You pictured this differently.
Maybe you imagined bonding instantly. Maybe you thought the anxiety would ease once the baby arrived, not multiply. Maybe you're not a mother yet, trying to conceive, and you're exhausted by hope that keeps getting interrupted. Or maybe your kids are older now, and you're only just realizing how much of yourself got left behind somewhere in the last few years.
Whatever stage you're in, here's something worth hearing: what you're carrying doesn't have to be carried alone, and it doesn't have to be labelled before it's taken seriously.
The Gap Nobody Talks About
There's a lot of support out there for the physical side of pregnancy and birth. Prenatal classes. Lactation consultants. Postpartum check-ups at six weeks. What gets far less attention is the emotional weight underneath all of it: the identity shift, the grief for who you were before, the rage that shows up out of nowhere, the sense that you're failing at something everyone else seems to find instinctive.
That gap is exactly where several of our counsellors do their work.
Meet the Team Holding This Space
Jenni Fehr, MSW, RSW ($160 per session, direct billing available) Supporting pregnancy planning, new moms, and postpartum are her main focus areas, and she's also a mother herself, which shapes how she shows up for other mothers in the room. This fall, she's running A Mother's Soul, a small group for people who are pregnant now or planning to be, built around connection rather than just information.
Ashley Bishop, MA (Cand.), Intern Counsellor (1st session is free, then $35) spent years as a labour and delivery and postpartum nurse before training as a counsellor. Her focus areas read like a direct response to what she saw in the hospital and what she needed herself after leaving it: perinatal mental health, postpartum depression and anxiety, pregnancy loss and infertility.
Cleia Sangster, PhD, Intern Counsellor (1st session is free, then $35) brings a decade of nonprofit work with parents of babies and teens into a counselling lens shaped by narrative therapy - the belief that you're not your problems, even when they're loud.
Adria Lipsett, MA, RCC ($150 per session, direct billing available) works with the life transitions, caregiving fatigue, and grief that so much of motherhood involves, whether or not "postpartum" is the word for what you're going through.
You Don't Need a Diagnosis to Start
A lot of people wait to reach out because they don't think what they're feeling is "bad enough" yet. It doesn't need to be. You don't need a diagnosis, a crisis, or the right vocabulary to book a first session. You just need the sense that something's harder than it should be.
We offer rates starting at $35, direct billing, and a free 20-minute consultation if you want to talk it through before committing to anything.
Read more and meet the full motherhood support team: 👉 strengthinheart.ca/prenatal-postpartum-counselling
Strength in Heart Counselling offers trauma-informed therapy in Victoria & Cowichan Valley, BC, and online across Canada. If you're pregnant, postpartum, trying to conceive, or just deep in the middle of motherhood and needing somewhere to land, we'd love to help you find the right fit.
