Psychological Support
Antenatal and Postnatal Anxiety, Depression, and PTSD
Pregnancy and becoming a parent can be wonderful, but it can also be much harder than people talk about. You might feel anxious when you expected to feel excited, flat when you thought you’d feel happy, or completely overwhelmed by how relentless everything suddenly feels.
Sometimes feelings like this start during pregnancy. Sometimes they appear after your baby’s born, particularly after a difficult pregnancy, traumatic birth, feeding or sleep challenges, or weeks and months of broken sleep. You might feel constantly on edge, tearful, irritable, disconnected, worried that something bad will happen, or even wonder whether you’ve made a terrible mistake.
If that sounds familiar, you don’t have to wait until things get worse before asking for support. Antenatal and postnatal anxiety, depression and PTSD are treatable, and talking with a psychologist can help you make sense of what’s happening, work through what you’ve been through, and start feeling more like yourself again.
Infertility and IVF Support
When you first start trying for a baby, it can feel exciting. Fun, even. But when your period keeps arriving month after month despite all the planning, tracking and hoping, that excitement can gradually be replaced by disappointment, frustration and sadness. And when it seems like everyone around you is falling pregnant without even trying, jealousy can creep in too - even when you’re genuinely happy for them.
Fertility treatment and IVF can bring a whole new layer of stress. There are injections, hormones, blood tests, scans and appointments to fit around work and everyday life, alongside the emotional rollercoaster of waiting for results and trying not to get your hopes up too much. You might also find yourself avoiding certain conversations or keeping things private simply because you can’t face another “Are you pregnant yet?” or another well-meaning suggestion about something you apparently have to try.
When you desperately want to become a parent and the path there keeps involving more waiting, uncertainty and setbacks, it can take a real toll - on your mood, your relationships and your ability to think about much else.
A psychologist can’t change the outcome of fertility treatment, but psychological support can help you manage the stress, grief, uncertainty and relationship strain that can come with infertility and IVF. It can help you find ways to cope with a process that can feel very all consuming too.
Pregnancy Loss
There’s so much that’s hard about pregnancy loss. Alongside the grief, there’s often guilt and self-blame - Was I too stressed? Was it something I ate? Did I do something wrong? Which is always misguided but impactful all the same because when you experience pregnancy loss, it feels like it’s something you did, like you’re somehow to blame, even though you’re not.
Then there’s the heartbreak and grief, which is a unique kind of grief, because you’re grieving the loss of someone you never had the opportunity to meet. And the things that usually help when you’re grieving - hearing other people talk about the things they loved about the person you’ve lost, or memories of special times you had together - aren’t things you can turn to for comfort, because the person you’re grieving never existed outside your body.
And sometimes the things people say in an attempt to help only make it harder. Comments like “at least it was early”, “maybe it was for the best” or “at least you have children already” can leave you feeling worse, because they imply your grief isn’t valid, or that it should be smaller, which of course isn’t true.
The physical side of pregnancy loss can also be distressing and, for some people, traumatic. Emotionally, the impact can last much longer than you expect. You might find yourself struggling with sadness, anger, guilt or intrusive memories, or feeling especially anxious during a subsequent pregnancy.
If you’re finding it hard to process a pregnancy or infant loss, or anxiety is making a current pregnancy difficult to enjoy, psychological support can give you a place to work through what’s happened and manage what comes next.
Hyperemesis Gravidarum
There can be a lot of pressure to feel grateful when you’re pregnant, particularly when you know how desperately other couples want to be in your position. But two things can be true at once: you can be grateful to be pregnant and still hate being pregnant.
Pregnancy can be physically hard at the best of times. Nausea, exhaustion, reflux, back pain and disrupted sleep can all take their toll. But hyperemesis gravidarum, or HG, is something else entirely.
It’s sometimes described as “severe morning sickness”, but that description doesn’t really capture how debilitating HG can be. It involves relentless nausea, retching, and vomiting that makes work, parenting, and getting out of bed feel almost impossible. And many women struggle to keep food and fluid down, which can lead to serious health consequences like dehydration and weight loss, and the need for hospital treatment.
And the impact isn’t only physical. Being intensely unwell for weeks or months can affect your mood, your relationships and your ability to cope. You might worry constantly about your baby, feel guilty about everything you’re unable to do, or overwhelmed by how hard it is to keep going when there’s no clear end in sight. For some women, HG can become so intolerable that they experience thoughts of wanting to end their pregnancy or not wanting to be alive.
Psychological support can’t take away the physical symptoms of HG, but it can help you manage the emotional impact of being so unwell, cope with anxiety and guilt, and get through a pregnancy that looks very different from the one you expected.
And if you’re too unwell to get to an appointment, that’s okay. We can offer psychological support online, so you can speak with someone from bed if you have to.
Birth Trauma and Traumatic Birth
Bringing a baby into the world can be an amazing experience, but birth can also be frightening, overwhelming and, for some women, traumatic. In Australia, around 1 in 3 women describe their birth experience as traumatic.
Sometimes it’s obvious why a birth felt traumatic - things might have happened very quickly, there might have been an emergency, or you might have been frightened for your own safety or your baby’s. But a birth doesn’t have to look traumatic from the outside to feel traumatic to you. Feeling powerless, out of control, unheard, unsafe, or as though things were happening to you without enough explanation or choice can all have a lasting impact.
Afterwards, you might find yourself replaying parts of the birth in your mind, feeling anxious or on edge, avoiding reminders of what happened, or feeling numb or disconnected from the experience altogether. Sometimes the impact shows up in ways that are harder to recognise - feeling irritable, difficulty sleeping even when your baby’s asleep, feeling unusually protective of your baby, or becoming anxious about medical appointments or another pregnancy.
A difficult birth doesn’t automatically mean you’ll develop ongoing mental health difficulties, but for some women it can contribute to postnatal anxiety, depression or symptoms of post-traumatic stress. It can also make the thought of another pregnancy or birth feel particularly daunting.
Psychological support can help you make sense of what happened and reduce the hold the experience continues to have on you. One of our clinical psychologists is also trained in EMDR, an evidence-based psychological therapy that can be used in the treatment of trauma, including traumatic birth experiences.
And if you’re thinking about another baby, therapy can also give you space to work through what happened previously, and what you need to have a more positive birth experience next time.
Relationship Support After Having a Baby
No-one really tells you how much having a baby can change your relationship. There can be plenty of lovely moments, but there’s also sleep deprivation, less time together, more pressure, more decisions to make, and a whole new list of jobs that suddenly need to be shared.
It’s very common for couples to feel less connected after becoming parents. Small irritations can turn into bigger arguments, conversations can become more practical and less personal, and resentment can build when one person feels like they’re carrying more of the mental load, housework or parenting than the other.
Sometimes the issue is communication. Sometimes it’s feeling unsupported, unappreciated or like you’re no longer on the same team. And sometimes you’re both just exhausted and trying to adjust to a completely different version of your relationship.
Psychological support can help you work through the changes that come with becoming parents — whether you’re dealing with conflict now or simply want to protect your relationship before things become harder. That might involve improving communication, understanding what each of you needs from the other, working through resentment, or finding a fairer way to divide parenting and household responsibilities.
The aim isn’t to get your relationship back to exactly how it was before your baby arrived. It’s to help you work out what your relationship needs to look like now.
Attachment and Understanding Your Baby
Getting to know your baby takes time. Some babies are relatively easy to read; others are much harder to figure out, and it’s very common for new parents to wonder whether they’re getting it right.
Babies communicate long before they can use words. They show us when they’re tired, hungry, overwhelmed, interested in interacting, or needing comfort through their facial expressions, movements, sounds and behaviour. Learning to notice and make sense of these cues can help you feel more confident responding to your baby and understanding what they need.
This kind of responsive caregiving is an important part of building a secure attachment. But it doesn’t mean responding perfectly every time or always knowing exactly what your baby wants. Attachment develops through thousands of ordinary moments - noticing, responding, getting it wrong sometimes, and reconnecting.
Psychological support can help if you’re finding it difficult to read your baby, feeling unsure about how to respond, or worrying about your bond with them. We can help you better understand your baby’s cues and temperament, build confidence in your own responses, and find ways of connecting that feel natural for both you and your baby.