About

Making the decision to become a parent is a huge step in your life. As well as feeling excited, you may have some natural worries. These can include concerns about conceiving a baby, worries about the pregnancy and birth, and fears about what you may be like as a parent. You may have had previous experiences of pregnancy that are influencing your feelings around your current journey, such as pregnancy after loss, pregnancy after birth trauma, navigating infertility, previous mental health difficulties, or navigating conception through surrogacy or donor.

As part of your pregnancy journey we can offer therapeutic support to help you to make sense of your worries and learn strategies for managing your anxiety. In addition, we can offer midwifery advice that may help you to make sense of your experiences within the maternity system.

During your pregnancy you may experience fears and worries related to your birth experience. For some individuals, this fear can be so strong that it prevents them from having children, or leaves them feeling unable to plan or enjoy the pregnancy or birth that they would like. These fears are often related to pain, losing control, or something bad happening. Primary Tokophobia occurs in women who have not given birth before, perhaps related to previous medical trauma, previous traumatic events or a lack of support during pregnancy. Secondary Tokophobia occurs in women who have previously given birth, often as a result of previous birth trauma.

You may also come across unexpected challenges during your pregnancy, such as medical or genetic complications, fears relating to pregnancy loss, ‘high risk’ pregnancies, distressing pain, difficulties with bodily changes, gender disappointment or struggles bonding with your unborn baby.

As part of your pregnancy journey we can offer you therapeutic support to help you to make sense of these fears and challenges. Therapy can help you to learn strategies to cope with the anxiety, allowing your feelings to become less distressing. In addition, we can offer antenatal midwifery birth planning support to help you to understand the options available to you and enable you to develop a birth plan that feels safe and empowering for you.

We recognise that the journey to parenthood can be overwhelming, and sadly for many parents the experience of childbirth may be traumatic. Birth trauma can be experienced by any birthing person, mum, dad, birth partner or others involved. Birth trauma can result from many situations including extended labour, blood loss, medical intervention, emergency surgery, witnessing a baby in distress, post birth complications or feeling out of control, unheard or not informed. However, birth trauma can also result from a birth that may not be medically seen as outside of the norm, depending on how the individual was made to feel at the time. Birth trauma can be an isolating experience when the birth resulted in a ‘healthy baby’ with many individuals left feeling invalidated in their trauma. Birth trauma can impact on a wide range of areas including bond with baby, bond with partner, wider relationships, fears about baby’s wellbeing, impacting overall emotional well-being, sleep, anxiety, low mood and many more.

Nurture Parenthood was born through a compassionate understanding of birth trauma, and the impact that an individuals experiences within the wider maternity system can have. We can offer a safe therapeutic space to help you to make sense of your experience. We draw on trauma focused therapeutic approaches including Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Compassion Focused Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Mindfulness Approaches. We can offer this support to any individual affected by a birth including the birthing person, mums, dads, partners, carers and wider family and networks.

In addition to therapeutic support, we can offer a birth review session led by a specialist midwife to help you to make sense of your pregnancy, birth and postnatal experience and answer any questions that you may be left with.

The loss of a baby is both traumatic and heartbreaking. You may have experienced a miscarriage, a missed miscarriage or a termination of pregnancy for medical reasons. Perhaps you have experienced a stillbirth or the loss of your infant child. Whatever your experience, it is devastating. The grief and trauma can feel very intense, and you may be experiencing a wide range of emotions. You may be struggling to make sense of your loss, or feel as though you are constantly faced with reminders of the baby and the hopes and dreams that you had for them. You may be struggling with thoughts around navigating a pregnancy after loss, or parenting your older children after the loss of a baby.

Whatever your experience, we can offer therapeutic support to help you to process your loss and manage the trauma and grief that you may be left with. We draw on specialist trauma focused therapeutic approaches including Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Compassion Focused Therapy and Mindfulness Approaches.

In addition, if you are contemplating or struggling with the journey of pregnancy after loss, we can offer specialist antenatal midwifery advice to help you to make sense of your experience and navigate your subsequent pregnancies.

The journey to parenthood can be exciting, challenging and overwhelming. A new baby can bring a range of emotions, as well as a significant change to life as we know it. The experiences that we have had in the journey to the birth of our child can impact on the way we perceive ourselves, others and the world around us. It can impact on our bond with our baby, and our relationships with partners, other children, wider family and friends. The transition can bring up issues relating to our own experiences of being parented, and navigating our own role as parent. You may be struggling with routines, feeding, sleep and societal expectations. As baby grows you may worry about developmental milestones, and transitions such as returning to work.

For some individuals the transition to parenthood may be so overwhelming that it can trigger postnatal mental health difficulties, including anxiety and depression.

If you are experiencing any of the above concerns, we can offer therapeutic support to help you to make sense of your experience and navigate your adjustment to parenthood. We draw on therapeutic approaches such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Compassion Focused Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Mindfulness Based Approaches and Attachment/Systemic Based Approaches.