Perinatal Mental Health: How Therapy Can Support New Parents (Starting with Postnatal Depression)
Pregnancy, birth, and early parenthood bring huge emotional changes. It’s a time that can be joyful, yes, but also one that can feel disorientating, exhausting, or even deeply painful. The transition into parenthood is rarely straightforward, and for many people, it stirs up a wide range of emotions that are not always easy to speak about.
As a therapist who specialises in perinatal mental health, I support both women and men through the complex and often hidden emotional experiences that can accompany this life stage. This includes things like birth trauma, anxiety during pregnancy, adjustment to parenthood, fertility struggles, baby loss, and, perhaps most commonly, postnatal depression.
In this blog, I want to focus specifically on postnatal depression: what it is, how it shows up, and how therapy can offer a safe, understanding space to begin to feel more like yourself again.
What Is Perinatal Mental Health?
Perinatal mental health refers to emotional wellbeing during pregnancy and the first year after birth. It’s not just about diagnosable conditions, although things like anxiety, OCD, and depression can arise, but about recognising how much pressure, grief, identity change, and emotional reorientation happens in this chapter of life.
And this is not limited to mothers. Fathers, partners, non-birthing parents. All can be impacted, especially when support is scarce or expectations are high.
In my work, I hold space for the full picture. From the joy and love, to the fear, grief, and loss that often go unnamed. I’ll be sharing more about some of these specific areas in future blogs. But for today, let’s sit with postnatal depression, because it touches so many, yet is so often met with silence.
Postnatal Depression: When the Joy Feels Out of Reach
Postnatal depression (PND) doesn’t always look how people expect. It’s not just feeling “sad”, though sadness may be there. For some people it looks like numbness, a sense of going through the motions. For others it might feel like intense guilt, rage, or disconnection from the baby, themselves, or their partner.
Many people I work with describe it as feeling like they’ve lost who they were. Or that they’re failing in some invisible, internal way, even when everyone around them says “you’re doing great.”
PND can begin any time in the first year after birth, not just in the early days. It can affect people who have a history of depression or anxiety, but it can also appear seemingly out of nowhere.
Some common experiences include:
Feeling low, hopeless, or emotionally flat
Persistent fatigue or feeling emotionally overwhelmed
Irritability or anger that feels out of proportion
Feeling detached from the baby, or worrying you’re a “bad” parent
Loss of interest in things you used to enjoy
Intrusive thoughts or constant worry
Struggling with sleep even when the baby is asleep
And underneath it all, there’s often a quiet question: Why don’t I feel how I thought I would?
How Therapy Helps
Therapy won’t promise to make everything better overnight. But it will give you space. Space to talk about the feelings you’ve kept hidden. To express the things you might be scared to say out loud. To not have to be “fine.”
In our work together, I might gently ask: What’s it like to say that here?
Or: What does it feel like to finally name that thought you’ve been pushing down?
And what tends to happen in that space is a kind of softening. The shame starts to loosen. There’s room to grieve, to be angry, to feel lost, without judgement. And from there, we begin to find you again. Not the “you” from before exactly, but a grounded, more compassionate version of yourself who can make sense of this new terrain.
Therapy can help you:
Understand your emotions and what’s underneath them
Make space for grief, guilt, or rage without shame
Reconnect with your sense of identity and self-worth
Strengthen relationships with your partner, baby, or family
Develop coping strategies that actually feel supportive
You’re Not Alone
There is so much pressure to enjoy every moment of early parenthood. But sometimes the reality is far from that. And when the world expects you to feel blissful, but you’re struggling just to get through the day, it can be incredibly isolating.
You are not broken. You are not failing. You are not alone.
If you’re reading this and something resonates, even quietly, I hope you know that support is available. Therapy can be a lifeline in this foggy, uncertain time. A place to make sense of what you’re feeling and begin to move through it with more gentleness and care.
In future blogs, I’ll explore some of the other areas I support around perinatal mental health, including birth trauma, anxiety during pregnancy, baby loss, infertility, and adjusting to parenthood. Each of these deserves time and attention.
For now, if postnatal depression is part of your story, please know this: it can get better. And you don’t have to carry it alone. Please get in touch here to find out more.
