn exam until they are 6 hours, so it depends on time of day as to whether women would need to stay in for this. Babies need to then be observed for signs of withdrawal, but this can be done by community midwife when they visit you at home. At one point we kept women and babies in for 24-48 hours, but we moved away from that, it might be that your trust have done the same but your midwife isn’t aware of the guideline changes. Every hospital is different though. If the best place for your mental health Is to be at home then make that clear to your team. Ask them questions like what they would do for a woman having a homebirth, would they transfer her in to have the baby observed for 48 hours, or do they have plans in place for those women? I hope you manage to get answers other than reducing your medications.

I had DS a couple of years ago. We stayed in for 24 hours because I had an ELCS. There was no additional monitoring or anything because of the sertraline. I wouldn't advise reducing/stopping at this stage of pregnancy because of the risk of PND.

I’m on 100mg sertraline and there has been no mention of it since my booking appointment, and it’s my due date tomorrow! I’ll ask the midwife when I next see her / when I go into labour. I was just told that it was safe and to carry on with it, even increase it if I needed to due to increased blood volume during pregnancy.