Prenatal anxiety is more common than most people realize, and it gets far less attention than postpartum mental health. The worry about the birth. The worry about being a good parent. The pressure to feel grateful and excited when what you actually feel is overwhelmed. The identity shift that begins before the baby even arrives.

Starting therapy during pregnancy is one of the most practical things you can do. It means you are not trying to find support in the thick of the postpartum period when everything is already harder. It means you go in with tools, a relationship with your therapist, and some understanding of what is coming.

I work with expectant moms and parents through all stages of pregnancy: processing fears about birth and becoming a parent, managing anxiety that has spiked during this transition, and building the kind of support that carries into the postpartum period. If you are already expecting and something does not feel right, you do not have to wait.

The new moms who reach out to me are not falling apart. Most of them are functioning. But inside something is off. They cannot sleep even when the baby is down. They are short with their partner and feel terrible about it. They feel disconnected from their baby, or from themselves, or from the life they had before.

Some are dealing with intrusive thoughts they have not told anyone about. Some just feel empty when they expected to feel full. Some love their baby fiercely and still grieve the version of themselves they used to be. All of it is real. None of it makes you a bad mother.

Postpartum anxiety and postpartum depression are not signs that you are not cut out for this. They are signs that your nervous system and your sense of self have been through something enormous. The sooner you get support, the faster things begin to shift.

The transition to parenthood changes a relationship in ways most couples do not anticipate. You are exhausted. You are not connecting the way you used to. One of you might be struggling more than the other, and neither of you has the bandwidth to help. Or you are both struggling and there is no space left to say it out loud.

Partners carry this too. The pressure to hold everything together while the other person recovers. The feeling of being pushed to the outside of a relationship that used to feel close. The loss of the dynamic you had before the baby came.

I work with partners individually and with couples together during this period. This is not traditional couples therapy. It is support for two people trying to find their footing in a new version of their relationship while also keeping a small person alive. It looks different for every couple, and we work on what you actually need.