Fertility & Perinatal Mental Health
A part of women's health
that gets overlooked.
I take it seriously.
The psychological weight of fertility challenges, pregnancy, loss, and the postpartum period is significant and routinely underestimated by the healthcare system. People are screened for postpartum depression but rarely supported through the complexity of what actually happens emotionally across the full reproductive journey.
I work with individuals navigating all of it: from the stress of fertility treatment and the grief of pregnancy loss, through to perinatal anxiety, postpartum recovery, and the identity shifts that come with becoming a parent. I also work with women navigating perimenopause and menopause, which carries its own psychological complexity that rarely gets the clinical attention it deserves. Where pelvic pain or sexual health concerns are part of this picture, I address both within the same clinical relationship.
These experiences sit at the intersection of the physical and the psychological in ways that make specialist care genuinely different from general therapy. If you've felt like your emotional experience wasn't being taken seriously alongside your medical one, that is exactly what I am here to address.
Why Psychological Support Matters Here
The medical system focuses on the body
Fertility clinics, OBs, and midwives are focused on physical outcomes, which is appropriate. What often falls through the cracks is the emotional experience happening alongside the medical one. Anxiety, grief, identity disruption, and relationship strain don't resolve on their own just because a pregnancy is healthy or a treatment succeeds.
These experiences reshape identity
Becoming a parent, losing a pregnancy, going through fertility treatment, or navigating menopause aren't just medical events. They change how people understand themselves, their relationships, and their sense of the future. That kind of reorganization benefits from space to process it, not just time to get through it.
You don't have to be in crisis to deserve support
A lot of people wait until they're really struggling before reaching out. Early psychological support during fertility treatment, pregnancy, or the postpartum period produces meaningfully better outcomes for the individual, and where relevant, for the relationship and the child.
Fertility Challenges & Treatment Stress
The emotional cost of fertility
treatment is real
and rarely acknowledged.
Fertility treatment is physically demanding and emotionally exhausting in ways that are hard to describe to anyone who hasn't been through it. The uncertainty, the waiting, and the loss of a sense of control over your own body and timeline take a real psychological toll that doesn't always get the attention it deserves.
What brings people in
Anxiety about treatment outcomes, grief following failed cycles, the strain that fertility challenges put on relationships, and a growing sense of disconnection from your own body are all common experiences that respond well to psychological support. This work often connects to couples therapy when the strain is affecting the relationship.
Many people also arrive carrying complicated feelings about fertility treatment itself, including ambivalence, guilt, and grief for the path they expected their life to take. There is room for all of that here.
Couples navigating fertility together
Fertility challenges affect partners differently, and those differences can create real distance. One partner may grieve more visibly while the other holds things together. One may want to keep trying when the other is exhausted. These aren't signs of incompatibility; they are predictable responses to an extraordinarily stressful situation.
I work with couples to help them stay connected through the process rather than emerging from it having grown apart. This work can run alongside individual sessions or as part of dedicated couples therapy.
Pregnancy Loss & Reproductive Grief
A grief that often goes
without the recognition
it deserves.
Miscarriage, stillbirth, termination for medical reasons, and failed IVF cycles are all forms of loss, and they are losses that are often minimized by the people around you, the medical system, and sometimes by the person experiencing them. The grief is real regardless of how early it occurred or how it happened.
Miscarriage & early loss
One of the most common and most privately carried forms of grief. The social silence around early pregnancy loss means many people grieve without acknowledgment, which makes the loss harder to process rather than easier to move through.
Stillbirth & late loss
Late pregnancy loss is traumatic in the fullest clinical sense. It often requires trauma-focused approaches alongside grief work, particularly when the circumstances involved medical decisions, prolonged uncertainty, or a delivery experience that was itself distressing.
Termination & complex decisions
Whether a termination was for medical reasons or personal ones, the emotional aftermath can be complicated, particularly when it involves grief, relief, guilt, or some combination that doesn't fit a simple narrative. This is a space where non-judgmental support matters enormously.
Perinatal Anxiety, Depression & Postpartum Mental Health
More common than people realize
and more treatable than
people are told.
Perinatal mental health concerns, including anxiety, depression, OCD, and PTSD, can emerge during pregnancy or in the postpartum period. They are among the most common complications of childbearing, and among the most underdiagnosed and undertreated. Screening exists, but follow-through on adequate support is inconsistent at best.
During pregnancy
Anxiety during pregnancy is more common than prenatal depression and often goes unaddressed. Worry about the health of the pregnancy, intrusive thoughts, and fear about labour and delivery can significantly affect quality of life and are worth treating rather than simply tolerating.
Pregnancy following loss carries its own particular psychological profile, a kind of anxious vigilance that is entirely understandable and still worth addressing with proper support.
After birth
Postpartum depression and anxiety look different from person to person. They don't always present as crying or sadness; they can look like numbness, irritability, rage, hypervigilance, intrusive thoughts, or a profound sense of disconnection from your baby or yourself.
Birth trauma is also real and underacknowledged. A difficult delivery, an emergency, or an experience that felt out of your control can leave a neurological imprint that doesn't resolve on its own. EMDR and ART are particularly effective for birth-related trauma.
Also Within This Area
Other transitions I work
with and the same depth.
Transition to Parenthood
Becoming a parent reorganizes almost everything: identity, relationships, priorities, and sense of self. That reorganization can be joyful and deeply disorienting at the same time. I work with new parents navigating the gap between what they expected parenthood to feel like and what it actually does. This work connects naturally to couples therapy when the relational dynamic is shifting.
Reproductive Trauma
Traumatic medical experiences, including difficult deliveries, invasive fertility procedures, pregnancy complications, or a history of reproductive coercion, can leave lasting psychological effects. Trauma-focused approaches like EMDR and ART are well-suited to this kind of work and don't require extensive verbal retelling of what happened.
Perimenopause & Menopause
The psychological dimensions of perimenopause and menopause, including mood disruption, anxiety, identity shifts, and changes to sexual function and desire, are still significantly underaddressed clinically. I work with women navigating this transition with the same neurobiological lens I bring to all reproductive health work.
Getting Started
You don't need to wait
until it gets worse.
Reach out now.
You don't need a diagnosis or a crisis to reach out. If you're navigating something in this space and it's affecting your quality of life, that is enough of a reason to get support. I respond to everything personally within one to two business days.