This may not be how you thought you were supposed to feel.

Maybe pregnancy, birth, postpartum, infertility, loss, becoming a parent, or watching someone you love go through it has brought up feelings you weren't prepared for.

Love can exist alongside fear, anger, grief, resentment, numbness, intrusive thoughts, exhaustion, or the desperate wish to feel like yourself again.

Sometimes it's crying. Sometimes it's not being able to cry at all.

For fathers and non-birthing parents

Distress may also show up as irritability, withdrawal, overworking, anxiety, anger, numbness, compulsive coping, or feeling enormous pressure to hold everyone else together.

There isn't one correct way perinatal distress looks. The first job is understanding your specific experience, not measuring it against a template.

Perinatal and reproductive mental health can involve several things at once: postpartum anxiety, postpartum depression, OCD, trauma, grief, relationship changes, identity, physical recovery, medical experiences, sleep disruption, attachment, and enormous changes in responsibility.

That means treatment shouldn't automatically look the same for everyone. Depending on what you're experiencing, the work may draw from:

The diagnosis doesn't get to erase the person having the experience.

We’ll keep coming back to what is actually happening for you and what you need from there.

Sometimes the work is learning who you are now.

Possible areas of work

For some people, feeling better means feeling more connected. For others, it means less fear, more sleep, fewer compulsions, more capacity, more grief that can actually move, or simply feeling more like a person again.

Anger can be one of the most frightening parts of this season, especially if you were taught that a good mother, father, or parent should be endlessly patient and grateful.

Sometimes anger shows up when you're overstimulated, underslept, touched-out, frightened, unsupported, carrying too much, grieving, trying to control something that feels uncontrollable, or repeatedly pushing past your own limits.

We don't need to shame the anger out of you.

We can be angry and it doesn't have to be scary.

We can get curious about what the anger is communicating, what it may be protecting, what happens before it takes over, and how to create more choice around what you do with it.

Understanding anger does not excuse intimidation, violence, or harm. Feelings deserve room; harmful behavior still requires accountability and safety.

Pregnancy, infertility, loss, birth, postpartum recovery, feeding, sleep deprivation, changing roles, parenting decisions, sex, body changes, work, money, and the invisible labor of keeping a family functioning can reshape a relationship quickly.

One person may feel abandoned while the other feels like nothing they do is enough.

One may desperately want closeness while the other desperately needs space.

You may both be exhausted and privately keeping score.

The goal isn't to decide which of you has it harder.

We can make room for both experiences without pretending their impact is always identical.

When appropriate, couples work can help you understand what this season has activated between you and build more honest ways of asking for support, setting limits, sharing responsibility, repairing hurt, and reconnecting.

Motherhood and reproductive experiences can change how you see yourself, your relationships, your body, and what you need from the people around you. You may feel loving and resentful, grateful and grieving, deeply connected and completely alone. These experiences do not make you a bad mother or mean that you are failing. They may be signs that something inside you needs attention.

Sasha's work with mothers draws from specialized maternal mental health, parts-informed, and ketamine-assisted psychotherapy training.

Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy is a separate service that may be considered for some individual intensive clients when clinically appropriate. It is not automatically included in maternal therapy, intensives, or groups.