PARENTAL & PERINATAL MENTAL HEALTH
Trying to conceive. Exploring options like IUI, IVF, surrogacy, and adoption. Grieving a pregnancy loss. Considering single parenthood.
The transition into parenthood begins not only when a child arrives, but from the moment you start considering or pursuing building a family.
It is one of the most profound experiences in adult life. It often includes joy and anticipation, but also anxiety, grief, anger, identity shifts, and relationship strain.
We offer specialized psychotherapy for individuals and couples in Brooklyn and the greater NYC area, who are navigating conception, pregnancy, pregnancy loss, fertility challenges, and early parenthood, including queer and non-traditional family systems.
Perinatal Mental Health
The perinatal period includes pregnancy through the first year postpartum. During this time many people experience mood and anxiety changes that can feel confusing or frightening.
We assess and treat Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders (PMADs), including depression, anxiety, OCD, trauma responses, and intrusive thoughts. When helpful, we collaborate with outside psychiatric providers for medication support and provide PMAD-focused therapy that is both evidence-based and depth-oriented.
However, our work goes beyond symptom relief. We explore identity transformation, attachment history, relationship dynamics, and the unconscious expectations that surface when someone becomes a parent. Therapy is available for birthing people, non-birthing partners, and couples.
Specialty Areas
Birthing Trauma
When labor and delivery do not go as expected or planned, the experience can feel disorienting, overwhelming, or even traumatic. Experiences such as emergency interventions, unexpected complications, NICU stays, or feeling dismissed during labor can leave lasting emotional impact.
Birthing trauma often lives in both the body and your relationship. We help individuals and couples process their birthing experience and aftermath, in order to minimize the impact on mood and parental bonding, as well as on intimacy, trust, and communication in the relationship.
We also support non-birthing partners who may carry fear, helplessness, or secondary trauma related to the birth experience.
Perinatal Loss
Loss in the perinatal period is frequently minimized and misunderstood. We provide therapy for miscarriage, stillbirth, termination for medical reasons, voluntary termination of pregnancy, neonatal loss, and infant loss.
Grief at this stage can include shame, anger at one’s body, isolation, relationship strain, and fear about future pregnancy. Therapy offers a place where the loss is fully acknowledged and mourned without comparison or minimization.
Pregnancy After Loss
Pregnancy following a previous loss often brings heightened anxiety, hypervigilance, and emotional ambivalence. Hope and fear frequently coexist. We help individuals and couples navigate this complex emotional terrain with steadiness and care.
Infertility & Reproductive Challenges
Infertility and reproductive challenges can quietly affect self-esteem, sexuality, connection with your partner, and identity. Repeated treatment cycles, medical interventions, and uncertainty are stressful and exhausting emotionally and physically.
We support individuals and couples navigating fertility diagnoses, assisted reproductive technology, and decision-making about continuing or ending treatment. This work often touches deeper themes of control, legacy, gender identity, partnership roles, and grief for the imagined child.
Preconception Counseling
Preconception counseling offers couples a structured space to explore parenting before a child arrives. Similar to premarital counseling, this work focuses on alignment and preparedness.
Common areas of exploration include parenting values, division of labor, mental health history, financial expectations, extended family boundaries, and how each partner was parented. This can be offered as a short-term framework or integrated into ongoing therapy.
Therapy for Pregnant Individuals, Partners, & Couples
Pregnancy can often cause shifts in identity, sexuality, career ambition, and partnership. We work with first-time parents, parents expecting additional children, non-birthing partners adjusting to role shifts, and couples renegotiating intimacy and shared responsibility.
Therapy provides space to speak what feels difficult to articulate and to strengthen connection during a period of transition.
Parental Support
Parenting continues to evolve long after the first year. We support parents navigating identity shifts, invisible labor, gender role tension, sleep deprivation, returning to work, and parenting disagreements.
We also work with parents of medically complex children and children with developmental or ability differences. Parenting often reactivates earlier experiences from one’s own childhood. In therapy, we gently explore these intergenerational patterns and support more intentional ways of relating.
QUEER FAMILY BUILDING
Building a family as a queer person or partnership can be deeply meaningful, but it often involves layers of planning, decision-making, and emotional labor that many heterosexual couples do not encounter. Questions about genetics, legal parenthood, medical systems, and social recognition can arise long before a child is conceived or adopted.
Our practice has a particular focus on supporting queer individuals and couples through the family building process. We provide an affirming and knowledgeable space where the complexities of queer parenthood are understood rather than explained.
Many of the clients we work with are navigating assisted reproductive technology, donor conception, surrogacy, or adoption. These pathways can raise significant emotional and relational questions. Partners may need to decide whose genetics will be used, whether reciprocal IVF feels important, or how to relate to donors, surrogates, or co-parents. These decisions can touch deeply personal themes around identity, biology, belonging, and legacy.
Therapy can provide space to think through these questions thoughtfully and collaboratively. Rather than focusing only on logistics, we help individuals and couples explore what these choices mean for them psychologically and relationally.
Navigating the Planning Phase
The period before conception often carries its own emotional intensity. Many queer couples spend months or years researching options, consulting medical and legal professionals, and navigating financial realities before conception ever occurs. If you are beginning to explore these paths, you may find it helpful to read more about the emotional and relational aspects of the process in our blog post on family planning for queer couples in NYC, including IVF, IUI, adoption, and surrogacy.
During this stage of planning, people may encounter excitement alongside anxiety, grief about biological limitations, or pressure to make decisions that feel permanent. We help clients move through this phase with greater clarity and emotional support. Therapy can help couples align around shared values, communicate about expectations, and process the stress that often accompanies this level of planning.
Gender, Identity, and Pregnancy
Pregnancy does not always align neatly with gender identity. Trans men, nonbinary people, and gender diverse individuals may experience pregnancy in ways that are both meaningful and complex. Medical environments are not always prepared to hold these experiences with sensitivity.
Our practice explicitly affirms and supports transgender and gender diverse people who are pregnant or planning pregnancy. Therapy can provide space to explore the intersection of gender identity, bodily experience, and parenthood in a way that feels respectful and grounded.
Navigating Social and Family Dynamics
Queer family building can also bring unique social dynamics. Some families receive deep support from their communities, while others encounter misunderstanding or lack of recognition. Couples may need to think about how to introduce their family structure to schools, healthcare providers, extended family members, and their children over time.
Therapy can help individuals and couples navigate these conversations while maintaining a strong sense of family identity and shared purpose.
When Challenges Arise
Even with careful planning, the path to parenthood may include unexpected obstacles such as infertility diagnoses, unsuccessful treatment cycles, or pregnancy loss. For queer families, these experiences can feel especially painful after significant financial and emotional investment.
We provide a space where these experiences can be processed openly and without judgment. Our goal is to support individuals and couples as they move through grief, uncertainty, and hope while continuing to shape the family life they envision.
JOIN OUR QUEER FAMILY BUILDING GROUP
Planning to become a parent can be an exciting and deeply meaningful process, but it can also bring uncertainty, complex emotions, and complicated decisions. This 12-week therapy group offers a supportive space for LGBTQIA+ individuals and couples to connect with others navigating the same life stage from relatable positionality.
Together, we will explore the emotional, relational, and identity shifts that can arise during family building, including topics such as queer parenthood, navigating heteronormative systems, family of origin, decision fatigue, grief, and building supportive community.
This support group is open to LGBTQIA+ folks at any stage of the family-building journey, including those pursuing IVF or IUI, surrogacy, adoption, fostering, pregnancy, or those returning to the process after perinatal loss. Individuals and couples are welcome, including couples where one or more partners identify as LGBTQIA+.
Unlike many therapy groups, participants will have the option to stay connected after the group ends, creating the opportunity to build lasting community with other LGBTQIA+ families.
DETAILS
12-week closed group
Open to individuals & couples
Date & Time TBD
Group Leader: Emily Cappell-Schultze, LMSW
Group Supervisor: Dr. Corinne Lykins
Contact us to learn more or reserve a spot.
Our Therapeutic Approach
Our therapists work from a Relational Psychodynamic framework. We are interested in how attachment history shapes parenting, how earlier developmental experiences reemerge in this stage of life, and how unconscious expectations influence partnership and family dynamics.
We integrate trauma-informed care and evidence-based treatment for perinatal mood and anxiety disorders while holding space for nuance, identity, and complexity.
Navigating Pregnancy and Parenting in New York City
Navigating pregnancy, fertility treatment, loss, and early parenthood in New York City can bring unique pressures. Many individuals and couples are balancing demanding careers, high living costs, limited family support nearby, and complex decisions about childcare, housing, and work.
At the same time, the city offers access to world-class medical systems and fertility clinics, which means many families are navigating assisted reproductive technology, specialized care, and multiple providers throughout the process.
Therapy can provide a space to slow down, reflect, and navigate these transitions with greater support.
You can learn more about our work with clients across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and throughout New York City.
Why Seek Prenatal and Perinatal Therapy in Brooklyn or Manhattan?
Pregnancy and the transition to parenthood are often described as joyful, but they can also bring anxiety, identity shifts, relationship strain, and unexpected emotional challenges. Prenatal and perinatal therapy provides a space to process these changes while they are unfolding, rather than waiting until distress becomes overwhelming.
Our work is grounded in relational, depth-oriented therapy. This approach is particularly helpful during pregnancy and early parenthood because it allows us to explore not only current stressors, but also how earlier experiences, attachment patterns, and expectations about family life shape the transition to becoming a parent.
Because this work addresses the emotional foundations beneath anxiety, mood changes, and relationship conflict, clients often find that the insights gained during pregnancy continue to support them well into parenthood.
If you are located in Brooklyn, Manhattan, or elsewhere in New York City and are seeking prenatal therapy, perinatal mental health support, or therapy for the transition to parenthood, we invite you to reach out to discuss next steps.