Postpartum Therapy
You can love this baby and still be drowning.
Postpartum is a whole season, not a six-week window your insurance company defined. The hormonal, identity, relational, and physical shifts of the first year (and second, and third) deserve a therapist who knows them by name.
Whether your baby is two weeks old or two years old, whether this is your first or you're sliding under after your third, there is help. And it isn't a step backward to ask for it.
You might recognize
If any of this feels familiar.
"I cry at things I never cried at before, and I can't stop."
"The intrusive thoughts terrify me, and I can't tell anyone."
"I'm raging at my partner over things I know are small."
"I feel nothing when I should feel something, and that scares me."
"I lost myself somewhere in the last year and I don't know how to come back."
"I should be 'over' this by now. It's been ten months. I'm not."
What postpartum therapy covers.
- Postpartum depression (PPD): sadness, flatness, hopelessness, loss of pleasure, difficulty bonding
- Postpartum anxiety (PPA): racing thoughts, scanning for danger, can't relax, can't sleep when baby sleeps
- Postpartum rage: the irritability and anger that nobody warns about, often layered over depression
- Intrusive thoughts (postpartum OCD): frightening images or themes that don't reflect what you'd ever do; very common, very treatable
- Adjustment difficulty: identity loss, marital strain, returning to work, the gap between expectation and reality
- Birth recovery: physical and emotional processing of the birth itself, especially if it was traumatic
- Bonding concerns: when attachment doesn't feel automatic, or when ambivalence shows up
These can show up at any point in the first 12-24 months, and the 4-month, 6-month, and 1-year marks are common surge points that nobody tells you about.
The thing nobody says out loud.
The cultural script for new motherhood is so narrow that anyone whose experience falls outside it ends up feeling broken. You are not broken. You are in a real, measurable, well-documented thing, and the people who specialize in it can help in ways generalist therapy and well-meaning friends can't.
How the work goes
What therapy actually looks like here.
I make postpartum therapy as accessible as possible. Telehealth from your couch counts. Babies in arms count. Sessions that get interrupted count.
Clinically, we work on two tracks at once: stabilization (sleep, intrusive thoughts, panic, daily functioning) and meaning (the identity, partnership, and family-of-origin material that this season cracks open). For some people, medication is part of the conversation, and I work closely with reproductive psychiatrists when that's the right call.
And, important: if you ever have thoughts of harming yourself or your baby, that's an emergency. Call or text 988, or the Postpartum Support International helpline at 1-800-944-4773. You won't be in trouble. You will get help.
Ready to talk?
A 15-minute consultation, by phone, costs nothing and tells you almost everything you need to know.