Pregnancy Loss, Infertility and Perinatal Mental Health
What happened to that pregnancy glow and the Lifetime movie moments around growing a family?
Navigating pregnancy loss, infertility, or the emotional complexities of the perinatal period can feel isolating, overwhelming, and deeply personal. Path Forward Counseling is dedicated to supporting individuals and families through these experiences with compassion, clinical expertise, and respect for each unique story. Whether you are grieving a loss, facing the uncertainty of infertility, or adjusting to the emotional shifts of pregnancy and postpartum, you deserve care that honors both your pain and your resilience.
Our work integrates evidence-based approaches with a gentle, attuned presence—creating room for grief, hope, ambivalence, and healing to coexist. We understand that these experiences can impact identity, relationships, and one’s sense of safety in the body. Together, we move at your pace, fostering grounding, meaning making, and connection as you navigate this chapter.
You are not alone here.
Miscarriage and Infertility
Grief and Loss Therapy offers support for individuals or couples navigating the emotional, mental, and physical impact of losing someone (or something) deeply meaningful. This form of counseling provides a safe, compassionate space to process grief, understand your emotions, and begin to heal and adapt in your own time.
Grief is a deeply personal experience, and when it arises from pregnancy loss or the struggle with infertility, it can feel especially isolating. At the core of my practice is a commitment to supporting individuals and couples through these profoundly difficult and often unspoken journeys. Whether you're mourning a miscarriage, facing recurrent pregnancy loss, or coping with the ongoing emotional toll of infertility, you deserve a space where your grief is acknowledged, validated, and gently held.
Path Forward Counseling will provide a supportive, nonjudgmental environment where you can explore your emotions, rediscover your voice, and move toward healing at a pace that feels right for you. With loss interwoven into personal story, Michelle brings both clinical experience and deep understanding of the experience.
Check out a bit about Michelle’s story in a podcast where she talked about the complexities as a guest speaker.
Hear Michelle talk about pregnancy and loss on Ryanne Mellick’s podcast “What Brought You Here Today?”
Therapy Can Help You Navigate:
Emotional Healing
• Shock, sadness, or numbness
• Guilt, self-blame, or anger
• Anxiety about future pregnancies
• Feelings of depression or emptiness
Relationship Strain
• Different grieving styles between partners
• Changes in intimacy and communication
• Feeling misunderstood by loved ones
Social and Cultural Pressures
• Isolation when others don’t understand
• Hurtful comments or pressure to "move on"
• Being surrounded by pregnancy or parenting milestones
Identity & Future Planning
• Questioning your identity as a parent
• Fear of trying again or facing infertility
• Rebuilding your vision for the future
Medical & Physical Aftermath
• Processing the medical experience
• Coping with physical recovery
• Fear of medical procedures or future complications
Milestones & Triggers
• Due dates and anniversaries
• Baby showers or pregnancy announcements
• Returning to work or facing social situations
Each person’s journey is unique, and therapy can help them process these layers of grief with care, understand their emotions, and begin to rebuild hope and connection.
Perinatal Mental Health
Has the post-partum period been less sunshine and rainbows and a bit more doom and gloom?
Perinatal mental health in therapy focuses on supporting individuals and families through the emotional, psychological, and relational changes (even the sex sort is welcome topics for therapy) that occur during pregnancy, postpartum, and the first year after birth. This period can bring profound joy, but also vulnerability to concerns such as anxiety, depression, trauma responses, identity shifts, and relationship stress. Therapists working in this area are attuned to both the normative transitions of parenthood and the ways that past experiences—such as trauma, infertility, or pregnancy loss—can shape the perinatal experience.
Clinical work often includes screening and assessment for perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, psychoeducation about the nervous system and hormonal influences, and the development of coping and regulation skills. Approaches may integrate talk therapy with somatic awareness, attachment-focused work, and trauma-informed modalities such as EMDR when appropriate. Supporting the parent-infant bond, addressing feeding or sleep-related stressors, and including partners or support systems can also be important components of care.
A key aspect of perinatal mental health therapy is creating a space that reduces shame and isolation. Many clients struggle with the gap between expectations and lived experience, and benefit from compassionate, nonjudgmental support that normalizes their feelings while also addressing symptoms. Therapy may also involve collaboration with medical providers, advocacy, and attention to cultural, spiritual, and systemic factors that influence care.
Ultimately, this work centers on helping clients feel more grounded, connected, and confident in themselves and their roles, while promoting both individual wellbeing and the health of the developing parent-child relationship.
Path Forward Counseling welcomes clients to bring their infants to session to the extent it is needed and not a distraction to the client. Conversations about including the child in session may relate to therapy modality used (talk therapy vs. EMDR for example.)
Birth Trauma
Birth trauma can leave lasting emotional, physical, and relational impacts that are often misunderstood or minimized. Path Forward Counseling offers a compassionate, trauma-informed space for individuals to process difficult or distressing birth experiences at their own pace. Sessions are designed to gently explore the layers of what occurred—honoring each person’s story, their body’s responses, and the meaning they have made of the experience.
Using a blend of talk therapy, somatic approaches, and EMDR when appropriate, the work focuses on reducing distress, restoring a sense of safety in the body, and supporting reconnection with self and the parenting experience. Whether a birth involved medical complications, loss of control, unmet expectations, or feelings of fear or isolation, each experience is valid and deserving of care and attention. Healing is possible, and individuals do not have to navigate it alone.
