Perinatal & Reproductive Mental Health
Becoming a parent can bring so many emotions—joy, excitement, love, grief, fear, uncertainty, and sometimes feelings you didn't expect at all. Pregnancy and postpartum can be beautiful, but they can also bring enormous changes to your body, relationships, identity, and sense of safety.
Maybe everything looks okay from the outside. You have a healthy baby. You have people who love and support you. You may even feel incredibly grateful to be a parent.
And yet… something feels off.
Your mind won't quiet down. You may find yourself constantly checking, Googling, researching, asking your partner or loved ones for reassurance, or replaying situations in your mind trying to make sure everything is okay. You might feel overwhelmed by thoughts about your baby's health or safety—or thoughts that feel so frightening and out of character that you're afraid to tell anyone about them.
What if the thoughts you're having are the ones you don't want to have?
Maybe you love your baby deeply, but your mind keeps giving you thoughts, images, or “what if?” questions that feel completely out of character.
What if I accidentally hurt my baby?
What if I miss something medically important?
What if something terrible happens while I'm responsible for my baby?
What if I don't feel connected enough?
What if having this thought means something about who I am?
You may find yourself checking your baby, avoiding certain situations or objects, researching symptoms, asking others if everything is okay, or mentally reviewing what happened again and again. You may get temporary relief from these things, only to find yourself doubting again a short time later.
This can be postpartum OCD (PPOCD), also known as perinatal OCD when symptoms occur during pregnancy or the postpartum period. And it can be incredibly frightening.
You may even worry that having these thoughts means something about who you are or what kind of parent you are.
It doesn't.
Having an intrusive thought does not mean you want it, and it does not make you a bad parent.
Therapy can be a place where you can finally talk about these thoughts without being judged, shamed, or misunderstood.
I work with adults experiencing:
Perinatal and Postpartum OCD
Intrusive thoughts related to your baby or your role as a parent
Fear of accidentally harming your baby
Excessive checking, reassurance-seeking, researching, or mental reviewing
Anxiety about your baby's health, safety, development, or wellbeing
Fear that intrusive thoughts mean something about who you are
Postpartum anxiety and/or depression
Birth trauma
Pregnancy and postpartum body changes
Feeling disconnected, overwhelmed, or unlike yourself
Grief and loss related to miscarriage
Infertility and challenges with conception
Postpartum isolation and lack of support
Maternal adjustment and identity changes
Relationship or partner stress
Sleep-related anxiety and distress
How I approach OCD
As someone trained in Inference-Based CBT (I-CBT), I approach OCD a little differently. Rather than focusing solely on getting rid of anxiety or proving that your fears aren't true, we look at how OCD creates doubt in the first place.
OCD can pull you away from what you actually know and experience and into endless “what if?” stories about what might happen. The more you try to achieve certainty, the more questions your mind can generate.
Together, we work on recognizing when your mind has shifted from lived reality into an OCD story, understanding the reasoning process that keeps you stuck, and rebuilding trust in yourself.
You don't have to become 100% certain that nothing bad will ever happen. You can learn to trust yourself even when uncertainty exists.
Whether you're navigating postpartum OCD, anxiety, depression, birth trauma, grief, changes in your body, or simply the overwhelming transition into parenthood, you don't have to figure it out alone.
You deserve a space where you can talk honestly about what's happening without having to prove that you're okay.