Perinatal & Parenting

The transition into parenthood can take many forms. It may include pregnancy, fertility challenges, perinatal loss, or other paths to becoming a parent. However it unfolds, it reshapes daily life, identity, and relationships.

Time, attention, and priorities shift, sometimes quickly. Alongside moments of connection and meaning, you may notice uncertainty, pressure, or a sense of being stretched. At times, this can show up as reacting more quickly than you’d like, questioning your instincts, or feeling strain in your relationship. Mixed or conflicting feelings are also common, even with a strong commitment to parenting.

Parenting typically unfolds within a relationship system. Changes in roles, time constraints and emotional availability can deepen connection, or bring tension into sharper focus.

How I Approach This Work

This work attends to becoming parents, your child/rens’ development and your own emotional and relational experiences.

As children grow, their needs change. Parenting involves adjusting in response, sometimes in ways that feel intuitive, and sometimes in ways that don’t.

At the same time, caregiving can bring forward your own history and internal responses. Moments of protectiveness, frustration, or self-doubt have deeper roots. Understanding these can create more flexibility in how you respond.

In practice, this involves recognizing the moment just before a reaction takes over, and creating enough space to respond in a way that reflects both your child’s needs and your own capacity.

We may focus on

• Making sense of your experience of becoming and being a parent

• Noticing how you respond to your child at different stages

• Understanding how your own early experiences show up in moments of stress or reactivity

• Exploring how roles and responsibilities are experienced within your relationship

• Working with the different parts of you involved in parenting

• This approach is informed by contemporary perinatal and developmental work, including the Becoming Model (Dr. Mou Sultana), emotion-focused family therapy (Dr. Adele Lafrance), and developmental frameworks emphasizing regulation and attachment (e.g., Dan Siegel; Gordon Neufeld), alongside parenting approaches that emphasize curiosity and responsiveness (e.g., Alison Gopnik; Tina Payne Bryson; Carla Naumburg).

Working Within a Family System

Parenting brings differences into sharper focus, including how decisions are made, how stress is handled, and how each person responds when things feel stretched.

This may include:

• Strengthening communication between partners

• Clarifying roles and responsibilities

• Making space for both caregiving and individual needs

• Maintaining connection alongside the demands of parenting

What This Work Can Support

• Greater clarity during periods of change

• A more flexible and responsive approach to parenting

• Increased confidence in navigating your child’s emotional world

• Improved communication within your relationship

• A more sustainable balance between caregiving, partnership, and self

Closing

Parenting is an ongoing process of adjustment.

This work supports you in responding to these changes with greater clarity and intention, while staying connected to what matters most to you and your family.