Counselling

Counselling for Pregnancy and Postnatal Families

Pregnancy and birth signifies profound changes both physically and emotionally.   These changes may affect a woman individually but also within a partnership.  Unexpected feelings and emotions may develop that can be difficult to understand and process.  A woman’s sense of self, beliefs and values may be challenged and may also reveal or heighten difficulties within interpersonal relationships.  Counselling aims to provide a supportive, safe and collaborative environment to help address everyday stress, grief and loss, anxiety, depression and life transitions.  It can assist to develop greater awareness, clarity and perspective in decision making, deepening understanding of yourself and your relationships with others, and provide relief from negative emotions and old patterns of relating.   

We offer counselling, which is specific to pregnancy and postnatal clients. Areas that our counsellors can help you with include:

• exploring the psychological aspects of birth and the pyscho-social factors which can affect birth outcomes.
• counselling for depression and anxiety
• bereavement counselling
• counselling for fertility issues and family planning
• debriefing of birth experiences for women and couples
• counselling for difficult or traumatic birth experiences for women and couples
• counselling for postnatal depression
• parenting issues – from newborns to teenagers, adapting to living life with a newborn and toddler, or more
• making the transition – woman to mother, couple to family, mother to grandmother, working woman to new mother, returning to
• work following childbirth
• empty nesting – when your children leave home and the home becomes eerily quiet … and tidy
• counselling for professionals – dealing with stress, setting boundaries, adapting to self-employment.

Rhea Dempsey offers both couples and individual counselling, as well as birth debriefing. ($120 per hour, $220 for two hour birth debrief)

Sue Power offers individual counselling. ($120 for 1.5hr initial session; $90 for subsequent 1hr sessions)