Infertility & Reproductive Mental Health

Chicago, IL • Virtual Illinois • Virtual Ohio

When Building a Family Becomes an Emotional Journey Too

Infertility can change much more than your plans for having a baby.

It can change how you experience your body, your relationship, your friendships, your sense of time, and your vision of the future.

You may find yourself moving between hope and grief, excitement and fear, certainty and doubt.

You may be tired of being asked how things are going.

You may feel like everyone else is moving forward while you are waiting.

Or you may simply be exhausted from having to be okay with something that doesn't feel okay.

There is no single way to experience infertility.

When Hope and Grief Exist Together

One of the hardest parts of infertility can be the expectation that you should feel one thing at a time.

You can be hopeful about your next treatment and devastated by what happened before it.

You can feel grateful for the possibilities available to you and still grieve the path you thought you would take.

You can want a baby desperately and feel angry that so much of your life has become organized around trying to have one.

You don't have to resolve those contradictions before you can move forward.

Therapy can be a place where they can coexist.

Infertility and Your Relationship

Infertility can affect a couple in ways neither person anticipated.

You may be experiencing the same treatment differently.

One partner wants to research everything.

The other can't bear to hear another detail.

One wants to keep trying.

The other isn't sure how much more they can take.

One reaches for reassurance.

The other becomes overwhelmed and pulls away.

Sometimes the fertility journey becomes the center of the relationship, leaving little room for the couple underneath it.

I work with couples to understand what is happening between them—not just to teach better communication.

We slow things down enough to understand what each person is experiencing, what each person is protecting, and how the two of you keep finding yourselves in the same cycle.

Individual Therapy Through Infertility

You don't have to be struggling in your relationship to need support.

Infertility can bring questions about identity, control, uncertainty, grief, body image, sexuality, family, and the future.

You may feel like your life has become a series of appointments, decisions, waiting periods, and outcomes that are outside your control.

Therapy can offer a space where you don't have to be productive.

You don't have to find the lesson.

You don't have to be positive.

You don't have to make the experience meaningful.

Sometimes you simply need somewhere to be with what is happening.

Pregnancy After Infertility

Getting pregnant doesn't necessarily mean the infertility experience disappears.

Pregnancy after infertility or loss can bring enormous joy alongside fear, hypervigilance, uncertainty, and difficulty trusting that things will be okay.

You may find yourself monitoring every sensation.

Researching.

Checking.

Trying to anticipate what could go wrong.

Feeling guilty for not being more excited.

Or feeling like you can't fully relax into the pregnancy.

Therapy can provide space to understand what your system learned during infertility and how that experience may continue to shape pregnancy.

The goal isn't to convince you that nothing bad will happen.

It is to help you develop a different relationship with uncertainty while staying connected to the experience you are actually having.

Pregnancy Loss and Reproductive Grief

Loss can be difficult to explain to people who haven't experienced it.

You may be grieving a pregnancy, a baby, a future, or a version of yourself that existed before the loss.

You may also be navigating medical decisions, another pregnancy, fertility treatment, or questions about what comes next.

Grief doesn't always move in a straight line.

It can show up unexpectedly: in a doctor's office, during a pregnancy announcement, at a baby shower, or on an ordinary Tuesday.

There is room for grief here without requiring you to move through it on anyone else's timeline.

Third-Party Reproduction

I also work with individuals and couples navigating third-party reproduction, including donor conception, gestational carrier arrangements, and intended parent evaluations.

These experiences can bring their own questions about identity, relationships, parenthood, grief, attachment, and how a family story is created.

I provide a separate Third-Party Reproduction service for intended parent evaluations and therapeutic support related to gestational carrier journeys and reproductive decision-making.

My Approach

My work with infertility and reproductive mental health is relational, developmental, and integrative.

I draw from attachment, Emotionally Focused Therapy, parts work, EMDR, ACT, and Polyvagal-informed approaches.

But I don't want to reduce your experience to a treatment model.

I want to understand what this experience has been like for you.

What has changed?

What have you had to become good at?

What parts of you have become louder?

What parts have disappeared?

Where do you feel connected to yourself—and where do you feel like you've lost yourself somewhere along the way?

Sometimes therapy means learning how to tolerate uncertainty.

Sometimes it means grieving.

Sometimes it means finding your way back to your partner.

Sometimes it means simply having a place where you don't have to pretend this is easier than it is.

You Don't Have to Make It Make Sense Yet

Infertility can ask you to hold things that don't seem like they should fit together.

Hope and grief.

Love and anger.

Gratitude and disappointment.

Excitement and fear.

You don't have to choose.

There is room for the whole experience here.