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Perinatal & Postpartum Therapy
Pregnancy is a transformative experience, but it is just the beginning of your ongoing transition into parenthood. It is common to feel overwhelmed at the many tasks before you as you prepare for birth or as you transition into family life after bringing your baby home. I offer perinatal and postapartum therapy in Seattle through online, in-person, and hybrid sessions to help you thrive through this exciting and upheaving time.
What Is Perinatal & Postpartum Therapy?
Perinatal and Postpartum therapy is a focused form of therapy designed for individuals during pregnancy and the postpartum period, to address the unique emotional, psychological, and relational changes that accompany the transition to parenthood.
Areas of exploration include the following:
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Learning to recognize postpartum mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs)
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Developing coping skills for navigating stress
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Navigating identity changes and role transitions
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Managing anxiety before or after birth
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Processing birth experiences and trauma
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Building secure attachment with your baby
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Addressing relationship dynamics with people in your life
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This therapeutic lens recognizes that becoming a parent can bring both joy and significant challenges, including anxiety, depression, birth trauma, identity shifts, and relationship changes.
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What is a PMAD?
A "PMAD" is a Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorder (which can include anxiety, depression, OCD, PTSD, bipolar and postpartum psychosis) that can impact a parent for a year or more after giving birth.
PMADs can happen to anyone, including parents with no previous history of mental health challenges. Although PMADs can be helped with targeted treatment and medication, they often go untreated because symptoms vary from person to person are sometimes confused with "baby blues".
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PMADs are serious health conditions and require immediate attention.
Click the button below to more about the signs and risk factors.
What Happens in a perinatal or Postpartum Session?
When you come in for Perinatal & Postpartum support we will begin by​ reviewing the symptoms you're experiencing to determine if you need to get connected to additional resources like medication management for a PMAD and/or a support group if appropriate.
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We will also identify concrete challenges, barriers and goals based on where you are in your parenting timeline and what support you need.
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If you decide to commit to ongoing therapy, our sessions will begin with verbal check-ins and reviews of symptoms, followed by a grounding breathing exercise to help you settle into the body.
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Based on the goals we identify, I will help you make sense of the transition you're embarking upon and teach you coping skills to navigate the stressors that are part of this journey.
My priority is to make sure you have a solid understanding of what to expect and how to navigate the impacts of pregnancy across all domains of experience: not only biological and cognitive, but emotional, spiritual, and relational too. I often bring in additional tools from my Mindfulness, Expressive Arts and Somatic training.
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You May Benefit From This Work If You are...
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Experiencing signs and symptoms of a PMAD
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​​Living with anxiety or chronic stress, and feeling stuck in overthinking or hyper-vigilance about the birth or what kind of parent you'll be.
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Moving through depression, grief, or numbness — and longing to feel connected and inspired by this period in your life.
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Carrying the impact of developmental, complex, or collective trauma that impacts your capacity to bond with your baby.
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Experiencing burnout that's common during the first few years of becoming a parent and raising your kiddo.
Many of my clients come to perinatal therapy because they experience symptoms in their body that are hard to manage like panic, dissociation and overstimulation.
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Together, we'll create a space where you can come home — to your body, your inner knowing, and the safety and calm that is innately present within you.
How Does Perinatal & Postpartum therapy help Parents With a history of Trauma?
Since our bodies undergo major chemical and hormonal transitions in parenthood, many parents who've lived through trauma can find themselves triggered by this life transition.
Caring for a being that needs 24/7 attention on little to no sleep causes our bodies to react as if they are under physical threat. But a nervous system that has already been shaped by trauma is even more susceptible to being rattled by the first stages of parenthood because of built in hyper-vigilance.
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Perinatal & Postpartum therapy provides a space where we can bring awareness and intention to the very real, and very challenging experience of parenting while dysregulated.
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Together, we gently work to identify your key triggers, develop awareness for how to interrupt your learned trauma response, and coping skills to bring your nervous system into a more neutral posture on a regular basis. The goal is to grow your capacity to recognize and interrupt old patterns of behavior that no longer serve you, and to develop a fluency in the decoding the language of your nervous system.​​
Is perinatal or Postpartum Therapy Right For You?
Caring for your mental health is a model of self-worth to your kiddos. But the life of a parent can be isolating and make taking care of yourself feel impossible. My mission is to create spaces where parents can be witnessed in their messy emotions without judgement.
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My practice centers parents who refuse to pass on harmful parenting strategies, family traditions and dynamics to their children. I bring a trauma-informed, feminist, and anti-oppressive lens to this work — honoring your story, your survival, and your sovereignty.​
