Becoming a mother is supposed to be joyful. Nobody told you it might feel like this.

The perinatal period is harder than anyone talks about

Pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period are some of the most significant transitions a person can go through. They come with enormous love, and also enormous challenge — physical, emotional, relational, and identity-shaping all at once.

Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders are the most common complication of pregnancy and postpartum. That includes prenatal anxiety and depression, postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, postpartum OCD, and postpartum rage. These are real, medically recognized conditions. They are not a sign that you're a bad mother. They are not permanent.

What it can look like

Perinatal struggles don't always look the same from person to person. You might be experiencing:

• Feeling disconnected from yourself, your baby, or your sense of who you are
• Crying unexpectedly, or not being able to cry at all
• Intrusive thoughts that frighten you
• Irritability or anger that feels out of proportion to what's happening
• Anxiety that doesn't let you rest, even when your baby is sleeping
• Grief — for your pre-baby self, for a birth that didn't go as you'd hoped, or for a loss during pregnancy

Pregnancy loss and the invisible grief

If you've experienced a miscarriage, stillbirth, infertility, or a complicated NICU journey, you carry a grief that is often invisible to others. Few people know how to hold space for it — or even how to bring it up.

Therapy offers a place where your loss is taken seriously. Where you don't have to minimize it to make others comfortable. Where the full weight of what you've been through is allowed to exist.

How therapy helps

Perinatal therapy is warm, practical, and meets you where you are. We'll talk through what you're experiencing, work through the fears and the grief, and help you reconnect with yourself — the person who existed before, during, and beyond motherhood.

I draw from evidence-based approaches specifically developed for perinatal mental health, alongside attachment-based work to support your bond with your baby and your own sense of self through this profound transition.

Perinatal struggles don't begin or end at six weeks postpartum. The transition into motherhood can unfold over months or years, and support is appropriate at any stage of that journey.