Maternal Mental Health

Mom with newborn counseling, postpartum counseling, attachment

I provide relationship-based care and focus on you helping you to feel like you again.

In my work with moms, I often explore the themes of:

  • managing emotions

  • developing parental identity

  • developing and/or improving relationships.

Motherhood and our identity as a mother is different for each of us. I am here to help you find your motherhood- whatever that may look like.

I work with moms of all kinds:

those experiencing fertility challenges, experiencing a traumatic or difficult pregnancy, healing from traumatic birth, mourning miscarriage(s) or infant loss, experiencing a postpartum mood disorder, and/or having difficulty adjusting postpartum.

I have specialized training for perinatal mental health as well as trauma and bereavement. Sometimes I involve EMDR (eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing) in our work. EMDR is a helpful therapy approach to work through trauma and past difficult experiences.

Birth Story Processing

Who benefits from birth story processing?

  • All birthing people

  • Those who have experienced: vaginal birth, c-section birth, traumatic birth, non-traumatic birth, birth with interventions, non-medicated births, birth that went to plan, birth that didn’t go to plan, those with NICU stays

What is birth story processing?

  • a loosely structured approach to explore the many parts of your birthing process: gestation/pregnancy, the start of and progression of labor, birth itself, meeting your baby, and your post-birth experience.

  • Helps to re-story and create an epilogue- you get to decide how to tell the story in the future.

  • Takes the immense experience of birth and all it entails and allows you to process, make meaning, and find resolution and peace.

Goals of birth story processing

  1. Process and organize memories of your birth

  2. Integrate feelings, body sensations, and thoughts related to your birth experience

  3. Uncomplicate thoughts and feelings surrounding pregnancy and birth for your own future experiences as well as when you relate with others experiencing pregnancy and nearing birth

Contact me for specialized counseling centering on your birth story or incorporate birth story processing into your larger therapeutic work.

Specialized Training

Birth Story Processing Training for Therapists with Emily Souder, LCSW-C, PMH-C, author of Birth Story Brave (2022)

The Advanced Practice of EMDR for Perinatal Mental Health with Dr. Mara Tessler Stein, 18 hour (2020)

Maternal Mental Health Professional Certificate Training by PSI and 2020 Mom Project (2019)